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"Who reads this shit?"
OK, in the actual joke it's "Who wrote it?" - but that's not my punchline for this post. See, it's like this:
On Saturday we went to a new play at Vital about the loving relationship of two adult sisters, one of whom gets cancer, and the other has to decide whether or not to pursue her mid-life dream of being a Writer, which involves taking a grueling grad school degree from a Bigshot Writer. She works hard, even beating out the hipster guy who wins prizes for stories that essentially come down to "Will my protagonist get laid?" (which, having now read a ton of submissions to various places, I am here to tell you is what a shocking percentage are about. Yawn. But that's another post....) . . . and her reward, her big marker of success, is that her mentor recommends her stuff to a prestigious literary Little Magazine. Which, after many edits & revisions, publishes her story. I suspect only the dying sister reads it. Though possibly she dies first.
The next day, Guy Kay (an old pal from our mutual Struggling Writer days) sends me this from Harper's (read it and laugh so hard you'll snork. I particularly like "This sentence is short, not because it is brief—which it is—but because it has few words.") Very cheering. But.
So here's the thing: What made me - and most people I know - want to be writers is that we loved to read. We read a lot. We wanted to write the kinds of books we loved to read.
Schools are full of grad students whose highest goal seems to be getting published in small literary magazines with minute circulations. But have they actually read those magazines themselves first? Did they love reading them?
I'm probably being an idiot here, but I've already written the post, and it seems a waste of time to delete it now. Also, it gives me a chance to offer you the link to the Colson Whitehead piece.
OK, in the actual joke it's "Who wrote it?" - but that's not my punchline for this post. See, it's like this:
On Saturday we went to a new play at Vital about the loving relationship of two adult sisters, one of whom gets cancer, and the other has to decide whether or not to pursue her mid-life dream of being a Writer, which involves taking a grueling grad school degree from a Bigshot Writer. She works hard, even beating out the hipster guy who wins prizes for stories that essentially come down to "Will my protagonist get laid?" (which, having now read a ton of submissions to various places, I am here to tell you is what a shocking percentage are about. Yawn. But that's another post....) . . . and her reward, her big marker of success, is that her mentor recommends her stuff to a prestigious literary Little Magazine. Which, after many edits & revisions, publishes her story. I suspect only the dying sister reads it. Though possibly she dies first.
The next day, Guy Kay (an old pal from our mutual Struggling Writer days) sends me this from Harper's (read it and laugh so hard you'll snork. I particularly like "This sentence is short, not because it is brief—which it is—but because it has few words.") Very cheering. But.
So here's the thing: What made me - and most people I know - want to be writers is that we loved to read. We read a lot. We wanted to write the kinds of books we loved to read.
Schools are full of grad students whose highest goal seems to be getting published in small literary magazines with minute circulations. But have they actually read those magazines themselves first? Did they love reading them?
I'm probably being an idiot here, but I've already written the post, and it seems a waste of time to delete it now. Also, it gives me a chance to offer you the link to the Colson Whitehead piece.
HA!
Date: 2009-01-26 10:03 pm (UTC)Re: HA!
Date: 2009-01-26 10:17 pm (UTC)Go, science!
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Date: 2009-01-26 10:07 pm (UTC)It addresses one of my peeves with this: "In my literary criticism, I have become known as a champion of the eternal verities and a scold of the trendy and the fashionable."
There is always the trendy and fashionable in writing, the really cool, the hip, then there is good writing. The other implicit message is if one wants to write well, there is no substitute for reading great books; they tend to spoil one and make one dissatisfied, in a good way.
divine dissatisfaction
Date: 2009-01-26 10:19 pm (UTC)Good books are good.
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Date: 2009-01-26 10:21 pm (UTC)The ability to be transported to another dimension by reading the well-written word is truly a gift received. The magick to write such words is creation, sharing in the Divine.
Honest.
I can still remember being a graduate student writing a critcism of Kant (yes, I actually did read The critique of Pure Reason) and realizing if I were to remain in the study tract I was in, I was going to die! slowly, agonizingly. It was so deadly and my graduate career ended soon after. It did not help my wife as well as early de Lint (in my opinion) now--then, not so much. and the best man at our wedding was and is a good poet. So I went with what I was good and gifted at, working with things.
Those who can write do it because they know what moves them and can create the emotional, physical and imtellectual tension with cadence and words in ways I can read, but not create.
and it is truly appreciated.
rojo
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Date: 2009-01-28 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 01:32 am (UTC)Seriously, I came to write because I wanted to tell stories. And, while I did read an issue of Glimmer Train once, to see what it was about, I have never aspired to being a "literary" writer. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's not a label one can successfully apply to oneself, but something that will be decided by the observation over centuries (perhaps), of how the writing resonates with readers over long periods of time.
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Date: 2009-01-27 01:40 am (UTC)She told me she didn't read fiction. I don't recall what, if anything, I managed to say in reply.
I now, much later, wonder whether she was suddenly embarrased to admit a fondness for westerns or fanfic or porn and couldn't think of an "appropriate" answer.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 03:41 am (UTC)Afterwards he came up to her in the hall and told her he really loved Romances.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 02:00 am (UTC)name the last book he had read, especially not the last
NOVEL he had read.
I suggested that a musician who never listened to music would
be considered insane. Or a baseball player who never watched
a baseball game. Or an actor who never, ever went to the
theater or saw a movie. Yet he wanted to do something that
he didn't do himself.
He thought I was a cranky bitch. Yes, I am!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 03:39 am (UTC)But you're a cranky bitch who happens to be *right*!
(no subject)
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Date: 2009-01-27 05:37 am (UTC)"Yeah, I probably will. But I don't have influences. Actually, I don't really like to read. S'too much work."
