Life in the Time of COVID-19

Bond, James Bond

As all of you are aware, this past weekend was Thanksgiving.  Everybody has their own Thanksgiving traditions and my family’s tradition is to see a movie on the Saturday after. This year was no exception and the movie of choice was Skyfall.  All my family members were really looking forward to seeing the movie given the fact that it had gotten good reviews and people we knew had really liked the movie.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say the movie did not disappoint.  In fact it exceeded my expectations and here is why.  This is one of the few James Bond movies that did not depend on gadgets to get James out of his impossible predicaments. Oh don’t get me wrong I love the James Bond gadgets. But in this movie it focused on the technology that we have today.  Computer programs, GPS and tracking devices that are all in use today plus the agent’s ability to think and assess what to do in a situation made the movie believable.  Also Q and Moneypenny are back!

Of course I will not say more because I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it.  It is definitely something to put on your movie going list.

But that is not why I am writing my post.  After the movie was over and all the credits were rolling I noticed that Ian Fleming was on the list of credits.  I was pretty sure Ian Fleming had died but heck I thought that I could be wrong so I of course went home to Google him.  Just as I suspected he had died in 1962.  He wrote many James Bond novels but Skyfall was not one of them.  It seems he still gets credit because he created and developed the characters or so it seems to me.  So other people wrote the story and screen play but he still got credit in the movie. Interesting!

 

Coincidently, I was reading the Sunday Washington Post.  I like to read Walter Scott’s Personality parade the question and answer column on famous people.  One of the questions asked by a curious reader was “There seems to be a new James Patterson novel every month.  Does he take part in the writing process or just lend his name as a co-author?” I was flabbergasted by this question thinking to myself, why would a writer not write their own books?  The answer to this according to Patterson is that he creates the outline and a “cowriter’ writes the first draft and Patterson than finishes up.  As far as I am concerned he is not writing or for that matter co-writing these books.  He is merely selling his name.  Ok he looks at the first draft to make sure the co-author can write a story but what part of these books did he really write?  He is basically playing the role of an English professor or a Company with his co-writer being his student or employee.

How Many other writers are doing this and why?  To me writing means expressing your views and telling your story not letting someone else do it for you.  Each writer has their own way of using words and developing their story.  It is like their finger print and while they may write many novels with different characters and plots their own special cadence and rhythm is woven into their words.

When I find an author that I really like, I will usually read another book by that author.  Some of the things I look for when reading is consistency in the writing.   Call me old fashioned but if I was a successful author why would I let someone else write books under my name causing people to question my personal writing ability.  Some of my feelings may be my ego talking but I am not so sure.  Writing to me is sharing and communicating with people in my own style.  It is an accomplishment, a personal accomplishment.  Am I the only one out there that feels this way?