Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Sometimes it seems people hate the unemployed. I've written about it before, and despite my other ranting and raving, it's never quite cathartic enough to purge me of the pernicious disgust I feel over the sheer dislike people have for those without jobs. I've mulled this over again and again – and amongst my many mulling I think I found at least one reason people look down on the unemployed.
They fear being like them.
I recall when I was first called an "Internet Personality." It was at a convention, and that was how I was described in the program booklet. That was quite a few years ago, and it seems that over time in the age of the internet, megamedia, and 24-hour news cycles the world is filled with "personalities."
Personalities are everywhere. News personalities. Internet personalities. Writers are personalities. Colorful local personalities. It seems some of the most successful (or at least famous) people we know are, well . . . personalities.
(Last week I posted to a link on an article about rejected SF and Fantasy novels, and one of our regulars noted that Dune had been rejected for length at one point – and then noted how some series and books seem to be overlong. That got me thinking and this column is the result).
What is the ideal length of a book? A series? A TV episode? A movie? A movie series?
You have an idea in mind. Publishers, TV executives, authors, and everyone has an idea in mind. I daresay you could, with little prompting start quite a conversation – or argument – about the ideal length/duration of any form of media. We all have ideas about such things, some held quite passionately.