A cluster of interactions outside the actual writing of novel has resulted in some postings in print and online. “A Planet of One’s Own” is a guest editorial I wrote for the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, On Spec. I wonder what Ms. Woolf would have thought…. ~__~
On the one hand I figure once you’re dead it doesn’t really matter, on an ego-level, does it? There’re only ego concerns if you’re alive enough to appreciate it and care (I’m working on the premise that there’s no after life, no self-conscious ghosties, no burdens of regret to pass onto the next generation, etc.). On the other hand I have children so if I can have books still bring in royalties, yah, that’d be awesome. Leave them a little something– if not enough to let them retire when they are 55 years old, at least enough to eat at a fancy restaurant several times a year!
When I write my novels I’m not thinking about whether or not they will Stand The Test of Time. And I am not specifically and consciously crafting stories that will try to evade or float above my historical timeline. (What I mean is we are creatures of specific times. My childhood in the 70′s has imprinted in specific ways. 80′s in the Canadian prairies has formed something else inside of my experience-scape. Etc. We bring those sensibilities to the atmosphere, if not the setting itself, in the stories we write. Some timeprint. It’s in us. We transport it. It’s one of our filters.) Some novels/stories/poems/plays etc remain as vivid, remarkable, relevant and vital even after decades, centuries have passed. Did the authors of these narratives wonder if their work would still speak to an audience three hundred years into the future?
I’ve been thinking about which SF and Fantasy stories stand the test of time and why. Not in a scholarly way, Jim, because I’m not a scholar, but in a writerly abstracted musing kind of way, like a little yarn hanging from my sweater that I like to pluck at and tug between thumb and forefinger.
Last week I reread Barbara Hambly’s Darwath Trilogy after 15+ years and was surprised to discover that it read very well, even revisiting it as an older and more experienced reader/writer, and that the subject matter and content would actually be quite fine to be released now. It’s a fantasy series with two humans from our world finding themselves in an parallel world that’s very much like what would have been a medieval culture for us. Aside from the very beginning of the narrative, there are no leaps between the locales. They are trapped in the medieval realm. So there was very little to fix the “presentness” of their lives in contrast to my reading now in the 21rst century. The only thing that stood out as time-fixed was mention of VHS videos…. (Which I still watch I’ll have you know! ^__^)
This got me to thinking about which elements may fix SF and Fantastic stories into a tighter reading time-frame. What I mean by a tight reading time-frame is stories that are best read in “the present” of when the story was first released, and, as time passes, its relevance or interest wanes. It doesn’t have a long shelf life. It is like a Beaujolais, not a bottle of brandy.
So back to Hambly’s trilogy. Fantasy, with its construction of an alternate world/setting with or without elements of the magical, may float above the tethers that would bind a narrative to a specific time because it’s often working out of an imaginary system that is actually removed from our experience of “real time” (and all the markers of reality that have a time-print). Science fiction runs a greater risk of being “dated” because of two significant elements: 1) SF will often imagine a future, and as we approach the date it can seem quite silly when what was imagined as the future is so far from the reality (Interestingly, as we catch up to the imagined timeline, the futuristic story actually becomes an interesting artifact of the past as it foregrounds the anxieties and interests of that culture’s present!). 2) Focus on technological advances/discoveries also fixes the narrative in time as technological discoveries continue onward, quickly surpass it, or veer in a different direction, etc. For instance, computers were room-sized machines but now they are becoming extremely small. What was cutting edge is swiftly surpassed. It seems to me that an SF novel based on technological discoveries would face more challenges in being current and relevant than a fantasy novel (of course I’m speaking in very broad terms, here). Steampunk seems an interesting marriage of fantasy and science fiction with a ground based upon nostalgia but that’s another little discussion for another day. Hambly’s fantasy adventure has elements of a mystery as well as following tropes of fantasy (such as fight between human survival against a strange deadly and evil force), as well as conflict between groups (church and state), conflict between individuals and groups, as well as a moderate romantic element (nicely handled, not overdone, <she nods approvingly>) and all of these things certainly recur in human history, they’ve never gone away. There’s one final element that actually affects how well it resonates as a book for current interest, but I don’t want to speak of it because I would spoiler the trilogy… >_< !! So I won’t. At any rate I suggest you read this trilogy for yourself and have a ponder about how and why it can still resonate.
