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Congratulations !
 
Congrats, old friend. This is becoming habit forming. :)

Here's a virtual bottle of Dom Perignon, courtesy of Storey. ;)
 
I drop back in from a long sojourn and find it's Deja Vu all over again. :D Congrats Director.

Joe
 
Congratulations Director, Faeelin, and all the recent WritAARs of the Week!
 
All his AARs are quite a read. I didn't post enough, but I really enjoyed his GC AAR "Frontier."

Very nice, Director! Good to see you in the top seat again!
 
Congratulations Director. I haven't commented on A Special Providence but the many pages (I don't even think I'm halfway through, though!) I have read so far have been brilliant.
 
Congratulations my Friend, you deserve this award so much. One of the best reads out there in my opinion :)
 
Congratulations!
 
Nice choice. Congratulations Director!
 
Wow. Um... I don't have a speech prepared, or anything. Um...



Thank you, Faeelin; I appreciate the honor. As Lord Durham and others have said, I have been here before, but I assure you I felt same explosion of surprise, delight and puzzlement then as I do now. Surprise because so many other people write more for popular support than I do - not a criticism; more on that in a moment. Delight - well, wouldn't you be delighted? And puzzled because I never think I'm writing very well at all.

I'm a veteran, now. I've been here since, what, 2002 I think. A lot - a lot - of the people I admired have gone quietly away. Heck, what may be the largest single trove of fine alternative history on the net - the EU2 library - is now a lost warren of dusty stacks, save for Catknight and a few other brave souls who still venture there. Everything we write here is destined for the same fate, even the excellent collection of HoI2 and the growing field of EU3, and that makes me very sad. So why keep writing?

When I began, I wrote so that people would notice me. My first two AARs were pretty much based on using radical ideas to shock people into paying attention. I enjoyed it, and they are not bad works. Somewhere in there I decided I could write professionally, and I think there are glimpses and flashes of quality in all my works. (How pompous that sounds. But I've probably written the equivalent of three novels by now). 'Dragons' nearly drove me out of writing forever, and from that I learned the necessity of keeping tight control.

I have made one serious attempt at writing an actual novel, which I abandoned early on as a dismal flop. Mostly, it suffered from the thing that makes an AAR possible: episodic segments, each a page or two in length. I'll have to unlearn those habits and learn how to write extended passages of chapter length before I will be able to successfully tackle a novel.

And I want to write. That's my secret. I've enjoyed working here and I appreciate Paradox's indulgence, but I do want more. Unfortunately, what I want isn't in our local bookstores any more. Classic science fiction is dead, reduced to a few shelves of Star Trek and Star Wars novelizations. Fantasy isn't in much better shape - go count the number of Tolkien ripoffs and vampire look-alikes and subtract them from the total. See?

There's nothing wrong with writing for popularity - without it, none of us would write, me especially included. But I want to write deeply enough to please the people who think deeply, as well. I want the freedom to develop a story without putting a hook for applause at the end of every line. It's the eternal difference between popular music and 'classical'. Popular music is hard to write - short, snappy, with a hook. But classical is harder to listen to because it gives the composer time and a broader set of tone colors. Few people these days can concentrate long enough to appreciate a piece longer than 3 minutes, but that's the sort of story want to write. Think of the difference between a sit-com and serious theater. Sit-coms are certainly hard to write well, but every line doesn't have to be built to a laugh track, surely? I've done that - read 'Napoleon', he said immodestly - and now I write to a larger plan.

In any event I am no longer as popular as I once was - writing in Victoria may have something to do with that; poor much-maligned game, she is not for the masses :p - but it is more likely that I no longer write in a way that is accessible to casual readers. And let me confess, 'Providence' is not perhaps my best work, though I think it is the most disciplined in terms of character development and pruning of plot sidelines. In any event I am committed to going forward, so long as the readers sustain me with their comments...

Thank you all for reading. Bless you for commenting, which I think is less common in the forum as a whole these days. If you don't spread your comments around, folks, all you'll have left is a handful of popular stories, and that'll be the true death of this place. All of the 'great writers' you love on this forum were once unknowns, and they were encouraged to start and continue by comments. The best fade away and the new ones never take root without recognition, and a comments are the currency of recognition.

Go read. Go write. Go tell someone what you thought. That's your civic obligation.



And thank you for recognizing me. A bad week just became better. :)
 
Wonderful ! ! Congratulations Director ! ! :cool:
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am passing on the torch and my choice was made for two reasons. First, of course, is because the author thoroughly deserves it. Second, I'm hoping an incentive will encourage him to finally finish the thing...

And so I pass the baton to CatKnight, who inexplicably has only won this award once before. Go check out Resurrection: Rebirth of the United States. You'll be glad you did. :)


Thank you for the recognition, and a double scoop of 'Bless you!' for those of you who have left a comment in my AAR this past week.
 
Congratulations , CatKnight :D