Spontaneous Musings

I was thinking about this after reading a reply to another post, regarding character and relationship shipping.

Like most people, I suspect, I tend to love the characters that I personally can relate to the most or if I don't, fascinate or interest me. I often can't explain why I like them or why they fascinate me. Sometimes I'll write a post or meta in an attempt to figure it out. It's like writing fanfic, I guess, you play with the characters or bits that bug or intrigue or interest you? (shrugs)

There's not that many television series that I've gotten obsessive about or shipped characters on. Nor would I necessarily state that all the television series that I've been obsessive about were high quality or worth mentioning. Some are guilty pleasures, which I'm tentative about voicing aloud, for fear of being judged. (Alas, I still care far too much about what others think. I know should care less, but well...I'm not quite there yet.) All tend to be serials. I'm not a fan of non-serials, I like character stories more than plot driven ones; it's how I roll. And I have a weakness for the soap opera genre. If you hate the genre, don't tell me. It's not that I don't care, it's that I do, perhaps more than I should, and it hurts me. Feels like someone ripping apart a favorite toy. Have you ever had that happen? Had someone take a toy that you loved and rip it to pieces? Or stomp on it with their dirty boots?

I'm ashamed to say, I'm not much different. I have stomped on favorite toys with dirty boots -- in part because the toy in question irritated me or made me angry. I think it's hard sometimes to realize there's another perspective, another way of seeing it. There's this brilliant song in Sondheim's "Into the Woods", which has always haunted me -- No one is alone. One of the stanzas states that you have to remember, that while there are people on your side, there are people who are not, and there is always someone on the other person's side too, no one is alone.

Okay, tangent. But, I was thinking about this...because while there are characters I love in television shows, there are equally characters I despised. I'd go online and discover much to my considerable chagrin that are people out there who loved the characters that I despised. I'd think, what - is this bizarro land? How can you possibly like let alone love this character? And how can you hate my favorite character? Are you crazy? What universe are you residing in? I could not wrap my mind around it. How could there be people who liked Harmony? Or Robin Wood? Or that mean girl, Cordelia?? Or gasp, Warren Myers? WTF? What in the heck was so appealing about that scene stealing Andrew? Why didn't people like Connor? Why didn't they love Willow? How could they hate Buffy? Why did they hate Spike? How could they? Didn't they see how cool Darla and Drusilla were? Why did they think Buffy/Angel belonged together still? Wasn't it obvious that was a high school romance that could not work? Also, Angel was sooo much older than her? How could people ship Buffy and Giles?

But alas, they did. Not only that, they wrote lengthy posts on why and supported their rational. Still felt like bizarro world, but they had a right to their point of view, even if it skewed with my own. I found people who shared my own, of course. But often they had bizarre views as well - such as there was no way Spike would ever attack Buffy, when it was clear to me that he would. Or saw the characters very differently than I did, almost as if we were watching separate shows.

Over time, it occurred to me, of course, that people do not think the same way. We focus on different things. Different things irritate us. Or urk us. Or trigger us, in different ways. Willow's voice irritated some people. Some had issues with her redemption and the character grated on them. While Cordelia and Harmony irritated me. Heck, Cordelia's voice apparently irritated me, I realized this last night while watching Lucifer, where the actress made a brief guest-star experience. Yep, something about her voice and acting style irritated me. As did the actress playing Harmony. So it wasn't just the characters they played but the actresses themselves. I don't know why. It just is. They irritated me. But others loved them to pieces, thought they were amazing. Go figure.

By the same token, for some odd reason, the characters of Willow, Spike, Buffy, and Giles fascinated me. Giles -- mainly due to the actor who portrayed him, Anthony Stewart Head. I'd seen Head several years prior in a stage production of Chess, and fell in love with him. He was subbing for his brother Murray Head at the time. Then I followed him through various Taster's Choice commercials on to VR5 and finally Buffy. I started watching for Head, almost stopped because I was disappointed in the lack of a substantial role for the actor. I was also, fascinated by the character of Angel -- who seemed to have lots of dark secrets. Xander made me laugh for the most part, and I enjoyed the character and found him interesting up until the actor's personal demons caught up to him and he derailed taking the character along with him. (This happened sometime around S5 -S7, which is why Xander began to disappear from the story a bit. It wasn't that the writers lost interest in the character so much as the actor had serious issues and it interfered with his work. It happens.) Faith disappointed me, I wanted more and felt somehow swindled or let down by the writers. She was interesting, but fell into cliche, without ever quite rising above it. So much wasted potential there. I felt they handled Spike better -- he could have easily gone the route Faith did. But they managed to keep him more ambiguous and didn't fall as easily into cliche as they did with poor Faith. But others didn't see it that way. They saw it the exact opposite. They loved Faith and hated Spike and thought Spike was a walking cliche and that the writers ruined the character. Some thought Spike ruined the show, like Fonzie did Happy Days -- someone even wrote a lengthy post or essay on this. See, bizarro world. Up is down. Green is blue.