As a writer is it important to consider whether or not the novel you are crafting is “timeless”? Is it important to carefully pore through the text to try to erase all timeprints that will anchor it forever in 2011?
I don’t think there’s a correct answer….
I have a feeling that trying to write “a timeless book” would be very much like trying to write “a universal story”; a fruitless endeavour, a little like trying to catch air with a butterfly net…. But who knows? Maybe there are a slough of writers out there who approach their novels in that very way??? I don’t know. And, as my father said, “Life is… <dramatic pause> Unknowable!”
Often reviewers will describe a novel as “timeless”. “Universal” is also probably close behind. Birth, death, love, heartbreak, success, failure, good and evil; these binary constructions have indeed, orbited our very short human lives since time immemorial, at least we’ve endless chronicles about them.
Of course writers write stories set in a wide spectrum of time. Their stories may be set in the distant past, the near past, the present, the future, the far future, etc. They combine multiple timelines, what have you. We are only limited by our imagination. As writers we can play with time! We can bend it, we can alter it, as long as we have the ability to have manipulate language to convey this. But none of this really clinches whether or not a story will stand the test of time.
Ultimately the story has to be very good, specific, and distinct.
In terms of my writing process my character(s) are the primary engines to my narrative. I have a broad concept, probably several pressing questions and the character(s) are dropped into the mix. Sometimes I feel very bad about the things they must endure. They are always very deeply loved….
I’m not trying to prove anything, here. <grin> I’m just kinda working out some random thoughts. Mulling. I suppose it would be good to talk about how one treats time inside a story. The seeming semblance of the passage of story time in the story world as opposed to how much time is passing for the reader…. Now THAT is a magic trick, I kid you not! But not today. ~___~
And, rather randomly, I end with a link to a recent interview for the Fall 2011 issue of The Seventh Week, Clarion West Writer’s Workshop! The most thoughtful, astute & imaginative Nisi Shawl asked me non-typical questions and it was an absolute delight to respond to them. You need to download the pdf once you’re on the site.
http://www.clarionwest.org/The_Seventh_Week
I suppose it does no actual harm, not like a deadbeat parent. <weak grin>
I’ve been writing and rewriting whilst editing another’s manuscript. Making excellent headway, but less time for bloglife, je me regrette et je ne regrette pas!
Super chuffed that Penguin Canada has chosen the cover images for my novel, Darkest Light (illustrated by the brilliant Jillian Tamaki!), as the cover image for their 2012 Children’s Titles catalogue! I spent several 5 minutes trying to take a photo of me holding up two copies, with the photo booth feature on the laptop even going to the extent of clicking the mouse with my toe, etc. Very ignoble. Always blurry.
Recently met someone who follows my tweets. She said that my personality is exactly like what she imagined it might be based on my tweets. Found this simultaneously dismaying and funny. Also very clear that I could never be a double agent. Heck, I couldn’t be a single agent. If I can’t even be a single agent I’m reduced to a subject. I object!
Sunday a day of chores. A run to second-hand bookstores. Maybe a late cheap lunch. I may finally try a Japadog. For the longest time the name really bothered me, but exposure has worn down my discomfort. Funny how that works, hey? <one raised eyebrow (which I can’t do in real life but admire a great deal in those who can)> A new friend who is Chinese Canadian mentioned that she would not be thrilled if there was one called a “Chinkadog”. Good point, I thought.
Thanksgiving has come and gone and Halloween around the corner. Every year I think how nice it would be to have a proper costume (Easy One Million Years BC “cave woman” costume a la Rachel Welsh tip: sew patches of fur (fun or otherwise) onto bikini!) but always some writing or family or life et al and I end up with a hurriedly bought bowlful of candies. One year I would adore to dress up as the female mime in Paris Je T’aime! I have a soft spot for over-the-top cliche and slapstickish…. But not this year. I’m galloping toward November, grateful for sunshine days and sweet coffee.
Bursts of work, a deadline yoke and nothing scrambled for breakfast except my brains of course I have to reorganize my desk, a bower bird compulsion of arrangementrearrangement…. First the surface cleared of receipts, dust, receipts, dust, coins, feathers, pens, Moomintroll sticky notes, scissors, books, unfiled papers, Chionodoxa bulbs, mice (not warm-blooded), magnifying glass, brochures and my ingrown heart…. Next the suspension of not disbelief, but a full spectrum light, above the far length of my writing desk, the garden herbs replanted into clay pots last week now placed in a row beneath the brilliant light when I leave my room the afterimage a dark horizontal strip hangs in midair.
