2014-03-19
New words on the Warning Words list
Added two new words to the list this week. Must be something in the air.
2014-03-18
Top Mutually Exclusive Advice for New Writers March 2014
Almost everyone asks me: "what's your top advice for new writers?"
They're usually hoping for something snappy. Thinking about over the last few days — especially in the light of a book I just finished reading (I have my notes to write up now) by a new writer — I find that the two pieces of advice that I would most like to give are, or at the very least seem to be, in fundamental conflict.
The first is:
It is painfully common for new writers, either revelling in the sheer joy of language or determined to impress, to use curious extended metaphors, nominal phrases of 6 words or more for the subject and object of single verb sentences, strings of adjectives, "clever" and "cute" turns of phrase, obscure or erudite vocabulary, synonyms*, alliteration, addressing the reader, swapping typefaces, using any POV except 1st-person-with-hindsight (e.g. Sherlock Homes) or 3rd-person-omniscient (e.g. Dickens), flashbacks (and any other anti-chronology), addressing the reader directly, and of course, words and phrases of whose meaning they are not CERTAIN.
All this and more is classed as "running before you can walk". I have been at pains to point out that as a writer you have to make conscious choices about the devices and conceits employed in the pursuit of your craft. And it is all to easy for the novice to respond: but I chose to do all those things.
The problem is that caught up in the maelstrom of all those bells and whistles, the new writer loses his grip on a story that soon becomes like a watersnake: incredibly hard to grasp; once grasped easily fumbled, and once fumbled it'll either bite you or swim way out of reach. You have to know you can nail the story FIRST. Once you do, you have to start chusing with reasons. This means making conscious choices, but able to state your objective for those choices. Messing about with chronology? You want the reader to discover things in improbable orders. Why? Rest assured I will challenge you.
The second is:
If you are one day going to become known for your distinctive, personal style; if you are going to keep your creativity open and unfettered, then you need to experiment and keep experimenting. So you need to try out all the stuff that you want to try out. Noone ever got better by sticking to what they know. Don't be yourself. Try to become what you want to be.
It is very easy for the zealous tutor to stifle creativity. A good tutor will provide you with a framework in which to improvise, and introduce you to techniques that you weren't aware of — and then let you use them when you feel like it, for better or worse.
This advice is conflicting. But that's normal. Learning, Creativity and Discipline form a three way love triangle whose conflict can never be resolved and whose conflict might be the key to great writing. You want to be a better writer tomorrow, or you wouldn't be reading my blog. Not that reading my blog will make you a better writer. It might help. If you want to be a better writer then you have to have the ambition, to want to try new stuff even if you don't quite understand it; you have to but the various techniques of the craft into practice before you can grok in fullness their potential. But like any grasshopper, to become a master, you must first accept that you know nothing (or, in fairness, very little. If you knew nothing about writing... I'm sure you get the point).
Yes, sifu.
_________
* <micro_rant> The purpose of Roget's Thesaurus, and the purpose of synonym dictionaries is NOT to help you find an alternative word, but to help you to find exactly the right word. Do you know who uses Roget the most? Translators is who: it is a very effective way of finding the best match for a meaning originally expressed in a foreign language. </micro_rant>
They're usually hoping for something snappy. Thinking about over the last few days — especially in the light of a book I just finished reading (I have my notes to write up now) by a new writer — I find that the two pieces of advice that I would most like to give are, or at the very least seem to be, in fundamental conflict.
The first is:
If there is a simpler way, use it.
It is painfully common for new writers, either revelling in the sheer joy of language or determined to impress, to use curious extended metaphors, nominal phrases of 6 words or more for the subject and object of single verb sentences, strings of adjectives, "clever" and "cute" turns of phrase, obscure or erudite vocabulary, synonyms*, alliteration, addressing the reader, swapping typefaces, using any POV except 1st-person-with-hindsight (e.g. Sherlock Homes) or 3rd-person-omniscient (e.g. Dickens), flashbacks (and any other anti-chronology), addressing the reader directly, and of course, words and phrases of whose meaning they are not CERTAIN.
