No! let 'em go as far as they like.
Of course. There is also a difference between being favored and perspiring!
Here you have rung in a change of venue. You have been asking about reactions to other people's writings; abruptly you demand details as to one's own artisanship. Anything is a tool of my trade which I find suitable to my purposes, and I will use it fully or in outline as fits the special situation.
Paul L. Anderson: It depends on how well the author has done his work. If he has done it well, I live the story I'm reading; if not, I don't finish the story. I do not see details clearly; the vision is broad, and I do not feel physical pain—the pain I feel is sympathetic. The pictures I see are in black and white, this fact, together with the breadth of vision, being traceable to the fact that for many years I worked at pictorial photography, where the effort was to see things broadly, without niggling detail, and to see them without color.
Trigonometry, analytic geometry, and solid geometry were my favorite forms of mathematics; probably because more concrete than algebra, calculus, and analytic mechanics.
I have a stock picture for a barroom and gambling hall, and curiously enough it doesn't in the least resemble any barroom I ever was in, though I have a secondary stock picture of one which does. No other stock pictures.
The imagination is more vivid in writing than in reading; I live the story with more force.
Sure they're tools of the trade. How can you make another man see a thing if you don't see it yourself?
William Ashley Anderson: This depends entirely upon the power of the author to make vivid the scenes and actions he describes. In direct proportion to the genius of the author do I feel the force of his impressions.
The aim of writing—as of all art—is to reproduce and idealize nature. Its aim, therefore, is to make everything seem real. It approaches reality, but it can never attain reality, because it is all illusion. It stirs the senses, therefore, as illusion stirs the senses, and has the power to make things as clear and vivid as in dreams—but never as sharp and poignant as in reality. The impress of nature is direct. The impress of literature is by means of metaphor. For its effect, metaphor must depend upon awakening the memory. For this reason, a sensitive, imaginative, experienced person appreciates best the works of higher genius which employ a greater variety of metaphor than mediocre works.