The bower bird writer rearranges her desk not to attract a mate, but to create a space that has a pleasing kuuki, an atmosphere/air quality that will seep into her creative process as well imbue into the language of her projects…. Other might call it procrastination. What have you. I am a bower bird writer, intermittently compulsive, with aesthetic and philosophical leanings. (At least I am not obsessively piling dung pellets on my desk. Really. Things can be so much worse. It’s always extremely reassuring to think about this.)
Two years ago I had a large fish tank with a beautiful velvet-blue Beta fish named Eduardo. He was so very clever and interactive and the lovely flow of his silky fins as he swam up and down in his own medium, just beyond the screen of my laptop. I would catch his movement like thoughts flickering across my subconscious. Dreamy. Languid. Flow.
I’m hoping the full-spectrum light will keep my plants healthy over the dark winter. The window in my room is north-facing and the clouds can grow oppressive. I’m also hoping that the light will be vitamin D-good for me as well, and that I will be able to eat fresh shiso, red chillis and basil over the winter! We shall see.
Edits and editing, rewriting and critiquing, a doubling of work and work is good. So is time away from desk and fully into body. Last Thursday L and I drove out toward Pemberton in search of matsutake. I think it may be too early, but we found, instead, what we thought were chanterelles*!
Ohhhh, so sweet and soft the air. The clean delicious scent of cedar, pine and spruce. The uneven spring of moss beneath our feet. We entered the forest gently, the trees ringing with silence, water rushing unseen a stream, the crack of dry twigs, the luminous glow of lichen. So body and forest and air and sound and no clutterthoughts just the careful placement of feet, just the sweep of eyes for a pale mushroom pushing up through moss. Here. And here. Ohhh!
Whenever I reenter the forest I wonder that it’s taken so very long to return. Why so city when the mountains…?
There’s still work to be done on my bower. The glare from the full-spectrum light (the fluorescent-tube variety, approximately three feet in length) is really hard on my eyes! Hahahahahahaha! Things don’t necessarily turn out exactly how one envisions, but it won’t be too difficult to make some kind of shade to attach along the edge of the piece of wood to which the light is affixed. I’m currently wearing a baseball cap to cut down on the glare. I’m sure the light is also bright enough to damage my photo of Alice B. Sheldon (a scanned reprint off the original, the original put away in a box) that’s hanging on the wall. So final tweakings to be fussed about, a darting beak and rustling feathers, midst words and language and the slow-building of an interior 3-D imaginary world in all its delicious details.
*Please NEVER eat uncertain mushrooms without having a professional confirm their identification. If you ever need to research dreadful details of a slow and awful death read up on mushroom poisoning. L got confirmation of the chanterelles from the mushroom guy at Granville Island Market. Don’t play Mushroom Roulette! Mushroom Farmers’ Daughter
Reading a work of narrative fiction can be compared to embarking on a type of journey. The reader embarks upon this journey willingly (unless it’s assigned reading for school, etc.), entrusting her well-being into the hands of the author. Of course this voluntary contract is non-binding– the reader can leave the book, unfinished, for whatever reason (Thankfully, this final power remains with the reader because no one wants to be trapped in a Clockwork Orange scenario. We call those nightmares….).
One of the key challenges faced by the writer is to draw the reader into the text and keep her engaged to the end of the journey. The writer maintains engagment in a variety of ways. In narrative fiction the common ways in which a reader can be held are:
1) An engrossing plot. This activates our hard-wired human trait, curiousity. I.e. What happens next?
2) A compelling character/voice. (We wish to be like her. Or we make the proxy cross-over and think we may actually be like her if we were to find ourselves in the same situation. Or we can’t ever imagine being someone like her, but wonder what someone like her thinks/feels.)
3) Creativity/Imagination. I.e. Elicits a sense of wonder.
4) Beautiful language and/or poetics. This elicits aesthetic wonder.
5) Via character, emotionally hooks the reader. I.e. Intimacy. (Also connects back to the idea of proxy. Empathy is socially and culturally valued if not a hard-wired trait in most of us.)
6) Eliciting intellectual curiousity. I.e. In terms of (new) information being relayed, or the mechanics of the structure of narrative is atypical thereby resonating as a puzzle to be solved or deconstructed, or making connections between disparate ideas in a new way, etc.
