The Campbell touch

As I've said before one of the great things about this blogging lark is when someone you've never met or even heard of leaves you a comment or links to your blog. Someone likes this rubbish you think! I mean I don't think I am interesting for goodness sake!!

Another thing is finding blogs you enjoy reading. I spend much less time on forums these days and more time reading blogs. A friend of mine emailed me today complaining that not only was she spending too much time reading my blog but reading the links as well!

I have no real idea why I started this honestly I don't. It certainly has gone in directions I wouldn't have expected. I expected no one other than a few friends to read it and now I find I comments from people from exotic places like Manchester!! OK the US and Sweden!

I am actually going to meet someone who I have discovered via this blog thingy this weekend. I mean how odd is that?

I was therefore intrigued to read the following on the foritsi blog (check the links folk).

One blogger in particular made me wonder if I should forget the whole idea, and take up stamp collecting . . . to this day I find her rather unsettling . . . her blog was streamlined and ultra professional, she had a little army of supporters who heaped lavish praise on even the most ordinary of posts. The idea of ever leaving a comment for this paragon of blogging virtue gave me the heebee geebees, so I never did. However, on one occasion, I did leave a comment on a blog she happened to visit. The blogger had asked a question, which I answered, correctly as it happens. Then, for no apparent reason, SuperBlogger, posted a comment which basically said ' why should anyone care about the opinion of a newbie, with a default template and nothing to say for themselves' I was horrified. Yes, I did have a default template, yes, I had only managed to accumulate half a dozen posts, but her criticism still seemed unwarranted. I'm not sure why she did this, and to be honest, as time has passed, I have ceased to care, but I have noticed that she is not alone.

Now I don't know who this blogger is, hell I've been blogging all of almost 3 months, so I have no knowledge on who are the hot bloggers (kate leave the blog name as a comment - I won't publish it!! but I am nosey) BUT! This strikes me as the attitude of the playground. I'm the popular boy/girl in the playground how dare you talk to me. For f**ks sake people GROW UP.

Why do people behave like that? Perhaps there esteem is so low that being a popular blogger means something and it makes them think they are important. Luckiy no one has been nasty to me.

Some of you may have heard of the writer Isaac Asimov. If you are a Science Fiction fan you will certainly know him. Along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke he was one of the biggest names in SF for over 50 years. In the late 1930's he was a nobody a young geeky kid. He submitted a few stories to the big magazine of the time Astounding. Now Astounding was edited by John W Campbell Jr who was a famous SF writer of the time. Campbell spent time talking through stories with Asimov and handing out ideas. Asimov maintained that Campbell was as much the architect of the Laws of Robotics as he was.

Campbell didnt have to do that but he did. Whereas our mystery blogger was quick to put down Asimov tells the following story of Campbell.

I asked him once, not too long before his death, what his secret was. He said, "I have a talent that can't be taught."

"What is that?" I asked.

He said, "An eighteen-year-old named Isaac Asimov came to my office with a story. I talked to him and read his story and found it to be impossible. From that impossible story, though, I could tell that if he were willing to work at it, he would become a great writer."

And that's what takes genius - because I certainly didn't know taht about myself at the time.

All I knew was that I wanted to write. He knew, and on the slenderest evidence, that I could write.

Now in this world we are all to quick to criticse to put down and say you'll never do it. So stuff the critics just go have fun.