It's hard to ship characters or relationships with others. Oh, on shipping? I've even run into arguments regarding whether "ship" should just be used in regards to "relationship shipping" as opposed to "characters". And that it is inaccurate and wrong to use the word in regards to shipping a character, because that just isn't done. And what the hell am I doing? This is weird! So not only did people disagree on how I saw the characters, their relationships, and back stories, but also the word or semantics I used to describe how I felt about them.

The semantic's arguments drove me crazy, I'll admit. I'll try to explain why -- I think it goes back to having a speech impediment when I was in school and having people constantly make fun of me or correct my speech. They still do occasionally, because I have a sort of aphasia when it comes to uttering the correct word. Sometimes I'll say a completely different word than I thought I said. (It's a genetic quirk, my mother and brother do it too.) I'll think for example "wrote" but will say "route" sometimes will even write it. I won't know I said the other word. It's why I prefer writing -- you can go back and edit. You can't with speech. People also don't tend to be very patient, and will often be cruel about it and judgemental.

See, here is the problem with people, I think, and this goes beyond this post...people have difficulty wrapping their minds around the fact that other people don't think or see or view or taste or smell or perceive the world the same way they do. We don't. It's not possible. It's why life is so hard but also so interesting...because trying to connect, truly and authentically connect to another human soul is difficult. And can seem impossible. It rarely seems to happen. When it does -- it is magic. We gravitate to that person, who seems to "see" us. Or at least I do. Wow, I'll think, you get me! You see Spike the exact same way I did! This is so cool! Let's be buds. Of course, a little while later, you discover, okay that's the only thing we have in common, so not going to work out. But what the hey, it was fun while it lasted.

I thought this today when I read a long response to another post. While reading it in my email, since I don't have lj access at work...I thought, damn, I don't agree at all. We seem opposed. I don't like those characters. I like these characters. Did we see different shows? I was grumpy and in a foul mood already. But luckily I have no access to lj at work...so I was prevented from responding on the fly. Most posting mistakes are made on the fly. There's something to be said - for thinking it over. Although I've made colossal posting mistakes after taking a week to think it over. So there's that.

Anywho...after I read the response a second time, I realized the individual was simply being candid or authentic. They were trusting me with their views and hoping somehow for a connection. It didn't exactly come, but that's hardly their fault or mine. It just is, what it is.

I see this all the time on social media -- people hunting connection, and rarely finding it. Too often you sit there with your thumb hanging out in the wind, no takers. Crickets heard in the silence. Others, you have an insane number of responses, and yet still no connection, everyone has misunderstood your post or taken what you said out of context - reacting emotionally to a phrase here or there that triggered them. They didn't listen to what you said, they didn't hear the post. They just reacted to the portions that they felt related directly to them or affronted them. And then there are the times, in which magically, people get it. The connection happens. Somehow you connect with that guy in Sweden or in Brazil, or that gal in England or France or Canada. Half a world away. So far, in fact, it seems insane that you did connect, that they found you.

It's those rare moments that are addicting and bring me back time and again. I never know what post will bring them on. What will click. It's like sending a message out in a bottle, and suddenly having someone send one back. Except faster, oh so much faster.

To truly connect with another soul, another mind, is a wonderful feeling. But it happens so rarely in today's world. People don't take the time to listen, I think. There's too much noise, too much to do, too much to read, too much...I was wandering about in Barnes and Nobel the other day and felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new releases...so many, and I got depressed. Instead of excited. It depressed me and I walked out, thinking, too many books, no way to know which to read. And why am I bothering to write ...when there are so many other tales and stories out there. Who would want to listen to me? Me, a small, little voice in the wilderness? What could I possibly say that hasn't already been said? What story could I tell? Even now, I wonder that...amidst a thousand, more than a thousand posts...why would someone read this one? It's long. It's rambling. And it goes off on tangents.

And yet, I continue to write and continue to post. Am doing so now, even though I should be in bed listening to the rain fall outside my windows. I try to connect to you through characters in a long ago canceled television show entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even though, to be honest, I've long since given up shipping or caring about them. Having moved on in the interim. But old habits, die hard. And this topic seems easier than most somehow...yet, false too. So..the loneliness seeps in, not from being alone, but from the sense that I can't quite connect. Can't quite be me. Candid. Authentic. Without somehow cutting off bits and pieces of myself. And wondering, if anyone out there perhaps..feels the same.

Read a bit more of David Foster Wallace, this round a Fresh Air Interview with Terry Gross. It also contains quotes from End of The Tour.

Foster Wallace fascinates me because he discusses mindfulness in his work, or being mindful of what we are doing and how we live, and not allowing ourselves to become lost in the ironic metanarrative that our popular culture has become. I can't quite decide if he is right.

