I’ve been meaning to sign up at Goodreads for ages. For those two of you who’ve been living under this rock with me, Goodreads is a socially-oriented book review and discussion site. An article over at Author Culture on using Goodreads as a promotional tool for authors finally kicked my ass into motion. You can follow my pithy reviews and mutterings at goodreads.com/leahraeder.
From Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the sublime mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
You’ve got to love those reviewers who just don’t get it
“The author should be ashamed of himself! Now Tim Burton is making [this] into a movie? I can hear President Lincoln turning over in his grave right now.”
To which another reviewer smartly rejoined,
“If Lincoln is rolling over in his grave, it’s because he’s a vampire, too!”
I’m a big fan of biology and atheism blog Pharyngula, as well as skeptic communities like the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum, yet in these spaces I can’t help but feel like a stranger in a strange land for my position of agnosticism on The God Question.
As I understand it (and I am open to criticism on this definition), atheism accepts as valid the question, “Does God exist?” and returns a definite answer, “No.”
Agnosticism, conversely, does not recognize that question as valid or meaningful. The question does not refer to something knowable. It is the same as asking, “Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist?” or, “Do snuffleborks muff in the rain?”
In a post on this topic on Dr. John Wilkins’s blog Evolving Thoughts, a commenter claims that agnostics are essentially atheists because they live without consideration to a deity or deities, just like atheists. Of course, this is patently false. I also live without consideration to a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but it doesn’t make me an amonsterist.
Similarly, I refute the idea that atheism merely means, as its etymological roots indicate, “without god(s).” We are each of us without many qualities that are expressed in humanity, but we do not define ourselves by what we lack. To do so grants credence or superiority to that which we are without. I’m female, not amale. Christians are Christians, not amonsterists. These terms are not useful, except in rare cases where the quality of having something (e.g., being moral) is nigh-universally accepted as superior (e.g., to being amoral). Atheism is, by usage, associated with denial of the existence of god(s). Show me an atheist who would answer the question, “Do you believe in god(s)?” with anything but, “No.” That an atheist also lives “without god(s)” is irrelevant; at its core, the term refers to an acknowledgment of The God Question as one that can be definitively answered.
I suppose I have a cockeyed view of this debate. To me, atheism seems like the more conciliatory, ingratiating position: it accepts the theist framing of the question and returns a definite answer, as if the question were valid and testable, thereby making an intellectual concession to theists. Agnosticism, however, rejects the question entirely.
This reminds me of James Morrow’s wildly imaginative trilogy about the death of (the Christian) God: Towing Jehovah
Fascinating:
In a book coming out next year about the psychology of fiction, Professor Keith Oatley describes a piece of research where scientists got people to read while they were in a brain scanner. “When readers were engaged in a story, the researchers found that, at the points in which the story said a protagonist undertook an action, the part of the brain which was activated was the part which the reader himself or herself would use to undertake the action. So, when the story-protagonist pulled a light cord, a region in the frontal lobes of the reader’s brain associated with grasping things was activated.”
This is something I’ve intuitively known, as someone who experiences fiction viscerally: when the prose is immersive, there is a physical resonance in my body to the images and actions described.
From the Guardian’s “A week without books.”
George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has been greenlighted for TV production by HBO. The TV series will be titled after the first book, Game of Thrones. Production begins in June and the series is expected to air next spring.
I’m both excited and apprehensive about this. Martin’s Song gradually became my favorite fantasy series after I first discovered it in the late 1990s. This is fantasy done right, for me: magic and monsters are rare; war is rampant; societies shift around political and social maneuverings; ugliness surrounds isolated moments of beauty. Martin spares no one—beloved characters are ruthlessly killed to serve the plot, and their perverse doings are examined without flinching. Most interestingly, the story is told in large part from the point of view of children, both those from the family Stark and an exiled young girl from a fallen dynasty. Seeing this brutal adult world through their eyes, and watching how they adapt to and grow within it, is fascinating.
