On Writing...why, and on fandom, what...
Jun. 29th, 2009 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatPicked up Stephen King's The Stand at the local bookshop over the weekend, and have begun to read it. Am a moody reader and this for some reason or other is hitting my mood at the moment. Have never the book, just seen the made for tv miniseries. But over the years, it has been recommended to me by numerous people - the latest a bookshop clerk.
In the preface, King explains why he reissued The STAND with the 400 pages that had been deleted from the original version restored.
The reason was not an editorial one: if that had been the case, I would be content to let the book live its life and die its eventful death as it was originally published.
The cuts were made at the behest of the accounting department. They toted up production costs, laid these next to hardcover sales of my previous four books, and decided that a cover price of $12.95 was about what the market could bear. I was asked if I would like to make the cuts, or if I would prefer someone in the editorial department to do it. I reluctantly agreed to do the surgery myself. I think I did a fairly good job, for a writer who has been accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor.
(Shudder - this dear friends is one of the many reasons I am not pursuing a career as a professional novelist. Death by paper-cuts sounds less painfully annoying. )
If all of the story is there, one might ask, then why bother? Isn't it indulgence after all? It better not be; if it is, then I have spent a large portion of my life wasting my time. As it happens, I think that in really good stories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.
He goes on to give what amounts to a summary statement of Hansel and Gretal - demonstrating how less sometimes is a like looking at "a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal."
Then he states something interesting about books being made into movies and vice versa:
"In the end, I think it's perhaps best for............[he lists the characters in the Stand] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken KEsey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad...but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way."
He ends this preface with one sentence that I keep pondering.
Finally I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.
Over the phone tonight I told Momster that I tend to only write - fiction - to please myself not others. I do it to communicate what is inside me. I do not do it with the purpose to entertain.
Momster was silent for the space of ten seconds. Possibly more. Then said: Interesting.
Then it is a good thing that you are not attempting to become a novelist, because it would be very difficult for you to make a living at it.
I struggle with this. With writing. I love it. I hate it. It is easy. It is hard. And for the life of me, I'm not really sure why I feel compelled to do it. While reading old letters and journals of mine - Momster noted that I was an odd journal and letter writer, unlike herself, my grandmother, and others - I do not write about what I did that day, but how I felt about something or why something caught my interest or what I thought about it. And it is, she said, this odd poetic stream of consciousness style of writing. I told her that I tried to write about what I did and grew bored quickly with it. Having read a lot of real life and fictional journals at the time - including the Dairy of Anne Frank - I realized I found the ones that spoke about feelings or thoughts more interesting than the day to day. So copied that style. (And to a degree I admit to being heavily influenced by James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Marquez in my college years.)
I worry that I can't get to the stories in my head at the moment. I have a strand, then forget it the next day. It's almost as if I have too much in my head due to work, that the stories are being pushed into the dark recesses of my brain. And when I get home the last thing I wish to do is attempt to precisely put them down one word at a time. Outlining? Ack.
Never had much patience for it. There's one story that I keep twisting about...but can't seem to quite figure out how to tell. And now, I'm wondering, why bother?
Do I write to please others at all? Do I care? And how selfish that must sound?
I do care if people read and/or enjoy my writing. And am devastated when they don't. So, yes, I think I care. And I think I do wish to please others - but, but not at the risk of my own pleasure and not at the expense of my own thoughts. I can't cater to their desires and I can't be, if you will excuse the term, their bitch. Nor do I believe any writer should.