(This list is not defnitive, of course.)
I’ve been pondering the levels of intimacy that are subtly and not-so-subtly reached/triggered during the back-and-forth play between author-narrator-reader in that stretch of time/space of writing and a book being read. Because the flip side of intimacy, which can be beautiful and so deeply moving, is vulnerability. To open oneself to intimacy is to receptive and unguarded– we are open to intense connection, but also to deep hurt. Consequently, I believe that it behooves writers to take time to consider the ways in which they create and shape narrative fiction and to what levels and the ways in which they will use intimacy to engage their reader.
Authors have a wide range to work with. There are texts that are very cool, distant, emotionally removed and dry. The primary engagement may be foregrounded as intellectual, and intimacy can be pushed far back, into the nose-bleed section of the emotive auditorium. I think the British literary tradition excels at this type of narrative style. To the other extreme we can be placed so subjectively close to a fictional character that we can experience her life completely as if we, momentarily and actually, are her. We can be more intimately connected to a fictional character, know more of what she thinks and what she feels, than we will ever be able to with our own lovers!
Narrative fiction, on one level, is the careful manipulation of words in order to construct an artificial imaginary temporal, causal, emotional and intellectual mindscape for a reader. The very nature of this work is one of manipulation. Although I’ve stated that ultimately the reader holds the power to close the book should she find herself taken into a place she does not wish to enter, writers also hold a great deal of manipulative power in hooking the reader (particularly through plot) to staying until the end. (I’m not going to go into books that are “difficult” to read i.e. unfamiliar form, or political content, or experimental, etc., but are actually doing an important work/writing. This is separate topic from what I’m detailing here.)
I’ve been thinking about trust and intimacy relationships between the author-narrator-reader because I’ve recently read a novel where I felt hooked enough to follow the plot until the end of the tale, and left the completed reading of the book feeling that the author manipulated me, the reader, as much as she manipulated the characters she created. Of course I understand that the entire construction of a fictional narrative is, on one level, the manipulation of words into a specific form. One must manipulate in order to succeed. But what are the terms? What is shared? Who gives? Who takes? How much? Are there junctures in the narrative where the flow of power shifts? Does the writer leave space for the reader to maintain a sense of autonomy. Does the writer love and respect the reader? Does it matter if she does or doesn’t?
I don’t want to be coy– the novel that troubled me was Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. I admire her earlier novels a great deal, especially as I read them when I was coming into my feminist understandings in the late 80s and early 90s. In terms of the a narrative of the dystopic, I was and am interested in what she’s created in Oryx and Crake. She’s clever, imaginative and engaging and she’s a skillful storyteller. Outside from its genre (which is highly foregrounded), however, was a kind of pounding upon my emotive reading psyche– one of manipulation. I felt like I had been led through a narrative Matryoshka doll-effect, with the final largest doll being the reader, and Atwood the agent who gets to put the set away after she’s finished playing with them. And I did not at all appreciate how this felt.
SPOILER ALERT! Technically, Atwood adeptly and quickly hits the reader with a dual track of causality with which to hook our drive to discover what happens and why: 1) We’re placed in the “present” where it’s post-disaster, so we wonder what’s led to the disaster, and also what will happen next in the “present” timeline of the hapless narrator caught in a survivor situation, 2) the narrative’s past leading up to the disaster is unveiled through its own timeline underscoring the causal elements that led to the disaster as well as establishing the protagonist’s own bildungsroman. Nothing troubling about these strategies; I think she was/is very clever to double up on the narratives and it’s also not unheard of. She treats the same character (Jimmy/Snowman) as two separate characters via the distance of time with the timelines meeting at the end of the novel. Clever.