The cast for the “Game of Thrones” series looks solid. I’m more worried about the writers. David Benioff’s record is checkered: “Troy” was decent, but “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was mindless pap. In fact, my problem with “Wolverine” was that the script was so poor—risible dialogue, lack of internal logic, etc.—while the choreography of the action and the overall visual spectacle was high-caliber. And Benioff’s “Thrones” partner D.B Weiss is an unknown. This series is standing on shaky writer legs, and Martin apparently will have little to do with it.
Of course I’ll reserve judgment until I see it, but I remain cautiously optimistic.
Genre fiction blog Writer Unboxed is running a contest to select a new columnist, and I’ve tossed my tiara in the ring.
Not only is this an excellent opportunity for exposure—vital to building your audience—but it is particularly interesting to me for its potential to chronicle a writer’s journey to being published, starting in the earliest stages with writing the manuscript.
As I’ve watched my friend Bethany go down this path, and read the sagas of other writers on blogs like Writer Unboxed and on forums like Absolute Write, something has hardened into certainty: if you write well and want to be published, it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.”
Publishing used to be this looming, almost religiously inscrutable mystery in my mind. I equated it with being “good”—if I was good enough, I could get published. It rarely occurred to me that the heap of books I’d bought, read, hated, and ranted about had been vetted by that same process. When I did admit that any verbal diarrhea could be published with enough persistence, I consoled myself (in that self-sabotaging way of which writers are so fond) that my work would have the opposite problem: it would be too literary, too erudite, to publish. Again, I’d ignore books by the likes of Tom Robbins and China Miéville that prove even the most indulgent and overwrought prose can be published, if it’s sandwiched between some semblance of narrative bread.
Not mine, I was sure. Mine would be the proverbial envelope that fell through the cracks, lost behind some civic employee’s desk, only to be discovered years after my death when a cup of coffee tips over.
But that masochistic fantasy isn’t any truer. Well-written—even over-written—prose still makes it past the gates. It might take a little more persistence, and perhaps some forced humility, but it, too, is published.
It wasn’t until I saw my friend go through the process, and discovered the internet communities of business-savvy writers documenting their own experiences, that I realized there was no mystical force field barring me from being published. I could write with as much adverbial antagonism as I wanted and still get into print. The fear—both of failure and success—melted. I realized that it was no longer a matter of “if” for me, but “when.”
Zombie News Network: my boyfriend has been playing the hell out of Plants vs. Zombies, a tower defense game. You fight off zombies invading your lawn using various plants. The zombies send you notes, trying to trick you into offering your brain for dinner. Best part: the ending music video.
Doesn’t quite top the incredible theme song of I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 on XBox Live Arcade, but how do you challenge perfection?
My good friend Bethany, who is working on her debut novel with an agent, shared some thoughts with me on the Great Books quandary. The issue:
Should we strive to write “great” literature, works that have a shot at becoming the New Classics—or should we write what we want to write, whether it’s literary fiction or unabashedly genre?
I think the problem with this problem is that we readily accept the two as mutually exclusive. Why is literary fiction the only style of fiction that is considered “worthy” of Great Book status? Why is genre fiction considered inferior to works which elude genre classification?
It starts with certain assumptions. Assumption #1: there is more bad genre fiction than bad literary fiction. What makes fiction “bad?” To me, fiction is bad if it is deficient in two or more of the following categories:
The majority of genre fiction fails to deliver Fine Prose (examples of what I consider Fine Prose: Virginia Woolf, Gregory Maguire). Assuming competence on behalf of the writer, the prose is serviceable, if workmanlike. Plot and character carry the book.
Genre fiction thus often comes down to that nebulous criterion, “Fulfills its own promises.” What I mean by this can vary: sometimes it means to maintain the quality of writing and deliver on the ideas often exquisitely rendered in the opening pages of a book. Sometimes it means to tie up loose ends and not resort to cheap tricks like deus ex machina to resolve an over-ambitious plot. Conversely, in the case of literary fiction, it often means to live up to the high standard of the language with which it is written, constructing characters and plots that are up to par with the prose.