The interview is HERE in cas you are interested. Foster Wallace like many contemporary literary writers was more interested in philosophizing than story-telling. He tended towards personal essays and personal narratives, famously or infamously writing about a cruise trip in Harpers, entitled "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". And in the novel "Infinite Jest" he writes about an independent film that is so entertaining that people want to do nothing else after they see it.
Has the quest for pleasure, constant though it may be, robbed of us of our ability to seek the pleasure in small everyday things, as opposed to on the television screen? I'm not sure he's saying that exactly.

GROSS: One of your essays in your new collection is about irony and how it's become the common language of TV and a lot of contemporary fiction. You talk about how television has institutionalized hip irony. Can I ask you to explain what you mean by that?

WALLACE: What sort of time limit is there?

GROSS: (Laughter).

WALLACE: No, I mean, the essay is really about the relation between TV and fiction and what it's like to be a fiction writer who watches a lot of TV. And I guess the basic point is that a lot of the tools that were used by literary fiction writers in, I guess, particularly the '60s, to help - I don't know if there was a social agenda. I think it was probably to debunk certain kind of hypocritical Ward Cleaver-ish assumptions that the culture was making about itself. Those techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, that what's interesting now is - now that, really, television - I think it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is now successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers. So that - the essay is supposed to be a setup for sort of what is the literary rebel or the writer who wants to be engaged somehow with the culture do now? You know, how do you be a rebel when Burger King, you know, for two years their slogan was you got to break the rules? How do you rebel against anarchy or a kind of weird crafted anarchy?

And from End of the Tour:

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) You know what I would love to do, man? I would love to do a profile on one of you guys who's doing a profile on me.

EISENBERG: (As David Lipsky) That is interesting.

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) Is that too pomo and cute? I don't know.

EISENBERG: (As David Lipsky) Maybe for Rolling Stone.

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) It would be interesting, though.

EISENBERG: (As David Lipsky) You think?

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) I'm sorry, man.

EISENBERG: (As David Lipsky) What's wrong?

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) It's just, you're going to go back to New York and, like, sit at your desk and shape this thing however you want. And that - I mean, to me, it's just extremely disturbing.

EISENBERG: (As David Lipsky) (Laughter) Why is it disturbing?

SEGEL: (As David Foster Wallace) 'Cause I think I would like to shape the impression of me that's coming across. Yeah, I don't even know if I like you yet. So nervous about whether you like me.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could shape others impressions of us? I've had situations in which someone has been really mad at me, but not told me why. I'm left to guess. Okay, what did I say or do? I find myself running over the dialogue and past conversations in my head, and of course without an actual tape recorder or video recorder, there's no way of knowing, on either side. It would be nice if the other person would tell you. Instead of being all passive aggressive about it. That way you could clear up the misunderstanding. Assuming such a thing is possible.

The problem with impressions, first, last, whatever...is the other guy is looking at you through his or her lense. They see what they want to see, and if you happen to have done something that reminds them of someone who pissed them off on the train that morning or their last girlfriend or boyfriend, than well, there's not a heck of a lot you can do.

In End of the Tour, much like The Great Gatsby or any story in which we see all the action through the narrator's lense...we learn more about the narrator. Foster Wallace is a supporting character in David Lipsky's story. Part literary hero, part cautionary tale, and to Lipsky, somewhat disappointing.
Small wonder that Foster Wallace was reluctant to be the subject of Lipsky's article and worse, hero worship. Both flattered and disturbed, Wallace allows it, to a degree. Realizing that what Lipsky really wants is to be Foster Wallace, somehow convinced that he could do it better.

I think the reason I find this all rather haunting, is it makes me a bit self-conscious of my own writing right now. I'm not an essayist. I know, I know, you would most likely disagree with me on that point. But you don't get a say in the matter. Because what I mean by that -- is I have no interest in publishing essays under my name for the world to see. It feels too much like dancing around in Times Square naked with a big sign stating my name, address, and telephone number. It's for the same reason that I've no interest in getting up on the stage of the Moth and telling folks, a crowd of 150 people, maybe more, in a packed room, a story about my personal life.

Here? It's different. There's a level of anonymity that does not exist at the Moth or publishing a personal essay. And it's safer somehow. I can delete negative responses, screen them, even the post.

Fiction feels safer to me and more comfortable. Like a warm snuggly blanket on a cold bitter day. I can coat myself in the metaphors. Also, I always have a story in my head, aching to break free. It's not the writing of it that has ever been the problem, so much as the sharing. And I'm no erstwhile philosopher, nor do I really enjoy reading them...the story, to me at least, is king.

It doesn't matter either way. Which I write. My chances of publishing personal essays are rather dim. Although I did publish two journalistic articles on racism in small publications, which sort of count.
Maybe.

While surfing the net for articles on Wallace, I also found this essay in Salon:


David Foster Wallace was Right Irony is Ruining Our Culture.

Curious. I like irony. Use it a lot in my own writing. Dramatic irony, I find rather hilarious.