Was thinking about writing and fandom today. About what I get "fannish" about. And realized the more I try to pigeonhole it...the more it eludes my grasp. Thought about doing a poll to see what others did, then, shrugged it off. Because I'm not sure you can pigeon hole or lable what you do any better than I can. I told a friend, embers, in the post below that I NEVER was a fan of the actor playiing the role, just the character. Then realized when I got home, hours later, that this was not entirely true - if it had been, I would never have watched Buffy - a show I started watching because of my crush on Anthony Stewart Head. And I would never have picked up AStonishing X-men or tried Dollhouse or Firefly - if it weren't for my fannish feelings for Joss Whedon's writings. They may have disappointed me, much as many of Head's acting roles have - but if it weren't for my fannish interest...Yet by the same token, I do not believe I have ever in my life been as fannish about a story or tv show as I was about Buffy. And I'm not entirely sure why. If it is the internet itself that caused it - an outlet, a place to post on something I enjoy and discuss it with others who equally enjoy it and similar items? Perhaps, that is it or at least mostly. Because it is hard for anything to exist for long without an outlet or something enabling it. If no one read my essays on Buffy, no one responded, then I doubt I'd ever write them. Would you write fanfiction if no one appeared to be enjoying or reading it?
This leads me back to the initial question - why do we write? To please just ourselves? If that were the case, I don't think I'd keep a livejournal. And I think I'd find it easier to write offline on my own novels and stories that you don't see - than I find it easier to write here in my livejournal - where I know someone may actually read it, may actually respond, and may say - "that is a wonderful amazing post, thank you for it!" So I think I am wrong about myself...I think I do, whether I am aware of it or not, write to please both myself and others. I think that is true of everyone on my livejournal who writes stories or essays, personal or otherwise on the internet.
In the preface, King explains why he reissued The STAND with the 400 pages that had been deleted from the original version restored.
The reason was not an editorial one: if that had been the case, I would be content to let the book live its life and die its eventful death as it was originally published.
The cuts were made at the behest of the accounting department. They toted up production costs, laid these next to hardcover sales of my previous four books, and decided that a cover price of $12.95 was about what the market could bear. I was asked if I would like to make the cuts, or if I would prefer someone in the editorial department to do it. I reluctantly agreed to do the surgery myself. I think I did a fairly good job, for a writer who has been accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor.
(Shudder - this dear friends is one of the many reasons I am not pursuing a career as a professional novelist. Death by paper-cuts sounds less painfully annoying. )
If all of the story is there, one might ask, then why bother? Isn't it indulgence after all? It better not be; if it is, then I have spent a large portion of my life wasting my time. As it happens, I think that in really good stories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.
He goes on to give what amounts to a summary statement of Hansel and Gretal - demonstrating how less sometimes is a like looking at "a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal."
Then he states something interesting about books being made into movies and vice versa:
"In the end, I think it's perhaps best for............[he lists the characters in the Stand] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken KEsey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad...but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way."
He ends this preface with one sentence that I keep pondering.
Finally I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.
Over the phone tonight I told Momster that I tend to only write - fiction - to please myself not others. I do it to communicate what is inside me. I do not do it with the purpose to entertain.
Momster was silent for the space of ten seconds. Possibly more. Then said: Interesting.
Then it is a good thing that you are not attempting to become a novelist, because it would be very difficult for you to make a living at it.
I struggle with this. With writing. I love it. I hate it. It is easy. It is hard. And for the life of me, I'm not really sure why I feel compelled to do it. While reading old letters and journals of mine - Momster noted that I was an odd journal and letter writer, unlike herself, my grandmother, and others - I do not write about what I did that day, but how I felt about something or why something caught my interest or what I thought about it. And it is, she said, this odd poetic stream of consciousness style of writing. I told her that I tried to write about what I did and grew bored quickly with it. Having read a lot of real life and fictional journals at the time - including the Dairy of Anne Frank - I realized I found the ones that spoke about feelings or thoughts more interesting than the day to day. So copied that style. (And to a degree I admit to being heavily influenced by James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Marquez in my college years.)
I worry that I can't get to the stories in my head at the moment. I have a strand, then forget it the next day. It's almost as if I have too much in my head due to work, that the stories are being pushed into the dark recesses of my brain. And when I get home the last thing I wish to do is attempt to precisely put them down one word at a time. Outlining? Ack.
