It's rather ironic that the book title he mentions has fourteen words; makes a bit of a nonsense of his earlier statement that titles should be no more than 1-4!

If these robotic readers are anything like the ones I've heard reading books in the past, they're awful. Give me a human reader anytime.

As our creative content becomes more tangible and honest in reflection, we will be forced to be more realistic about everything over the coming years. This applies both to our economic confidence and our cultural outlook. The human story will be one of value reflection and reassessment, as both our priorities and purchases are examined in light of what is truly meaningful to us. I had a quick look at the other nine 'predictions' - some of them seemed more likely than this first one, which assumes that somehow when people are faced with more reality they want more reality in their stories. If that's the case, how was it that in the Great Depression, Hollywood produced more and more films with deluxe production values, comedy (mostly of the unrealistic kind) and fantasies?

I guess it all depends on how good the iphone novel is. I read the other day that in Japan young women have been successfully writing romantic novels on mobiles!

I don't like the answer. I think if authors have to spend their time marketing, then they're losing the creative edge of what they're trying to do in the first place. Writing a novel on an iphone may be cute, it's hardly going to be something this person will make work the second time around in marketing terms.

"a length of only 84 minutes, to conform to the attention span of a young audience" A dubious piece of reasoning. One of the most popular movies amongst young people (if forums discussing movies are anything to go by) is Titanic, which hardly conforms to the short attention span theory. Mike

Not being disciplined with your writing is in the same family as not writing until you're inspired. Neither work in the end. Since I began blogging in earnest, which meant writing for up to four blogs a day, I've found that any writing I do comes more easily. I can sit down and write and know that the ideas will arrive quickly. Furthermore, blogging is very freeing, because you're not committed to producing masterpieces all the time, and that keeps the internal editor under control.

And a Happy Christmas to you too, Jurgen. Thanks for the daily email notes about writing. It's one of the few daily emails I read consistently!

I agree with all of this, Jurgen. I can remember one editor saying that the writing was only the stuff to fill in the spaces between the ads. That might be how a magazine editor views writing, but I don't believe it's how magazine readers view it. How many people buy magazines or newspapers for the advertising primarily. Very few, I suspect. And editors seem continually under pressure to make writers' payments the smalled amount on the budget. I think times have changed: when the Saturday Evening Post was one of the major magazines in the US, back in the 30s, good writers could make a fortune from writing for it. I've found newspaper editors are worse than magazines editors: they will ignore writer's submissions if they're not interested. And even if they are interested, they take their time. No wonder so many writers have turned to blogs: at least the blogs never turn you down, and response time is immediate!

I'm not sure that I'd categorise those two artists quite so definitively. While Welles never quite made another movie like Citizen Kane, he certainly made more movies that are well worth watching even after all these years. His talent and ego seem to get in his way, somehow, but he was hardly a one-shot artist. As for Hitchcock, he'd hardly fit into the late bloomer category. He made marvellous movies back in England in the thirties, (and some duds, but then he was a 'general' director at that point, required to make whatever the studio wanted. In the forties he turned out a series of excellent black and white movies, of which Rebecca is just one example. The fifties brought new explorations, and then came films like Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho - all experimental. Hitchcock was one of the great experimentalists. It was only in his final years that he made a few more dud movies. In the sixties there are six movies: The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy (one of his worst), and Family Plot (possibly his worst, with the exception of some of the early British studio features). So how does he show up as a 'late bloomer'? Not at all, if his filmography is anything to go by.

Great to meet you briefly today, Jurgen, at the PodCamp. I was only able to stay till mid afternoon, and can't come tomorrow. However, what I did get involved in, and the conversations I had were all interesting and worthwhile. Hope you found it that way too. Mike Crowl

Hi, Jurgen, see you there on the Saturday. (Can't make the Sunday, unfortunately.) Hoping to get a bit of understanding of the podcast scene and some more ideas on blogging. Mike Crowl