Irony is now fashionable and a widely embraced default setting for social interaction, writing and the visual arts. Irony fosters an affected nihilistic attitude that is no more edgy than a syndicated episode of “Seinfeld.” Today, pop characters directly address the television-watching audience with a wink and nudge. (Shows like “30 Rock” deliver a kind of meta-television-irony irony; the protagonist is a writer for a show that satirizes television, and the character is played by a woman who actually used to write for a show that satirizes television. Each scene comes with an all-inclusive tongue-in-cheek.) And, of course, reality television as a concept is irony incarnate.

For the generation that came of age during Vietnam, irony was the response to a growing distrust toward anything and everything. In the 1980s, academics such as Mark Jefferson attacked sentimentality, and Neo-Expressionists gave sincerity a bad name through their sophomoric attempts at heroic paintings. Irony was becoming a protective carapace, as Wallace pointed out, a defense mechanism against the possibility of seeming naïve. By the 1990s, television had co-opted irony, and the networks were inundated with commercials using “rebel” in the tagline. Take Andre Agassi’s Canon camera endorsement from that period. In the commercial, the hard-hitting, wiseass Agassi smashed tennis balls loaded with paint to advertise Canon’s “Rebel” brand camera. The ad wraps with Agassi standing in front of a Pollockesque canvas saying “Image is everything.” For all the world, it seemed rebellion had been usurped by commercialism.

This environment gave artists few choices: sentimentality, nihilism, or irony. Or, put another way, critical ridicule as experienced by the Neo-Expressionist (see Sandro Chia), critical acceptance through nihilism like Gerhard Richter, or critical abdication through ironic Pop Art such as Jeff Koons. For a while, it seemed no new ideas were possible, progress was an illusion, and success could be measured only by popularity. Hot trends such as painted pornography; fluorescent paint; sculpture with mirrors, spray foam, and yarn were mistaken for art because artists believed blind pleasure-seeking could be made to seem insightful when described ironically.

And...

Wallace called for art that redeems rather than simply ridicules, but he didn’t look widely enough. Mostly, he fixed his gaze within a limited tradition of white, male novelists. Indeed, no matter how cynical and nihilistic the times, we have always had artists who make work that invokes meaning, hope and mystery. But they might not have been the heirs to Thomas Pynchon or Don Delillo. So, to be more nuanced about what’s at stake: In the present moment, where does art rise above ironic ridicule and aspire to greatness, in terms of challenging convention and elevating the human spirit? Where does art build on the best of human creation and also open possibilities for the future? What does inspired art-making look like?

Finally ending with...

Artists must take responsibility for finding the form to make our dreams real. They must assess a work as honestly as possible, seeking integrity. At one time, irony served to challenge the establishment; now it is the establishment. The art of irony has turned into ironic art. Irony for irony’s sake. A smart aleck making bomb noises in front of a city in ruins. But irony without a purpose enables cynicism. It stops at disavowal and destruction, fearing strong conviction is a mark of simplicity and delusion. But we can remake the world. In poetry, in music, in painting, we can reimagine and plot coordinates into the unknown. We can take an honest look, rework and try again. The work will tell us if it has arrived or not. We have to listen closely. What do we see? What do we hear?

From that, I gather irony is not bad in of itself, it is when it has no focus and is irony for irony's sake...that we become lost. Falling a quagmire of cynical disillusionment. Jim Carry famously stated after 9/11, that this was the end of ironic comedy, yet it was actually just the start.
Comedy in of itself is cruel and often cynical, with a biting edge to it. Wounding with a laugh.
We make fun of that which is distinctly foreign to us, and all too familiar. The prat full, the ethnic joke, the snarky one liner, the rejoinder, the clown tripping over a banana peel that he himself dropped while juggling those bananas.

The world has become snide. Practicing irony for irony's sake. Our elections have become satires, with cartoonish candidates ripping each other apart with snarky comments scripted off reality shows.
Everything is a joke in a world where television is a 24/7 operation. It's funny (okay not ha ha funny) that I remember a time when television was on maybe 12 hours a day, if that. At midnight the screen went to fuzz, after the National Anthem or the famous sign-off. If you rent the movie Poltergeist, you can witness it for yourself. It wasn't until the 1990s that stopped. We only had three networks. News was on maybe four or five times a day, not 24 hours. Cable was subscription only and only one Channel, HBO. We spent most of our time outdoors in the summer. Oh, I watched television, way too much, or so I thought, but not nearly as much as people do now. Oddly, I've been watching less. Each show that I see feels familiar somehow, as if it is a repeat of another one.
And each joke, wink, wink, nudge, nudge...I find myself reading and writing more. Odd considering how much I read and write for work. But there it is.

I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to be a philosopher, found the subject deathly dull in college, actually. Did date a few of them, though. Rock singers and philosophers are deadly combinations, just saying. But I can't read philosophy without falling asleep, even if it is wrapped inside the guise of fiction. (I'm looking at you Roger Zelzany, Phillip K. Dick, and David Foster Wallace.) But, I do think there is happiness in small things. And watching a television show here or there after a tough day at the office is well, no nevermind. Any more than occasionally binging over a weekend.

