A B N A Vets : Forum : The Buzz


The Buzz

17 Years Ago


Looks like Amazon is setting up the excerpts for entries that made the cut -- only 110 of them so far, not yet available for download, but the titles, authors, and synopses are there.  Here's the url:

 

 

I didn't spot anyone from this group, but Betty from the forum (The Huguenot Hearts) is #83.

 

Correction:  the excerpts can be downloaded -- and the first four are dummies, apparently.

 

 

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


Thanks for the heads up, Leah.  I wonder if anyone ever bled to death from chewing their fingernails?  This is crazy!

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


I don't know how many people are bleeding from their excessive nail-chewing, but if there's a lot of people like me then there's going to be a lot of people who don't sleep until all the semi-finalists are posted and repeatedly bang their head against the nearest hard object...

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


Three cheers for Betty!! Keeping my fingers crossed that some of us ABNAVets make it too.

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


I have to admit that I have known since last night. I emailed Betty immediately.
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[no subject]

17 Years Ago


They have taken them off. There were 114 before I went to tea and now they are gone. All that is left is the first four trial ones and just one real one. How disappointing! Now we will probably have to wait until the official unveiling.  Exciting for Betty and co to get a sneak notification.

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


And thank goodness, I say.  People were getting obsessive about it.

 

Well, we're all a little obsessive about the competition, I suppose.

 

I'm trying to curb my anxiety and get on with other things, like writing and revising, and reviewing over here.

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


Obsessive? Hah, not only that. Most peeps from the official boards also seem to be quite touchy and nervous, up the point of being positively neurotic. :)

I have to admit I'm quite confident in Amazon handling everyhing properly in the end. With their amount of mind share and dependence on an image of rock-solid reliability and service, they can't afford any major screw-ups.


Just give them some time, see how things pan and start complaining once you've been shortchanged. If I don't make the January, 15th cut, I'm confident it won't be due to some technical or procedural mishaps, but based on the lacking merit of my entry alone. :)

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


I reckon most writers are a tad neurotic.

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


That begs a question: Are we writers because we're neurotic, or are we neurotic because we're writers?  Perhaps the answer is different for everyone.

 

As for me, I'm a writer because I'm neurotic. If I didn't have an avenue to vent all my anxieties, I'd implode. So instead, I write.  ;-)

[no subject]

17 Years Ago


Originally posted by Siobhan MacIntyre

That begs a question: Are we writers because we're neurotic, or are we neurotic because we're writers?  Perhaps the answer is different for everyone.

 

As for me, I'm a writer because I'm neurotic. If I didn't have an avenue to vent all my anxieties, I'd implode. So instead, I write.  ;-)


I think we all are writers because we are neurotic.

Consider what Geza Roheim wrote on medicine men in The Origin and Function of Culture (Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs), as sourced from Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces:

"They are the leaders in the infantile game and the lightning conductors of anxiety. The fight the demons so that others can hunt prey and in general fight reality."

I think artists and writers are the medicine men, the shamans, of our times. We battle the demons, and sometimes become involved up to a point of personal and social malfunction, so that others--society at large--can function. We battle inner realities, they battle outer realities. And while we allow them catharsis in a mediated experience of our struggle and anxiety, they usually allow us to live and take care of us in a material way, even if sometimes in a very roundabout way.

So, yes, even the most disfunctional artist, believing to have abandoned mankind and standing at the deep end's edge, does a vital, social service. It just sometimes sucks for him.