But the smallest of the Matroyshka dolls comes into play via the introduction and treatment of the characters of 1) Jimmy’s mother, and 2) the figure in the child porn abuse film that Jimmy views/overlay of Jimmy’s narrative of the abused child atop of Oryx. Clearly Jimmy/Snowman is a kind of anti-hero. And his understanding and perceptions of his mother and child-abuse victim/Oryx is that of a flawed and sexist/misogynist/colonialist character. But by situating the text via Jimmy/Snowman’s subjectivity the reader is situated to impose this reading upon them as well, and the writer who orchestrates this manouvre is Atwood. We are vicariously set up to perceive in a way we may abhorr, in order to experience Jimmy/Snowman as Atwood has constructed. The next stage of manipulation is unveiled when we discover Jimmy has been utterly manipulated by his long-time friend, Crake (who may have manipulated the video depicting the execution of Jimmy’s mother in order to manipulate Jimmy into having feelings of vengeance, as well as manipulating Jimmy via his obsession/desire for Oryx). Jimmy, whom we thought had had at least some level of agency in his own story, has actually been played like a pawn by Crake, throughout. To top it off, we are clearly made to understand that Crake is only the “natural” outcome of a society gone utterly wrong. Crake has been manipulated into being by a bad human world. The novel ends with a seemingly “open-ended” sequence– Snowman is at the ultimate crux of having to choose between the lives of humans like himself, or protecting the genetically constructed Children of Crake (as designed by flawed Crake). Atwood does not finish the scene for us, but in terms of how Jimmy was manipuated throughout the narrative, she leaves us with very little space to imagine him doing anything other than what he was manipulated into doing. This is the final manipulation. The reader is manipulated into reading only one ending even when there seems to be space to choose other options.
It could be said that I’m missing the entire point of the novel in that it was written as satire (as implied, for instance, by the main character’s Leave-it-to-Beaver-like name, ”Jimmy” alongside the figure of the emotionally distant and disengaged mother, invoking a kind of contructed and heimlich gesturing toward an artificial nostalgia that’s clearly ironic, not to mention the over-the-top names of drugs, trends, organizations, products, etc. found throughout the fictional world as constructed by Atwood). It could be stated that we aren’t meant to engage with the novel on an emotive and empathetic level when the primary engagement is meant to be satirical (and intellectual). This may have been the intention, but I’m not convinced that the intention was successfully deployed. Or, perhaps Atwood intended the reader to recognize that manipulation was the modus operandi, both cause and effect, and appreciate this?
I do enjoy satire– Philip K. Dick excelled at it in the best of his books. Perhaps it’s a matter of degree and tone. In our current lives of hyper-consumerism atop of inherited legacies of colonialism and oppression, that which Atwood gestures toward as satirical is actually part of our lived realities. The real and satirical collapses into one and the same. So the future that Atwood creates is not necessarily perceived as humorous embellishment. This is the whole point, it may be said.
I would respond to this idea with Fred Wah’s, “So what?”*
So what?????
Social commentary and warning if humanity doesn’t change its trajectory? Don’t be manipulated like Jimmy was? Don’t be a Jimmy or a Crake? Don’t be manipulated like they are, even though I manipulated you so that you can see how manipulation works? Aren’t our consumer-driven corporation-led lives a comedic tragedy…?
There is a huge experiential difference between satire that allows us to observe the unfolding of the joke, and one in which we are part of the joke. The dividing line may not be so clear in the construction of the joke– context and subjectivities are not static. I have no idea of whether or not Atwood situated the reader as reader-pawn intentionally, or if it was an unintended outcome. I like to believe that it was unintended. But the reading of Oryx and Crake had me pondering less about the dire conditions we are moving toward in terms of our global impact upon environmental/ecological/social/cultural wellness, and more focussed upon the difficult-to-measure ethical relationship between the writer and the reader.
In the end I felt like the writer had no love or affection for the reader. Indeed, I felt like I had been had. A curious place to find myself when the underlying impetus for the writing of dystopias could be said arises from a place of deep caring for the survival of humanity.
Ultimately I don’t regret having read Atwood’s novel, because it has had me considering important moral and ethical issues around the relational between author-narrator-reader. We should not enter this space lightly, even if the creative intention is an expression/articulation of levity. It is a relationship that we ought to consider every time we write something intended for a readership.
*Fred Wah was my first creative writing instructor at the University of Calgary. He had a very effective way (if not somewhat alarming/intimidating) of directing a critical gaze upon a story or poem that was skillfully constructed and stylistically “faultless”, but, somehow, devoid of life, or vibrancy, or risk, or edginess, or urgency, etc. The story set out what it intended to do, and achieved it, the end. Stories/poems like these elicited the dreaded Fred Wah’s, “So what?” A rhetorical question, but one critically necessary for the writer to consider.
I’m so very excited to share the cover of Darkest Light! Companion book to Half World, the cover and illustrations are being done once again (so lucky!) by the most amazing artist Jillian Tamaki .
I’m still working on finishing the novel but the catalogue comes early and what a nice incentive to see the book cover looking so real after years of working on a project… ~_____~ . Darkest Light is available for pre-order through Amazon. And I also encourage you to order it at your favourite independent local bookstore!