It's when you let it or anything else for that matter take over. You die slowly. That's what continues to haunt me from the film, End of the Tour, when you just watch tv, stay home, do nothing else, maybe surf the net, discuss it on forums...you die slowly. I should know, it almost happened to me...once or twice. Now, I watch less, and write more. And try to let myself live in the world, to be mindful of it. As it drifts and whirls around me, rarely making sense, but always different and often interesting.

For any writers out there who are beating themselves up for being stuck - this is an oddly reassuring post from GRR Martin regarding his inability to meet his latest deadline on Winds of Winter - book six of the Song of Ice and Fire series. (Although it's probably not reassuring for the readers out there who are eagerly anticipating its release. At this point, you might need to re-read the last book in the series or a plot synopsis of it in order to remember the plot prior to reading the next one.)

At any rate, I enjoyed Martin's lengthy post - made me feel better about my own writing, which is sluggish at the moment. After I self-published "Doing Time on Planet Earth" - various readers wanted to know if I was writing a sequel. (Uh, no. There is no sequel. I'm done with the characters, sorry. This by the way was amongst the many reasons I chose the self-publishing route, so I wouldn't have to deal with a pesky publisher insisting on a sequel that just isn't in me. There's another story in me, other characters that want to be heard. The characters in Doing Time have moved on and have stopped talking to me. So I let them go. Also, publishing Doing Time, freed me finally. I couldn't write a story until I got it out there, it kept pestering me. )

Martin apologizes in his post for not finishing Winds of Winter, and being unable to tell anyone (including his editors and publisher) when he will finish it - it may be next year or the year thereafter. And he really doesn't know if S6 of the HBO series will spoil readers on the books. Since the HBO series has long since diverged from the books, it's unlikely but you never know. (Also, it already spoiled me on the books, so it's hard for me to care.) Martin doesn't deal with deadlines well, and prefers to write as it comes to him. Which I can identify with -- it's why I have a day-job and do my writing on the side, because I can't write on demand. (Most of the genre writers who can write on demand and churn out sequels in their series each year without fail, I've noticed tend to drop in quality as they go...and the story starts to feel either repetitive or stretched too thin, and the characters either begin to act out of character or become inconsequential. So, I'm not sure doing this is necessarily a good thing for everyone. It's also why I'm not a huge fan of novel series.)

What a lot of readers don't understand is writing a story, an actual story with characters, isn't something you can just turn on and off. It's not the same as writing a blog post or meta or a review.
Your characters have to speak to you. You have to hear the story in your own head, see it unravel like a movie in your minds eye. If they aren't talking...it doesn't happen. Also, nothing shuts down the creative process quicker than stress, fear, and pressure. Some people work well under pressure, many don't.

I'm not surprised Martin is struggling with Winds of Winter -- I could tell after reading the last book that he'd written himself into a tight corner with a few of the characters. He doesn't say that, so I could be wrong. But, it felt that way to me. Also, there's a lot of folks who think one character will survive, I'm not so sure about that.

At any rate, it is reassuring to know that I'm not alone in writing in this manner. Crafting a story requires time and patience. It also requires the understanding that it won't appeal to everyone.
The world can be insanely critical. But the responses to Martin's post are positive and kind.
Which is also, reassuring.

Found this essay via shipperx who appears to be attempting to teach me the value of twitter via her lj posts regarding tweets. (okay not me personally, obviously.)

From Ursula Le Guinn's essay on "Where Writer's Ideas Come From" (something I was asked recently and flailed about trying to answer. She does it far more eloquently.) found in the altogether fantastic 1989 collection of her speeches, essays, and reviews, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (public library).

The blogger, that I've linked to above reproduces some of the following quotes from the essay:

The reason why it is unanswerable is, I think, that it involves at least two false notions, myths, about how fiction is written.

First myth: There is a secret to being a writer. If you can just learn the secret, you will instantly be a writer; and the secret might be where the ideas come from.

Second myth: Stories start from ideas; the origin of a story is an idea.


I will dispose of the first myth as quickly as possible. The “secret” is skill. If you haven’t learned how to do something, the people who have may seem to be magicians, possessors of mysterious secrets. In a fairly simple art, such as making pie crust, there are certain teachable “secrets” of method that lead almost infallibly to good results; but in any complex art, such as housekeeping, piano-playing, clothes-making, or story-writing, there are so many techniques, skills, choices of method, so many variables, so many “secrets,” some teachable and some not, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice — in other words, by work.

[…]

Some of the secretiveness of many artists about their techniques, recipes, etc., may be taken as a warning to the unskilled: What works for me isn’t going to work for you unless you’ve worked for it.