All this and more is classed as "running before you can walk". I have been at pains to point out that as a writer you have to make conscious choices about the devices and conceits employed in the pursuit of your craft. And it is all to easy for the novice to respond: but I chose to do all those things.
The problem is that caught up in the maelstrom of all those bells and whistles, the new writer loses his grip on a story that soon becomes like a watersnake: incredibly hard to grasp; once grasped easily fumbled, and once fumbled it'll either bite you or swim way out of reach. You have to know you can nail the story FIRST. Once you do, you have to start chusing with reasons. This means making conscious choices, but able to state your objective for those choices. Messing about with chronology? You want the reader to discover things in improbable orders. Why? Rest assured I will challenge you.
The second is:
Be ambitious.
If you are one day going to become known for your distinctive, personal style; if you are going to keep your creativity open and unfettered, then you need to experiment and keep experimenting. So you need to try out all the stuff that you want to try out. Noone ever got better by sticking to what they know. Don't be yourself. Try to become what you want to be.
It is very easy for the zealous tutor to stifle creativity. A good tutor will provide you with a framework in which to improvise, and introduce you to techniques that you weren't aware of — and then let you use them when you feel like it, for better or worse.
This advice is conflicting. But that's normal. Learning, Creativity and Discipline form a three way love triangle whose conflict can never be resolved and whose conflict might be the key to great writing. You want to be a better writer tomorrow, or you wouldn't be reading my blog. Not that reading my blog will make you a better writer. It might help. If you want to be a better writer then you have to have the ambition, to want to try new stuff even if you don't quite understand it; you have to but the various techniques of the craft into practice before you can grok in fullness their potential. But like any grasshopper, to become a master, you must first accept that you know nothing (or, in fairness, very little. If you knew nothing about writing... I'm sure you get the point).
Yes, sifu.
_________
* <micro_rant> The purpose of Roget's Thesaurus, and the purpose of synonym dictionaries is NOT to help you find an alternative word, but to help you to find exactly the right word. Do you know who uses Roget the most? Translators is who: it is a very effective way of finding the best match for a meaning originally expressed in a foreign language. </micro_rant>
2014-03-16
There's no such thing as literature
My missus, who is French, is very proud of the fact that, along with temperature and secretary, she can pronounce literature correctly. All three words are pretty difficult for most foreigners and more horrifying than Cube Zero to French people.
But literature is a pet hate of mine.
"Do you," people ask me, "edit literary fiction as well as genre fiction?"
"How," authors complain, "can I cross over from pulp to literature?"
"It's not literature," readers excuse themselves, "but it's what I like to read."
Definition #4 from Wiktionary knows what I'm talking about:
4. Written fiction of a high standard.
However, even "literary" science fiction rarely qualifies as literature, because it treats characters as sets of traits rather than as fully realized human beings with unique life stories. - Adam Cadre, 2008
I'm very lucky in that I grew up in exactly the kind of household which would traditionally have differentiated fiction between "literature" and "entertainment or light reading", but my mother was an instinctive iconoclast with a deep suspicion of categories of any kind; racism and sexism are forms of prejudice that are communicated and reinforced by lazy and thoughtless categorization. I don't actually remember what her opinion on the question of what literature is might have been. Perhaps I'll ask her.
In any case, the idea that fiction could be sorted into what is, and what is not, literature is a familiar one, but neither instinctive nor natural for me, and with my borderline Marxist anarchist social politics, one which reeks of prejudice and discrimination. Specifically, intellectual snobbery.
Intellectual snobbery is a form of status rivalry. It is perpetrated by people who feel that they have no real power, but have enough education, and are widely enough read, to use that as a means of saying that they are better than others. The label of literature is one of the pillars of intellectual snobbery. It is a way of saying: you haven't read the right books.
My missus, correctly, challenged my assertion that there is no such thing as literature saying that some books are clearly better than others. And some books are absolutely dreadful. This is true. But there is no way of defining a dividing line above which all the books are literature and below which all of them are "light reading". Rather like a Monk of Cool selecting his outfit, what makes a book literature is that it is on the list of books read by, or books to read by, whichever intellectual snob you are unfortunate enough to be talking to.