Description of Darkest Light:
The breathtaking follow-up novel to the award-winning Half World
The recently reunited realms of the Flesh, Half World and the Spirit are again at risk—something has been left undone. Gee, adopted as an infant, has been kept ignorant of his troubled past. Now at sixteen, he is a loner both despised and feared by his classmates. Dark feelings, unbidden, slowly grow inside him. Even as he struggles to control them, his past catches up with him and compels him to journey to Half World. Abandoning his adoptive grandmother and the place he has called home, Gee must face what he used to be in order to determine his fate and the fate of the Three Realms. Aided by a surly cat and a troubled newfound friend, Gee must fight the monstrous and the horrific in Half World. Most difficult of all, he must overcome his own propensity for evil.
The nightmarish adventure picks up sixteen years after Melanie’s return in Half World (2009, Puffin). With a new dark hero whose unlikely companions are a heartless cat and a self-destructive Neo Goth girl, Darkest Light is a compelling journey through despair in a desperate search for redemption.
Of note: this is my first novel with a male main character….
Being a professional writer invariably leads to public performances. I actually never thought this through when I started writing and only realized, in horror, that I’d have to read my words aloud in front of people I both knew and didn’t know…. I grew up as an introvert child…. Performing in front of people was something that I never aspired to do nor fantasized about. I thought being a writer meant I could be by myself a lot to write…. <weak grin>
Happily, after many years of reading in public, I’ve come to enjoy the performative nature of the engagement. It still makes me feel very nervous and I have a kind of tizzy when I have to perform new things, but I can often leave the stage feeling satisfied. It may never come easily to you, but developing a professional modality of performance can greatly affect how often you are invited to engagements. Remember, every time you read in a public space you are introducing your work to a potential fan who will go on to buy your books. Performing well can affect sales. If you’re trying to get by on your writing EVERY GIG COUNTS.
Some Tips on Performance:
1) Never go longer than your allotted time.
2) Never go longer than your allotted time.
3) NEVER GO LONGER THAN YOUR ALLOTTED TIME! (Clearly I cannot say this enough. Whenever I’m invited to a group reading there will always be someone, maybe several people, who go over time. Really, people. Get over yourself. Some people say they will just go a couple minutes over time because their story is a little longer than the time allotted. No. You should have chosen something that fit the allotted time. That’s all. Be respectful to the organizers of the event, your peers and your audience. If you use up more than your allotted time it may mean that people performing later in the line-up may not have their share of time/space/audience patience-energy. Audiences grow tired. Don’t be a space hog. If you want people to hear you for longer set up a salon at home and invite your friends who love you to bits and won’t get mad if you go on and on.
4) Select an excerpt or story that performs well on the stage. Some things that work well on paper don’t perform well. If you’re not sure if it performs well ask a writing friend to act as your audience and provide feedback.
5) Be sure you’re not going to go over time because you’ve practiced your reading, as well as the preamble/introduction, aloud, at home, several times, as you timed it against the clock. If it goes over time pare it down so it doesn’t. Easy!
6) A public reading is a performance. Try to inflect some feeling into the reading. A reading is more than just words read aloud; it seeps into a grey area closer to dramatic performance. Bring life to your performance. Imagine that you’re reading a bed-time story to your children. Or, imagine that you’re bringing a film into life through the invocation of your words. You are performing a magic act. Transport them.
7) Thank your hosts. Acknowledge the audience.
FOR THE RECORD: I think it’s perfectly acceptable to go over time as an act of political intervention. I.e. you’ve been invited to perform at an event that claims to be inclusive, but you’re the only woman and of colour person in the line-up. I think it’d be totally politically acceptable to HOG UP TIME by reading selectively critical things, etc.
My policy has been to read a little less than allotted time. I kinda feel that it’s better to quit while people still want to hear a little more, rather than hit the point where people are starting to tune you out.
Go knock their socks off!
If you have never had your work published in a professional venue (i.e. magazine not owned by family members, anthologies, newspapers, contest win leading to pro publications, etc.) and you are eager to do so you might like to ask yourself:
Question #1: Have I worked long at developing my craft?
and:
Question #2: Have I had professional critical feedback on the piece I’d like to submit and I’ve re-written it once again (after numerous previous revisions)?