People kept telling me that I had a god-given gift for writing. Uh...no. What I had was a drive, be it genetic, or mystical, (most likely genetic considering my family is filled with writers), to write and tell stories no matter what. But that's not enough on its own. I had to work at it. HARD. It didn't come easily. I have been writing stories since I was ten, first on three ring notebooks and then on a type-writer. I was telling them aloud since I was 6. I've been doing it non-stop for 44 years. I'd written the equivalent of six books prior to self-publishing one. I'd taken numerous creative writing courses, and been in various writers groups. I've had my writing torn apart by experts. And paid line editors to work with me. It's not been easy, and it didn't come to me magically. I worked at it. Constantly. I've also read voraciously since I was 9, and my parents read to me constantly prior to that. I have read over a billion books. I'd rather write and/or read than go out drinking with friends, see a movie, or party. If you can't say the same? Don't bother trying to be a writer. You won't become one. Writers don't take vacations from writing. We write constantly.
It's a drive. That's the secret. You feel driven to write. I write during my lunch hour. I write during any down time at work - while co-workers are chatting about tv shows they saw or their kids.
I write each night when I get home from work. I write on weekends. I write on holidays. I write when I'm sick and burning up with a fever. (The story that I got an award for, I wrote with a 104 degree fever, in a computer lab at the basement of a library until midnight. This was in the 1980s. We had crappy computers back then.)

My talent and inclination for writing stories and keeping house were strong from the start, and my gift for and interest in music and sewing were weak; so that I doubt that I would ever have been a good seamstress or pianist, no matter how hard I worked. But nothing I know about how I learned to do the things I am good at doing leads me to believe that there are “secrets” to the piano or the sewing machine or any art I’m no good at. There is just the obstinate, continuous cultivation of a disposition, leading to skill in performance.

[Fits me perfectly. I was never inclined towards music or sewing. But stories, telling them, writing them, I was driven towards, although not so much keeping house. Organizational matters - definitely.]

The more I think about the word “idea,” the less idea I have what it means. … I think this is a kind of shorthand use of “idea” to stand for the complicated, obscure, un-understood process of the conception and formation of what is going to be a story when it gets written down. The process may not involve ideas in the sense of intelligible thoughts; it may well not even involve words. It may be a matter of mood, resonances, mental glimpses, voices, emotions, visions, dreams, anything. It is different in every writer, and in many of us it is different every time. It is extremely difficult to talk about, because we have very little terminology for such processes.

I've told people that I've no idea where it comes from. It just comes. The story I'm writing now is a hodgepodge of various things. Characters jump out at me. Ideas float into my brain. I write the stories I can't find on the shelves or on the net or on the screen, yet crave to read. I write the story that bubbles up inside my brain aching to be free...

I would say that as a general rule, though an external event may trigger it, this inceptive state or story-beginning phase does not come from anywhere outside the mind that can be pointed to; it arises in the mind, from psychic contents that have become unavailable to the conscious mind, inner or outer experience that has been, in Gary Snyder’s lovely phrase, composted. I don’t believe that a writer “gets” (takes into the head) an “idea” (some sort of mental object) “from” somewhere, and then turns it into words and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn’t work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow a story.

Exactly.

I beg you please to attend carefully now to what I am not saying. I am not saying that you should think about your audience when you write. I am not saying that the writing writer should have in mind, “Who will read this? Who will buy it? Who am I aiming this at?” — as if it were a gun. No.

While planning a work, the writer may and often must think about readers: particularly if it’s something like a story for children, where you need to know whether your reader is likely to be a five-year-old or a ten-year old.* Considerations of who will or might read the piece are appropriate and sometimes actively useful in planning it, thinking about it, thinking it out, inviting images. But once you start writing, it is fatal to think about anything but the writing. True work is done for the sake of doing it. What is to be done with it afterwards is another matter, another job. A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; it takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer’s job is to be its medium.

Too often the audience or reader gets in the way of the story being told. I've noticed this with online fandoms who attempt in various and sundry ways to interfere with the story-teller. I keep wanting to smack these fans. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Let the writer work. Let their story breath.
If you don't like it - write your own story. But don't interfere with their work, until at least it is finished. It is out there. Complete. Then you may whinge and pick and criticize in all your fannish glory. But not until then. How dare you think for one moment that you know the story better than the teller...

The writer cannot do it alone. The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it alive: a live thing, a story.

[…]

It comes down to collaboration, or sharing the gift: the writer tries to get the reader working with the text in the effort to keep the whole story all going along in one piece in the right direction (which is my general notion of a good piece of fiction).

In this effort, writers need all the help they can get. Even under the most skilled control, the words will never fully embody the vision. Even with the most sympathetic reader, the truth will falter and grow partial. Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn’t know they knew. All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

But timing I think is key here. Wait. Wait. Wait until it is out there. The serial writer needs space.
Sure you can offer suggestions. But don't cripple their process. Don't shut them down. Go over there.
Sit in that corner. Wait until they are done. Now, you can watch, now you can read, now you can ponder what worked and what didn't. Now is the time to interact -- once they deem it fitting to share it with you.

