Zorknot wrote:

Good points. 
I might, just maybe, possibly, in a hypothetical situation, theoretically speaking have to say I'm wrong about this.

I have a habit of attempting to argue a side even when the reason for arguing has long been lost. Sorry about that. 

At any rate while the creative disclaimer thing is a risk, at the end of the day it's an itch I have to scratch. If I have a normal disclaimer I just feel incomplete. Maybe I'll get over it sometime, but not until the stupid part of my brain is convinced of the futility.


 

I'm going to de-lurk here just to make a comment. For some reason, this 
exchange caught my eye.

Zorknot, the thing that strikes me about this whole "disclaimer debacle" 
is not so much the principle of the matter (others have made that point) 
or even whether or not any of your disclaimers were cleverly written. 
It's the extent that you felt you needed to go to defend what you'd 
written, for an extremely trivial and easily fixed aspect of the story.

What I'm recognizing here is something that I have gone through with my 
own writing. It's easy to be too attached to your own work. It's natural 
to want every to preserve every golden word you've lovingly crafted for 
your story, and to try to defend each decision you made as if there was 
some deep, powerful reason behind writing things precisely that way.

It's also very limiting.

Now, I confess -- I reflexively deleted your story before I read it, 
because that's what I do with almost everything these days (nothing 
personal). So I haven't seen how you react to other C&C. But from the 
way that you're manning the trenches to defend a silly disclaimer, I'm 
thinking that you approach your writing from a very protective 
standpoint. To get the most out of C&C, you have to relax that.

Here's an exercise that has been helpful for me. Take any aspect of your 
story you like. Make it an important one -- whether a character lives or 
dies, whether someone is the villain or the hero, who falls in love with 
whom, etc.

Now, ask yourself this: "What if I completely changed this?"

Don't try to defend what you had in mind or convince yourself that it's 
necessary for some plot point you must make down the road. Let it go for 
a moment. Think about it without attachment, and see where it takes you. 
Turn your story on its head, and take a good look at it. It might be 
worse... but sometimes, it'll make your story better. If you are able to 
engage in this, I think you'll find it's very liberating. It opens up 
all sorts of doors in your writing.

Best of luck,
Grayson Towler
http://www.talesfromthevault.com/relentless



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