I think it’s really important that you’ve accomplished these two things before submitting. Of course I’m not speaking in absolutes. There are many paths and ways to being a published writer. The path I’ve taken is what I consider “The Tortoise’s Path” of “The Tortoise and the Hare” model. I’ll blog about that path on another day. ~__~
There are a few other questions you may like to consider. Writers write and seek publication for a wide range of reasons. We are complex and complicated creatures and life is never boring even if a great many of us are neurotics. I digress. I would like to caution the writer who is seeking first-time pro publication, however, if her primary drive to be published is ego-driven. I think that before the ego must come craft…. I’m sure there are wildly successful authors whose ego considerations come before their craft. And that’s fine for them. And, perhaps, that’s fine for you. Who knows? I have strong feelings, however, about the art-fullness of work to be made public. If you’re going to do it, do it to the best of your ability. Make it count. Because once it’s out there you cannot take it back.
If you are a gifted young writer, and I met so many gifted and hard-working writers at the VPL Writing and Book Camp this past week, I would encourage you to not be in a terrrible rush to be published (Unless you’re suffering from terminal illness– that would very sad, and rushing would totally make sense.). Maybe you long to make a big literary Splash in the publishing scene. It has happened before, and it will continue to happen in the future. I think this kind of entry into the publishing scene is not without certain stresses and drawbacks that could deeply affect your career and writing development trajectory. Because even after the pro publication our writing continues to change and develop. We dig deeper. We think harder. We continue to grow. This is the lovely and amazing thing about being a writer. We can keep on learning and growing as long as we seek this! If, perhaps, you seek early career publication and it makes a Splash, you’ve set yourself up in a very public way and there will be expectations that you produce something just as splashy the second time around. The Second Book Syndrome can be paralyzing and destructive to your creative process. I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody. I’ve seen this happen to adult writers. I would hate for this to happen to someone in her teens. Not that you might not be up to the challenge. But let me reassure you: it’s okay to take your time. Writers needn’t race toward publication. If the story, the poem, the novel, is well-crafted and a lovely thing, it will find a home. Author Justine Larbalestier has blogged about being published early that may be of interest: http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2005/08/13/too-young-to-publish/ I don’t want to discourage you if you’re young and ambitious. It’s great to have goals and dreams. I know sometimes there feels like a great urgency to be “a real writer” (i.e. published. I don’t know if I think that only published writers are “real writers” but that’s another essay)…. I swear. There’s lots of time. Read and read and read. Write, rewrite, ask questions, find someone to professionally critique your work, rewrite. Rewrite some more.
Now, if you’ve answered a resounding, “Yes!” to question #1, I would suggest that you go do research at your largest library and find out what kinds of magazines and journals are being published locally/regionally. Of course you can also look online for these journals as well as looking for online publications. You need to seek out venues that would be a suitable place for your stories/poems. If you’ve written a Pro-Choice poem and submit it to a Roman Catholic magazine it’s not going to be accepted. You need to research the market and submit to likely places. Read a wide variety of journals and magazines and look for a publication that publishes work similar to yours. There’s also a lot of helpful pro tips online if you look around. Do tons of research!
Contests are also a place to submit your work. If the contest is asking for a submission fee or processing fee that doesn’t differ so much from the prize I would advise you not to participate. For instance, if they ask you to pay $25 and the prize is $500 I would consider it “not worth it”. A true contest should not have you paying anything at all. Often a magazine will have a contest and with the processing fee you receive a year’s subscription of the magazine. If it’s a magazine you like and it publishes work similar to yours and you’re interested in the content then I don’t think it’s a rip-off.
Beware of online contests and publications. There’s not a great deal of quality control there yet. You may want to seek out professional advice before submitting to venues you’re unfamiliar with. Do research. Ask around.
Question #2: Where do I go for professional critical feedback? If you live in a major city it is very likely that the central libary or university(ies) have a Writer-in-Residency Program. The Writer-in-Residence is hired by the library/university/etc. to be available to the writing public to offer professional feedback/critiques. I’ve served in four residencies and not so many younger writers were coming in to access the services. There’s no age limit. Younger writers should feel free to book an appointment to receive feedback on their writing. You needn’t worry about your work “not being good enough”, because the whole point of the writer-in-residence is to provide feedback to writers who are working on a project, so they can strengthen it. I would also add, however, that some writers-in-residence may be more helpful than others. This is true of editors. If you have a less-than-helpful interaction with a writer-in-residence or editor it may be that they weren’t the right one for your kind of work. Please don’t despair. Find someone else. Maybe there’s a school teacher who is interested in writing, is a writer herself. Maybe there’re writing workshops through Continuing Education. Find places where you can receive critical feedback so you can further polish and develop your work. Family and friends who encourage us is very important to keep us going, but they may not be the best people to critically evaluate your work. The work being critiqued may not feel so pleasant, but it’s a necessary part of revisions.
