Wangst and weemo

[feuervogel]

I read a lot of writers' blogs. Or LJs, whatever. And I've started to feel like I'm inadequate and inept as a writer, because I wasn't an English major. I'm not Trained in things like Narrative Technique, Structure, and Symbolism, and I'm not well-read enough in classics, folklore, or myths to make use of Allusions.

I'm an impostor.

All I've got is some characters, a story idea, and 20-odd years of reading spec fic (and some Real Books™). No technique, no ideas for creative symbolism or structure or literary allusions.

I'm never gonna sell anything.

Comments

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Huh, and here it never even occurred to me to consider myself inadequate or inept as a writer because I am not an English major. It boils down to your ability to tell a story.

The thing to bear in mind is, you're not writing literary fiction, bb, you're writing genre fiction.

Nobody is going to deconstruct your work and inspect it for literary devices until your work becomes very popular and is considered groundbreaking or classic for genre fiction. AND EVEN THEN I find people will pick up far more meaning from your work than you consciously put in. =p

[feuervogel]

Some modern genre writers are very enamored of Structure, Narrative Form, and Deconstruction of Tropes. People love them. They win Hugos. (Also, apparently, Purple Lyrical Prose is the big thing these days.)

I'll also never be considered a Good Writer because I don't like killing off my characters.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

And is winning a Hugo your goal and why you want to write? Are you looking for literary acclaim? If you are then, yes, be concerned about these things. If you just want to publish your stories and have readers enjoy them then don't sweat it; just tell your stories as best you can. J.K. Rowling is proof technical skill and education are not requirements for writing a popular and money-making story. (Not that I am accusing you of writing as bad as J.K.Rowling, I would never do that! lol I'm just saying, if SHE can do it...)

(Purple lyrical prose will NEVER be a big thing in my taste for writing. If it has come back into vogue then comfort yourself with the knowledge it is a fad and will go away. [Much like acid wash denim.] =p)

As for killing off your characters, dude, who says?

I understand that all creative people navigate ups and downs with their work but don't let these sort of things get to you. Soldier on and keep writing. Rejection is part of the industry and you need to move past the stories that don't sell and keep going!

And, yes, next time I'm having a low moment and going on about how I'm unpublishable feel free to toss all this back at me. I'll likely need a reminder!

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

J.K. Rowling is proof technical skill and education are not requirements for writing a popular and money-making story.

Ahem. For further evidence, I refer you to Stephanie Meyer. If the metric is success, money, audience... yeah. Knowledge of and even skill at writing aren't requirements.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention S.Meyer but I've never been brave enough to actually try reading one of her stories. XD Is her writing absolutely horrible?

What bothers me about popular but horribly-written stories is what the kids reading them learn about story-telling. Then again, history is fraught with horrible writers who tell popular tales. Staying power seems to be based on popularity and having your works physically survive long enough to become 'classic'.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I've never read them. I'm afraid the books would burn me. I've read in-depth reviews and analyses, though, and excerpts... summaries showing the characterization, etc. I know some people who have read it, but none of them are writers or English majors, and even they comment on the mediocre quality.

I particularly worry about popular-but-crappy genre fiction, because it just confirms what people want to believe - that all genre fiction is inherently inferior, because look at what the "break out" genre fiction is like! Likewise, every poorly written breakout inspires even crappier knockoffs of the crappy original. From what I've read, the Twilight novels actually bother me more for their commentary (and indoctrination) on people and relationships than their writing lessons.

Not to mention that S.M. publicly and profusely disavows having done her homework with regard to writing fantasy. Which, of course, she's not writing, really. Those vampires and werewolves are taken from fantasy, which is of course a ghetto of unpopular, badly written stuff for D&D nerds.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

...because it just confirms what people want to believe - that all genre fiction is inherently inferior...
Ugh, yes. This attitude needs to go away and blockbuster crap isn't helping. XD

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that whenever a genre novel starts getting literary attention, it stops being considered "science fiction" or "fantasy" or what-have-you - now it's a bildungsroman that just happens to be set on a fictional world where there happens to be magic, or it's a "startling vision of the future" or what have you.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, I forgot, until a news story tonight about the new book...

The ultimate argument. The final proof you don't need writing skill. You don't need research. You don't need realism. You don't have to write compelling dialogue or narrative. You don't even need interesting, realistic characters or consistency in characterization.