By the same token, she is right. Le Guinn. You have to get used to the criticism. To realize you have no control over the reception of your work. All artists get ripped. It's inevitable. All misunderstood.

Our work once it hits our audience, once it is out there, takes on a life of its own, and is often interpreted and reinterpreted in ways we'd never imagine. All artists hope to be loved. All to be understood. The tragedy of James Joyce's life is the love of his life, Nora, never understood or liked anything he wrote - which ironically was all he ever wanted. It's all so subjective.

Writing is painful. Because you are at the mercy of the reader.

I've been reading about a daytime soap opera head-writer who has been ripped to smithereens by fans and various actors performing his work. He was fired for poor ratings. One moment on top of the world, getting nominations, told he was amazing, the next told he sucked, was horrible and destroyed the show. Same is true of novelists.

And I wonder sometimes why I bother with it. But as my father stated tonight over dinner, there's something marvelous about seeing a book - the final published product of something you sweated years over, poured your love into and all your dreams and thoughts and imagination. It's a beautiful thing.

So done a little bit of research and have discovered the following self-publishing platforms:

1.( Create Space )

2.( Author House )

3. ( Kindle Direct )

4. ( Dog Ear Publishing )
5. ( Lulu )

6. ( Infinity Publishing )
I don't know, color me confused. Feeling a bit overwhelmed and depressed by the whole thing. I either have to do it all myself or spend a lot of money to get someone else to do it...while getting very little back in return either way. Good thing, I'm not publishing my book for the money. (Most writers, well fiction writers, like dancers, actors and artists aren't really in it for the money (lots of money)...it's rare you'll make that much. This is the sort of thing you do for love and often have a day job or someone else with a day-job to fall back on.)

Apparently if you are a sci-fantasy writer and wish to make any sort of living, you spend 75% of your life wandering about promoting yourself and your work like crazy. It's the big difference between literary writers and genre writers - I've noticed. The literary writers online - don't do this. They sort of sit on their laurels...and well write, teach courses, go to a few conferences, and that's it.

The genre writers on the other hand, particularly the sci-fantasy ones - seem to travel about the world either on their own dime or someone gives them money (can't quite figure out which - guessing a bit of both or they'd be broke by now, one would suspect because world-wide traveling can't be cheap) jumping from fan convention to fan convention and book signing to book signing, etc. Lord knows when they find time to write admist all this hubbub. Although, considering I find time to write and tell myself stories and blog with a full time 8 hour a day, mentally exhausting job...shouldn't be that much of a surprise. My father wrote a book in airports and at motels while he flew to and from meetings (the original road warrior). He was in and out of airports so much when I was a kid, that the other kids in my neighborhood thought he was a pilot. Which was admittedly easier to wrap one's head around than organizational and compensation consultant, who wrote mysteries in his spare time. Didn't get them published because he sucked at marketing himself. Now self-publishes them.

Been reading my correspondence list - and all the professional writers are blogging long-ass posts from some convention, book signing or awards conference advertising themselves and their work like crazy. The only one I sort of envy is Neil Gaiman who is by far the most successful of the bunch and the most famous. He just won two Shirley Jackson Awards - didn't know there were such things. Rather adore Shirley Jackson, although she rarely won awards and struggled mightily. What is it with the entertainment industry and awards? No one else gets them. People who work long days, sweating in the street fixing a sewage system, or abating asbestos from cables, or ensuring such things get done in a timely manner don't get awards. I'm guessing the reason people in the "entertainment" jobs do - is they are unappreciated or scoffed at, so need to some respect from somewhere - all people need that after-all. Also...it provides the rest of us with a way of choosing amongst the vast majority of content out there. Sure there are critics, but critics as we all know tend to be unreliable. Awards are far more positive any how, and they are based on the opinions of people in the actual field - who do it for a living. Also it's, let's face it, a lot more fun to predict which favorite tv show, book, story or movie is going to win than say which sewage construction worker did the best job. Entertainment takes us out of ourselves and our mundane lives - let's us escape...without nasty side-effects. And we adore those who entertain us - because they provide that means of escape or in some cases they communicate our greatest fears, joys, woes to the universe - connecting us with people we'd never met otherwise, like-minded souls across a vast divide.
So who's to say really which job is the most worthwhile? If any? And the awards are a means of showing some appreciation to those artists who move us the most.

Speaking of nasty ways of escape? Read about a really nasty drug the other day called Bath Salts - which causes severe psychotic episodes. Episodes that remind me a bit of zombies. The people who take these drugs - get high, but also often go violently and scarily insane. And are difficult to sedate or restrain. One woman scratched herself to bits - thinking bugs were crawling under her skin.
She looked like she'd been drug for miles over broken glass. Another woman was so violently deranged, it took six men to restrain her, and nothing worked to sedate her. A man - climbed a pole and threw things at the street. Another man killed his entire family while on it. Talk about your bad acid trip. It's like something out of a horror movie. Britain banned the drug in 2010 or 2009. Now its made it's way to the US and they are having troubles containing it - since it is sold in bath shops and stores as well "bath salts". This is why we can't legalize drugs - some drugs turn people into violent psychopaths right out of a Stephen King horror flick. The fiction writer in me went nuts over this story - I kept playing with ways to turn it into short story or novel.