I'm not accusing you of being an intellectual snob.If you think you know which books are literature and which books aren't, that's because all forms of snobbery are endemic and unconscious in our culture. You're only actually a snob if you think that people who haven't read the literature that you've read are inferior to you.
Mostly, of course, I'm speaking to struggling writers here. Among struggling writers there are various attitudes towards literature:
"I'll never be able to write literature."
"I hope some day to be able to write literature."
"I don't want to write literature." - often followed by quite sensible reasons.
"People don't think I'm writing literature."
"People don't realize I'm writing literature."
"You don't like my work because you aren't used to reading literature."
No prizes for guessing what I think of the last one. What I'd like writers to think is that it doesn't matter. It matters that you write what you love and love what you are currently writing. (I don't expect you to love what you wrote ten years ago. It's probably awful. Everything I wrote ten years ago is awful.)
It matters that you want to write a satisfying book. It matters that you want to understand and improve your craft. It matters that you want to understand how to give your readers the book that they want to read.
These are far higher goals than getting yourself placed in a category that gives you a spurious, divisive status.
There's no such thing as literature.
But literature is a pet hate of mine.
"Do you," people ask me, "edit literary fiction as well as genre fiction?"
"How," authors complain, "can I cross over from pulp to literature?"
"It's not literature," readers excuse themselves, "but it's what I like to read."
Definition #4 from Wiktionary knows what I'm talking about:
4. Written fiction of a high standard.
However, even "literary" science fiction rarely qualifies as literature, because it treats characters as sets of traits rather than as fully realized human beings with unique life stories. - Adam Cadre, 2008
I'm very lucky in that I grew up in exactly the kind of household which would traditionally have differentiated fiction between "literature" and "entertainment or light reading", but my mother was an instinctive iconoclast with a deep suspicion of categories of any kind; racism and sexism are forms of prejudice that are communicated and reinforced by lazy and thoughtless categorization. I don't actually remember what her opinion on the question of what literature is might have been. Perhaps I'll ask her.
In any case, the idea that fiction could be sorted into what is, and what is not, literature is a familiar one, but neither instinctive nor natural for me, and with my borderline Marxist anarchist social politics, one which reeks of prejudice and discrimination. Specifically, intellectual snobbery.
Intellectual snobbery is a form of status rivalry. It is perpetrated by people who feel that they have no real power, but have enough education, and are widely enough read, to use that as a means of saying that they are better than others. The label of literature is one of the pillars of intellectual snobbery. It is a way of saying: you haven't read the right books.
My missus, correctly, challenged my assertion that there is no such thing as literature saying that some books are clearly better than others. And some books are absolutely dreadful. This is true. But there is no way of defining a dividing line above which all the books are literature and below which all of them are "light reading". Rather like a Monk of Cool selecting his outfit, what makes a book literature is that it is on the list of books read by, or books to read by, whichever intellectual snob you are unfortunate enough to be talking to.
I'm not accusing you of being an intellectual snob.If you think you know which books are literature and which books aren't, that's because all forms of snobbery are endemic and unconscious in our culture. You're only actually a snob if you think that people who haven't read the literature that you've read are inferior to you.
Mostly, of course, I'm speaking to struggling writers here. Among struggling writers there are various attitudes towards literature:
"I'll never be able to write literature."
"I hope some day to be able to write literature."
"I don't want to write literature." - often followed by quite sensible reasons.
"People don't think I'm writing literature."
"People don't realize I'm writing literature."
"You don't like my work because you aren't used to reading literature."
No prizes for guessing what I think of the last one. What I'd like writers to think is that it doesn't matter. It matters that you write what you love and love what you are currently writing. (I don't expect you to love what you wrote ten years ago. It's probably awful. Everything I wrote ten years ago is awful.)
It matters that you want to write a satisfying book. It matters that you want to understand and improve your craft. It matters that you want to understand how to give your readers the book that they want to read.
These are far higher goals than getting yourself placed in a category that gives you a spurious, divisive status.
There's no such thing as literature.
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