Never had much patience for it. There's one story that I keep twisting about...but can't seem to quite figure out how to tell. And now, I'm wondering, why bother?
Do I write to please others at all? Do I care? And how selfish that must sound?
I do care if people read and/or enjoy my writing. And am devastated when they don't. So, yes, I think I care. And I think I do wish to please others - but, but not at the risk of my own pleasure and not at the expense of my own thoughts. I can't cater to their desires and I can't be, if you will excuse the term, their bitch. Nor do I believe any writer should.
Was thinking about writing and fandom today. About what I get "fannish" about. And realized the more I try to pigeonhole it...the more it eludes my grasp. Thought about doing a poll to see what others did, then, shrugged it off. Because I'm not sure you can pigeon hole or lable what you do any better than I can. I told a friend, embers, in the post below that I NEVER was a fan of the actor playiing the role, just the character. Then realized when I got home, hours later, that this was not entirely true - if it had been, I would never have watched Buffy - a show I started watching because of my crush on Anthony Stewart Head. And I would never have picked up AStonishing X-men or tried Dollhouse or Firefly - if it weren't for my fannish feelings for Joss Whedon's writings. They may have disappointed me, much as many of Head's acting roles have - but if it weren't for my fannish interest...Yet by the same token, I do not believe I have ever in my life been as fannish about a story or tv show as I was about Buffy. And I'm not entirely sure why. If it is the internet itself that caused it - an outlet, a place to post on something I enjoy and discuss it with others who equally enjoy it and similar items? Perhaps, that is it or at least mostly. Because it is hard for anything to exist for long without an outlet or something enabling it. If no one read my essays on Buffy, no one responded, then I doubt I'd ever write them. Would you write fanfiction if no one appeared to be enjoying or reading it?
This leads me back to the initial question - why do we write? To please just ourselves? If that were the case, I don't think I'd keep a livejournal. And I think I'd find it easier to write offline on my own novels and stories that you don't see - than I find it easier to write here in my livejournal - where I know someone may actually read it, may actually respond, and may say - "that is a wonderful amazing post, thank you for it!" So I think I am wrong about myself...I think I do, whether I am aware of it or not, write to please both myself and others. I think that is true of everyone on my livejournal who writes stories or essays, personal or otherwise on the internet.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 03:23 am (UTC)I see no reason why the first requires the second. When I write, or take photographs, I do it first because the thing in and of itself-- the light, or the words-- appeal to me in some way. If others see or read, and enjoy, that's a bonus, but it doesn't diminish the elemental pleasure of creation.
Now, if people see or read and they don't like it, it soesn't bother me greatly unless their response is presumptuous (i.e. they weren't paying attention) or they expect something that I wasn't trying to communicate in the first place (i.e they wanted a different story or some other picture).
I can't make them pay attention, and I certainly can't make art that is all things to all people, nor do I wish to.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 09:02 pm (UTC)Another possible way to look at the question of 'why keep a livejournal?' -- rather than just write privately, offline -- would be to phrase it as a desire to connect with others, to communicate and hear something back (not just communicating one's own vision without any thoughts or feelings coming back from the others).
For me, this seems slightly different than writing to PLEASE others, since not all communication is pleasing, and not all fiction is intended to be pleasant (as opposed to, say, thought-provoking, or cathartic, or even transformative). I think we often try to connect with other people through online writing without necessarily needing anyone's approval or validation (though that's always nice, and I'm sometimes a pathetic slave to positive reinforcement, myself!). Sometimes, it's enough to know that we've been heard and experienced, even if nobody else seems to agree with us.
On the other hand, if people aren't pleased by reading our journals more often than not and pleased by our fanfiction more than not, then they'll cease to read . . . and there go the human contact and communication possibilities out the window, as we end up speaking to an empty room.
So maybe it DOES come down, in the end, to trying to connect with others through the things that please us both, writer and reader alike -- through the shows that we love, and shared stories, and constructive dialogue that sparks an idea in the other or leads to deeper insights.