DHBirr Wrote:Similarly, there's that famous line, Samuel Johnson claiming to be quoting someone else, about going through whatever you've written and if you come to "a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." Following that strictly has always struck me as a recipe for bland writing.
There's something that seems strangely paradoxical about it. Is an author's tastes assumed to be so different from their readers'? Shouldn't it be more the opposite, where the author thinking they just did something cool there is a positive sign? Liking the stuff you come up with is why your fans became your fans in the first place.
-Morgan.