Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Who Wants to be an Author?

Hands up who wants to be an author!

Michelle Pauli in the Guardian today reports that:
... that almost 10% of Britons aspire to being an author, followed by sports personality, pilot, astronaut and event organiser on the list of most coveted jobs. More women than men yearn to write, while those aged between 35 and 50, and those over 50 were most likely to dream about getting published ...
and reckons J.K. Rowling has a lot to answer for!

13 comments:

Greenbottle said...

...More women than men yearn to write...

doesn't sound like good news to me.

bibliobibuli said...

bloody misogynist!

Anonymous said...

Heh.. might as well ask.. who wants to slog really hard and still be poor for life ? :)

Why do people still dream about getting published when there are so many ways to self-publish ? getting published is not what it used to be.

bibliobibuli said...

Heh.. might as well ask.. who wants to slog really hard and still be poor for life ? :)

i know. people are masochists, aren't they.

Greenbottle said...

ha ha...


we already have more than enough sophie f*****g kinsellas in the world...could do with a few more boys who want to write like gunther grass (or girls who write like men)...

Anonymous said...

Greenbottle,
As a non woman, you have no right to comment on women novelists or women readers.

Greenbottle said...

ai, sorry if i make anybody mad. may be we can make up and argue things out over lunch or something.

i thought you guys (or gals) value and love freedom of expresion...i don't mean to insult non man writers and readers. i'm just stating my personal reading preferance only.and i do read some non man writers.

it could be worse, one guy once memorably mentioned that he is almost homosexual with regards to his reading preference .

Anonymous said...

Greenbottle, you are forgiven. I was just using the "non [fill in the blanks]" argument that Malaysians seem so fond of using. Saying non woman or non man sounds ridiculous don't you think? Just imagine saying non Chinese or non Hindu. We should stop trying to exclude the other and be more exclusive. Ok Animah get off your high horse
I do value freedom of expression and of course you are entitled to your opinion even though you provoke us, but that's all in good fun. Right??

bibliobibuli said...

lunch is always good greenbottle no matter what your views on books! i don't know if animah is still speaking to you though.

Anonymous said...

Sorry I meant we should be more inclusive. Typo.

Amir Muhammad said...

It was Nabokov who said he was "frankly homosexual" in his literary taste.

Greenbottle said...

oh bugger, so that guy whom i admire greatly for his taste on books actually plagiarized nabokov...but that's really ok with me. if anybody wants to copy anything, nabokov is just the person one should ape i suppose.

i'd kiss the feet of any malaysian who can write half as good as nabokov.

Anonymous said...

"i'd kiss the feet of any malaysian who can write half as good as nabokov."

This country will have good writers when good writers make a million a month :)

"i thought you guys (or gals) value and love freedom of expresion."

That's what they all say. In reality what they believe is they like tghe feeling of believing that they support freedom of expression. They like the yelling and screaming and waving of banners that say "FREEDOM NOW !" and things like that. If you ask them what freedom of expression means though, a lot would be hard pressed to give you a definition.

In short, what they like is the drama, the conflict, the sense of "rebelliousness" that comes from supporting freedom of expression. Whether they actually believe in freedom of expression is debatable :)