I give you...

Dan. Motherfucking. Brown.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Ahahah! Is that the guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code? (Which I have not, nor will I ever, read.)

Q.E.D., indeed!

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

It is, and, sad to say, I have read the book. So I can say with all reasonable assurance that he would fail any writing course in the world. Not to mention any history course.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

And then this lovely link (http://ow.ly/pGV9) crossed my path. XD

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Wow. Picking the 20 worst sentences of Dan Brown is like trying to find a needle in a needlestack.

So, now, take that, and multiply it by hundreds of pages over multiple novels. Because, trust me, The Da Vinci Code doesn't really have any better turns of phrase that I recall.

But the chapters are short, and the sentences are usually simple, and you get to thrill to the fact that you're way smarter than the Professor of Symbology and all his very educated friends. I mean, like, people who studied Leonardo da Vinci's life, but are thwarted by a clever "code" for several pages - said "code" being mirror-writing. You know, like Leonardo used all his life.

[feuervogel]

Ack! Horrid! That shit was *published*????

As someone's LJ icon says, Stephenie Meyer is my hero. If she can get published, I can too.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

AND EVEN THEN I find people will pick up far more meaning from your work than you consciously put in. =p

My parents always used to talk about one English professor at their college who fetishized some author's work, had whole classes devoted to deconstructing the intricate symbolism and themes and the deeper meaning that went into it, etc, etc. Then, one day, he landed the author to come talk at the college, went to pick him up, and said author spend the whole ride to the college, and much of his talk, angrily deriding all the morons out there who kept trying to read all this deep meaning bullshit into his work.

Apparently, the class was not offered the following years.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

AHhaha! YES! Exactly! My experience was with a poet and a teacher who kept arguing a particular meaning for this one line and when we asked the poet himself about it he looked at us and pretty much said, "I don't remember what I was thinking when I wrote that."

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

LOLOL -- I feel pretentious now. ^_______^

*chops and cuts and trims*

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

LOL!
Not at all! Like smarriveurr has said, "...all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience." If you're in the audience, then poke away but don't look to the originator of the work for validation on your observations. XD

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

(To be honest, "trimming" is NEVER bad advice when directed at me. But that's another thing. ^_______^)

No, I gotcha. Poor Dead Author. :-D (LOL I remember a prof giving us an anecdote about "I grow old, I grow old, I will wear my trousers rolled" -- everyone was looking for a huge death metaphor or something when in fact Eliot stated that he was just stuck and needed a rhyme.)

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Bingo. We talked specifically in my Hermeneutics class at the Philipps-Uni about how you can't divorce the reader from an interpretation of a piece, but it's all too easy to divorce the writer - his/her job is done, and all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

his/her job is done, and all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience
That is heartening to read! I always thought I was a bit odd for how callously I move onto another project when I finish something. I've always felt that once something is published the creator's job is done. Which is probably why I so STRONGLY resent people like George Lucas going back and revising a published work.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Any creative work is inevitably out of the hands of the creator eventually. The goal, as far as my Professor was concerned, was to try to achieve a "molten horizon", where you and the creator kind of meet.

I'm terrible about editing. It's one of the reasons I don't really write anymore, nothing ever feels done. But once something is published, it's out of your hands. You might cringe at it if you read it again, you might think you could tell that story so much better now, or handle that scene with more skill... but it's over. It's not uniquely yours, it's in the hands of the fans and the minds of the readers. You can say what you tried to achieve, what you wanted to say, but the message, ultimately, is in their heads.

Grabbing Lucas, classic example: Han shot first. No one cares how Lucas wanted that scene to go, much less how he wants it to go now. The audience considered it a defining facet of a complex character, and audiences thoroughly objected to mucking around with it.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Han shot first and I really show my geek colours when that phrase brings a swelling to my heart that one usually associates with national pride. XD

But yes, exactly.

I like deadlines because they FORCE me to push a story away and declare it finished. You could tinker ad infinitum otherwise.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

It seemed pretty much the most iconic "You are actually detracting from your work by trying to 'improve' it" example to hand. ;)

I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. I don't work well in an open-ended environment, but deadlines always give me agita. Part of me wants to try to set some rules and get back into writing. Part of me wonders if the results would be worth the stress.