Okay off to bed. Damn, I can't make it to bed until 11 no matter what I do. Feeling the Wire withdrawl, big time. I'm starting to figure out the narrative tropes that turn me on. The Wire hits so many narrative tropes that turn me on, it's not even funny. And I love, just love to pieces, all the main characters - well with the possible exception of Burrell and Valcheck, who I keep wanting to spork with a spoon. Great rec guys. You were so right about the Wire.

Inspired by recent rants about professional writers who have engaged in snarkfests with fans, pissing off some of them. I thought I'd give you some of the best and most noteworthy, not to mention blood pressure inducing fan and professional writer fights online. I'll let you choose the worst.

1. David Fury in a 2001 post on Bronze Beta in direct response to fans who were critical of his episode "CRUSH" in S5, Fury wrote the following classic line:
( warning sure to cause blood pressure spikage to all Spuffy fans, so you may want to skip it )

2. Anne Rice Bites Back at Reviewers on Amazon.com

Amazon.com’s policy of allowing readers to post reviews of books might be a helpful feature for consumers, but for bestselling vampire author Anne Rice, it’s been a pain in the neck. Rice was so outraged over the vitriolic response to her latest book, Blood Canticle—apparently the final installment in her bestselling Vampire Chronicle series—that she posted a 1200-word response that requested that unsatisfied readers mail her back the book for a refund. Baring her own fangs, Rice blasted the readers, saying "your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander…you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehoods and lies." While admitting she reads Amazon.com’s reviews for other author’s works, she criticized the site’s "willingness to publish just about anything." Some posters found the book so unlike its predecessors they doubted Rice wrote it, while others carped about her needing an editor. The author countered saying she wrote "every word of it" and has "no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate" her sentences. "I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status," she said, adding "every word is in perfect place." Rice further asserts that the Chronicles, which began in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire, is an "unrivalled series of books." She, however, praised the positive reviews.

3. Elizabeth Moon's controversial post and fight with people on Islam. The end result was - the author was asked not to be the guest at Wiscon next year. She never submitted an apology. And deleted all the comments to her blog and disabled.
But people kept an archive. The fight is still going on.

4. Aaron Sorkin vs. Fans of the West Wing on TWOP - Sorkin was a frequent poster on TWOPY during the West Wing, posted as Benjamin. Around emmy time, he failed to acknowledge a co-worker, fans commented on it - and Sorkin did not take it at all well. He later enacted vengeance by writing it into a West Wing episode.

And of course there are the ones I remember but can't find - Whedon's numerous snarkfests with fans,
Deknight, Petrie and Fury's on BronzeBeta, notably around the airing of Seeing Red. Marti Noxon's fight with fans. One smackdown between Whedon and a fan regarding Marti's writing of a Mad Men episode on Whedonesque (I think it was MAD MEN, it might have been earlier than that). Notably - Damon Lindenoff's rant against fans of LOST, accusing them of not really being "true Lost fans" if they didn't like the finale.

Sigh late and must get to bed. I think fighting with fans of one's work is a post-modernist thing.
We couldn't do it in the dark ages before the internet and twitter and facebook and fan boards.
Is it a good thing - to be able to converse and interact with the readers and watchers of your work?
I don't know. I think it has it's peaks and valleys. While it's great when people love you, there's always that one person who comes along and kicks you where it hurts and for some reason I've never understood that's the person I remember, not all the raves, the one who sticks in the head.

Writers are a wrecked lot. I think. Human and vulnerable. We're also so critical. Everyone of the writers listed above has written critical reviews and ripped things they loved or disliked apart critically. Whedon certainly has. As has Fury, and Sorkin and notably Lindenof on the Harry Potter film.

In hunting quotes for church listserve which I'm editing - found this one by Coretta Scott King (the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.). Not fitting for the listserve, but worth remembering.

"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated." (Quite true. Worst emotions? Anger, Envy, Fear, and Jealousy - not necessarily in that order.)


And these quotes by Isabelle Allende, a South American Writer. I have her book "Zorro" which I keep on meaning to read, but first must finish Storm of Swords and Side Jobs by Butcher, which I'm now reading at the same time. Sort of bogged down in Storm, it's good, just...very, very, very long.
Write what should not be forgotten.

• While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things. Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.

• Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken.

• For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

* Write what should not be forgotten.

[Sigh. I fear sometimes that I write far too often that which not only should be forgotten but must be forgotten, to such an extent I either delete it or throw up my hands in surrender, and wish I'd never put down the words. Being precise and careful in writing and speech remains oddly a constant struggle, I say oddly, because I am cautious with just about everything else.]