A question about writing

Okay, so I ranted a little :)

I'm facing a similar quandry w/ the Creative Writing - Poetry class I'm taking right now. The teacher's fantastic, but some of the folks in it make me wonder. I mean, I quoted T.S. Eliot's Prufrock in my last assignment (the line about "mermaids singing, each to each" - I used it as the title) because the poem I wrote (about misspent youth & junk) reminded me of Prufrock, and the discussion in the class actually involved a brief little tangent about whether mermaids can actually die, and why a mermaid is saying all this stuff. I mean, sure, college, woo boy, but when English majors come out with this sort of stuff in a senior/grad level writing class, it makes me wanna stay in my room and pop zits until my face disappears. And I'm a COMPUTER SCIENCE major!

It's all a matter of finding your audience and knowing as much as you can about what reaches it and moves it, or puzzles it and puts it off. If the other writers in your workshop agree with your instructor, then you need to decide if they represent the audience you are trying to reach. If so, you had better listen to them. You can't convert your readers any more successfully than a wife can remake her husband into the man she should have married.

Apol for rant x 2

-- Tep (te...), March 3rd, 2004.

Anyone read my long-ass Reader essay on this very subject? It certainly does provoke rants. I called this genre "litfic." I'll E-mail the text to anyone what wants it (my address below is correct). I can't believe people still pay for the writing-workshop scam. How old are you, whiner? Someone needs to tell college kids, "Just work for the student newspaper -- you'll actually learn something besides pop psychology and how to resent other writers, plus it's a much easier way to get laid anyhow." Not to mention free CDs. And at my student newspaper we drank underage at staff meetings, whee!

Also, if you're of college age, you should probably be doing more reading and practice-writing than writing fiction for an audience. You should both be aware that your style is nowhere near ripe -- you should try not to think it's perfect, though I guess we're all invincible geniuses at that age -- and, yes, protective of its development. Write for your own eyes first, and observe the masters by reading attentively. I can't understand why they have larval writers try to learn from each other, that's absurd -- of *course* they all come out sounding alike, especially when you've got ego-damaged profs who can't get published outside the academy shoving their own styles and rules down the kids' gullets to boot.

On the other hand: taking a writing workshop for credit buys you time in which to write, because you're not having to take whatever other class. There's certainly a practical aspect to it. (This is probably the only reason for an MFA in writing, unless you want a job teaching it. It buys you two years in which to write without risking becoming That Guy On The Bus, He's Gonna Write A Novel Someday, Really He Is, because almost everyone is that guy, and they never write the novel, and if they do, it sucks.) I took four writing workshops as an undergraduate, but have never applied anything either of the instructors said, and there were only maybe four or five students total who had any genuine interest in writing.

(And yeah, I did the "bring in a story you've already sold" thing.)

I think it's very important to write for an audience, as soon as you're comfortable doing so, because for one thing, you need to learn that an audience can enjoy something you've written and still be wrong. "Audience" is a hazy thing, though. But with the internet and other opportunities, it's easy to find them, and easy to trade them in, if you don't want money in return.

Right now though, my biggest complaint is that the instructor actually sets aside half of one class to do your typical English: 1A analytical discussion . And that one story gets about 20-30 minutes of actual workshop. And that she makes people read the story out loud in class. And that she keeps ghettoizing "genre fiction." Oh, literary fiction is clearly the best.

Thank god I got out of there before... well, I'm too much of an asshole to ever curl up and die, actually. Thank god I got out before they wasted too much of my time, let's put it that way. I don't have a problem with motivation unless I get too drinky, and god knows college/writer-bonding atmospheres are great for avoiding demon liquor...

See, the way I look at writing -- well, at being a writer -- that isn't possible. The people who actually end up writing full time -- whether they're paid a full-time wage or not -- are the people who are driven to write, and someone not liking what they wrote isn't going to change that. That drive is there long before the ability is, or the ability doesn't come.

Now see here Lee the Whiney (first thing you need to do is change your name) you first need to realize that the keys to being an artist are 1)smoking lots of cigars, 2)drinking yards of absinthe, and 3)using metaphors. Or noticing when your readers use them. Then you can respond in kind. Take our dear lovely Ann, por example: she equates writing with drinking. What a novel approach! Using such avant garde terms like "drinky" sets her inches above the rest. Rest assured, if you follow her example, your prose will become truly prosaic. Always try and disperse witty allusions to alcohol throughout any piece you write, because I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have a frontal lobotomy!

Oh yeah: as a general rule. Fuck everybody. Write what your soul demands you say. Then shut up.

Indulgent experimental fiction. I made the complaint about genre fiction only because of how rockist the instructor seemed about it, which might've been fine by itself if she were as intelligent as she imagined herself to be.

-- McDowell Crook (mcdowellcroo...), March 6th, 2004.

(Cough.) Er... I don't know how on earth you pulled that from what I said, which was: "I don't have a problem with motivation unless I get too drinky, and god knows college/writer-bonding atmospheres are great for avoiding demon liquor..." I'll use a simpler sentence structure so we can all read along: ANN GET MORE WRITING DONE WHEN ANN SOBER. IN COLLEGE TOO MANY PEOPLE PUT LIQUOR BOTTLE IN FRONT OF ANN. IN BAR FULL OF WRITERS ALSO TOO MUCH LIQUOR IN FRONT OF ANN. ANN PINCH ANN AWAKE, ANN STAY HOME, ANN WRITE. ANN HAPPY.

"Oh yeah: as a general rule. Fuck everybody."

MCDOWELL OBVIOUSLY NOT HAPPY BUT THAT NOT PROBLEM OF ANN. ANN SAD FOR MCDOWELL, BUT NOT VERY: ANN SPENT DAY WRITING, ANN HEAD FULL OF STORY. ANN STILL HAPPY.

Prude: When I say "litfic" I don't mean "literary fiction" -- just as "chicklit" doesn't mean "women's writing." "Litfic" is a genre, and -- perhaps because it's so young, perhaps for uglier reasons -- it sounds far more homogenous to my ears than, say, sci-fi.

(I've published stories I had previously had on my website, but I did so as part of a collection. I don't otherwise put things up unless I know I'm not going to try to publish them, online or anywhere else.)

There's not yet any real consensus of what "published online" means -- it used to be clear that printing out copies for a writing workshop or to show to friends didn't count as "publication," for print; but doing the equivalent on the web (specifically the web -- no one's challenging email so far as I know) will often be considered a "previous publication" if the publisher buys electronic publishing rights. Other editors only consider it a publication if it's in a clearly publishing-oriented context -- like a webzine, instead of just your homepage or something. Many of them simply have no idea. (I've had editors say, "Um, well, I don't know ... what do you think is best?" when I've asked about things like this.)

(By which I mean "it will often be considered a previous publication, by publishers who buy electronic publishing rights." The reasoning, of course, is because if it's online one place already, its presence in the publisher's publication -- online or offline -- is less likely to attract readers.)