There are many paths to becoming a published writers and you will find your way somehow! Ganbare! And believe! ~__~
Everyone I had spoken to on the matter had told me that the Louvre could not be viewed in one day, but I had no idea how enormous the museum was until I approached it from outside and saw the long wings of the former royal palace…. Holy crow, I thought. Lookit the size of it! And it’s crammed with stunning pieces of art– as if all of the photos of my Western Art History book were taken there! The scale! I know the dimensions of the paintings are noted in the textbooks but it is completely something else to stand before The Raft of the Medusa and feel the high drama of the tragic scene so stylized and so freaking enormous– I was imagining that people in the early 1800s might have experienced this painting as we currently experience films on the big screen. Larger than life, dramatic, and intense.
We made the pragmatic choice to see certain paintings that were “the most famous” because we would not have enough time to see everything well (perhaps if we had one week to spend inside the museum?), and, the space was very crowded with high-peak tourists (of which we were an additional five….). So off we went to see the Mona Lisa.
I had also been warned that there would be a queue in front of painting… I was totally unprepared for what I found. I had imagined that there would be those velvet ropes that folded the line-up back and forth into an organized and compact repeating U-shaped order, much like we line up at banks and airline wickets, etc. But there was no order. It was an outright scrum. On top of that most members of the scrum had one arm held vertically in the air with their camera or cellphone, as if they were mobbing a film star instead of viewing a piece of art. They were not trying to view a piece of art. They were trying to capture a piece of it to take home as trophy…. It was an art mob….
I was appalled, fascinated, curious, frustrated, disheartened, surprised, and alarmed. Holy smokes, I thought. What have we come to? Look how the ease with which digital photography has altered our behaviour and relationship!
We had requested a wheelchair for my mum because she couldn’t walk through the entire Louvre for so many hours without a great deal of pain. Bravely we joined the scrum and inched our way forward. It was terribly unorganized. People in the front who had finished viewing were trying to move to the back while the people in the back were trying to get closer. Truly it’s a trampling death waiting to happen. People were pushing and shoving and cutting in front of my mum’s wheelchair. It was a true mob with no sense of individual relationship to others. Daughter grew so disgusted by the entire thing that she left the scrum. Grimly, I pressed forward. The scrum would not stop me from viewing the Mona Lisa (thereby, I was part of the scrum. Oh, the tangled webs!). My sister was pushing my mum’s wheelchair. My mum’s friend was a little to my right. As we neared the front velvet rope that kept the crowd about ten feet away from the Mona Lisa, the pushing and shoving grew greater. There were two gallery minders standing inside the rope and one of them, with a slightly disgusted look on his face, unclipped it and held it open so my sister could push my mum to the front and away from the awful, awful crowd. They got to view the Mona Lisa from close up, away from the maddening horde!!!! Awesome! I finally got to the front and had 30 seconds to gaze upon portrait. A forest of arms behind me, raised high, the digital clicks of cameras crowding paparazzi buzz and the press of bodies, unsettled longings for things they cannot say–
How quiet she is… how cool her smile. Cool as a deep shadow-dappled pool in a leafy forest…. A pocket of calm. A pocket of still. How remarkable, I thought. How utterly lovely.
We went on to see more paintings and sculptures. The third floor was far less crowded and I was so grateful. I can’t wait to return during the off-season….
It wasn’t only with the Mona Lisa– in front of all the other “famous” paintings people stood beside the artwork so that they could be photographed with it. As if the artwork is a tourist location/moment. Perhaps a little like having a photo taken with Goofy at Disneyland? The engagement was not between art and the viewer, but as site-documentation with placement of self within the frame. I’m not even certain many people actually looked at the painting. Interesting, as Spock would say. I have to confess it made me feel sad. But contexts shift with time and what was is not now, and will be something else in the future. As Octavia E. Butler wrote, “Life is Change.” The paintings are static. Our human culture(s) are not.
I am glad for some things that do not change….