I stared at him for a bit, but he apparently wasn't kidding.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 02:18 am (UTC)It's a kind of awkward admission to make in this context, but I'm actually in the process of applying to a Creative Writing MFA program, so I really ought to be able to answer this sort of question without squirming. And yet.
One of the issues, I think, is that most small literary magazines are difficult to read regularly unless you (a) spend a lot of time hanging out at the university library or a really good literary bookstore or (b) get a subscription. Or, of course, (c) they have an active presence online.
But w/r/t print-based magazines, I've very seldom had enough disposable income to be able to feel like multiple subscriptions to literary mags - enough of them to follow the market and follow new writers - were a good investment; I try to pick up (usually five-year-old) copies when I come across them in library sales, and sometimes buy an issue if I actually saw a name I recognized (happens more with poetry magazines than fiction).
But for the most part, when you can barely make rent, you tend to embrace the internet, and to only want to pay for novels and fiction you can live in happily for days, or collections by authors you already care about or who've been recommended to you by someone you trust, rather than take a chance on spending as much or more money and time reading several stories that you can't connect with. That's been my experience, anyway.
I don't know what the solution is, because obviously both the people publishing in lit magazines and the people who aren't reading them are missing out on some great cross-pollination. I'm just not sure everyone involved sees it that way.
...And I'm feeling very young and naive right now.
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Date: 2009-01-27 03:38 am (UTC)Anyone good you can recommend? You especially rang my chimes with "cross-pollination," since that's what my beloved Interstitial Arts Foundation is all about. Thank you - and keep in touch!
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Date: 2009-01-27 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 03:47 am (UTC)Bleeeghh. XD
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Date: 2009-01-28 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 07:50 am (UTC)It would be cheering to know in advance that people also want to read the books you are writing. Desperately.
I actually love wordsmiths who write luscious prose, but I've been told I am so unfashionable I should be in a museum. Ah, well. d;-)
May I ask - is this Guy Kay who wrote the Fionavar Tapestry and Tigana? I love his work, I have been trying to find people on my f-list who have read him. He's one of those writers whose books end up looking extremely ravished. Swordspoint is also on that ( rather small )shelf along with Tolkien and a couple of others.
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Date: 2009-01-27 11:24 pm (UTC)Have you read Dorothy Dunnett? Both Guy & I were very much influenced by her "Lymond" series.
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Date: 2009-01-27 01:11 pm (UTC)I went to University for my degree in English, but I really went thinking "This will teach me how to write!" How stupid that was? I did learn a lot of very interesting things, like how I actually really like Milton, which I'd never thought I did, but for writing, it was such a bust.
What I did learn was that, if I wanted to be a writer, I wasn't going to learn how in my creative writing classes, which mostly focused on getting published in our school writing journal... which couldn't give away the five hundred copies it printed.
In the end, I graduated without honors and got a dumpy job where I could write at work. Wrote a few books, then wrote the one that knocked it out of the park. I've got a 3 book deal now writing books I love.
But the REAL happy ending is that, when I emailed my mentor in the English department to tell her the good news, she ran to tell the head of the department, and now I'm a distinguished alumna. Distinguished alumna, picture on the wall, and all for writing the same kind of stories that four years ago my Creative Writing teacher said I should chuck over for "serious fiction."
The world moves in funny ways, sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 04:20 am (UTC)And I so agree that one should study literature, not writing, in college. There is so much to learn! And stuff like Milton & Chaucer and even 19c folks can be hard to read without a Friendly Native Guide.
Write on your own time.
(no subject)
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Date: 2009-01-28 07:56 pm (UTC)So it's not so much that I didn't like the contents (I like some-- not all-- New Yorker stories, and lots of the Glimmer Train etc. ones were similar), but the magazines themselves aren't very accessible. Also (this might be just me) I don't like reading one short story after another; I'm not a big short story anthology reader, either, even in genres I adore.
The Literary Fiction career path was presented to me (back in those days) as just that: a career path. You don't submit to Glimmer Train because you grew up loving Glimmer Train; you submit to Glimmer Train in hopes of getting an impressive publication credit so as to get an agent when you want to sell your novel. It's not the ultimate goal, but it's the first step.
It's not that different than other career paths, writing-related or otherwise: you aspire to be like the people you admire, but you don't always get that gig, especially not at first. How many would-be NYT journalists find themselves writing for some mid-level, small-city paper that they never would've been caught dead reading, or maybe never even heard of, back in their youth? How many young people, inspired to get into politics by, say, a certain brand-new president, will put in a good many years on city council, dealing with the mundanities of zoning laws that hardly anyone thinks about? Etc.
For me, it all started to feel exhausting; the odds and the glacial pace and the lack of feedback got to me and I didn't have the stamina. And I agree that the whole scene can be quite...precious, I guess would be the word. But in its who-reads (sees, notices, has ever heard of)-this-stuff-ness, it's hardly unique.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-02-01 06:02 pm (UTC)Could it be the LitFic career path, littered with those magazines few read, is just a shadow of the past? Once upon a time, many magazines published short fiction and that's how much of the population got their fiction fixes. It's not true anymore. Most magazines publish very little fiction. Short fiction isn't how most people GET their fiction fix. I'm not sure what the answer actually is, but I'd say the current situation ain't it. Like so much of publishing, it's clinging to past times.
I had a professor who recommended to us, instead of running down all the "little" magazines, picking up the current year's "America's Best Short Stories" to check the list of magazines in the back, and to submit only to those magazines. Why? Because we wanted our stories reviewed by the book's editors, so why submit to something those editors would not look at?
I'm going to go eat some cookies and think about my novel now.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 08:23 pm (UTC)