Is genre fiction then, on the whole, rife with more badness than literary fiction? Actually, literary fiction neatly dodges this comparison, as much of it is deliberately plotless, instead consisting of loosely-chained vignettes, ruminations, and internal monologue. Despite this, literary fiction can be wonderful–witness Virginia Woolf’s largely plotless Mrs. Dalloway, or the meanderings of Joyce, Proust, et al.
But is it wonderful on the whole? No. Fine language does not compensate for the solipsistic navel-gazing dullness, cliché-mongering, and insipid lack of imagination in characterization and plotting that afflicts much modern literary fiction. As a voracious devourer of lit fic, I am the first to admit that the ratio of good to shit is piled high in favor of shit.
Bethany, who has an MFA in Creative Writing, offers her perspective on this:
“The academic writing community is biased toward high literary works, just as the commercial community is biased against them. So, when I was in class, I always felt like I couldn’t write what I really wanted to write.”
She adds that her agent was surprised upon hearing she has an MFA—presumably, most of her agent’s authors come from writing workshops, which are decidedly commercial and non-academic.
Bethany elaborates:
“For a long time, I fought against my inherent need to include romance. This is looked down upon. There is seriously no genre as scorned as the romance genre. But finally, I decided to just give in: this is something that appeals to me, something I like writing. My novels are going to have romance in them and that’s just it.”
Assumption #2: genre elements in fiction undermine its quality. Only the pure snow of genreless literary fiction is worthy for the pissing out of Great Ideas.
But this is changing. Literary fiction is beginning to encompass genres, thanks to genre-straddling pioneers like Neal Stephenson and China Miéville (both writers whom I love to hate: they often violate my rules for plotting and fulfilling one’s own promises, but their language and characterization keep me coming back for more…even if I am starting to feel a bit like a battered wife).
“Does this mean I’m never going to be F. Scott Fitzgerald? Yeah, pretty much. But as much as I idolize certain writing styles and love certain novels—it’s just not who I am as a writer. And I feel like, in spite of all my writer emo—which will always be there—I’m much happier writing the way I want to.
So, for me, I guess it’s about writing the books I want to write, instead of what I feel like I should write. I doubt I will ever write a Great Book. But maybe I’ll be entertaining.”
It saddens me that this is the attitude we’re taught to adopt: if we want to be taken seriously as writers, we have to manufacture literary fiction and carefully avoid any genre pigeonhole, even if it’s not what we genuinely want to write. If, on the other hand, we want to be commercially successful, we should spurn the literary and write for the lowest common denominator, stripping away all art of language and reducing our work to screenplay-like manuscripts. If you want to follow your heart and take a middle path, your future will lie in limbo—maybe you’ll make enough to eat, or maybe you’ll have to mop floors or sit in a cubicle all day.
I admire Bethany’s courage in following her own path, and in resisting the temptation to write something she doesn’t feel passionate about (though she could certainly write fine literary fiction—if she wanted to live on ramen). It’s something I’m still struggling with, though I feel myself being won over by the Follow Your Heart brigade.
The fictionverse needs more genre-busters.
From The Guardian: “Ten rules for writing fiction,” part one and part two. Writers share their personal dos and don’ts in a polarized, contradictory, fascinating hodgepodge, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s ten rules of writing.
I’ve never agreed with Leonard’s guidelines. He advocates stripping away all the essential qualities of a novel, reducing it to a clincal description of action and floating dialogue—in other words, a screenplay—unless you’re an established writer who has mysteriously earned the right to be literary. As Leonard says in summation:
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
Well, that’s great, if you’re striving to not sound like a writer—whatever that means to you. But what about personal style? What about the art of language and the poetry of prose? What about thought and the internal life, that world that no other medium can tap into so directly as the written word?
Venerating the conversational tone above the literary tone is suspect, as well. Conversation isn’t what it used to be. We live in an information-saturated age, increasingly isolated islands of flesh linked to each other wirelessly. If we followed Leonard’s implicit rule that writing shouldn’t sound like writing, but more like natural communication, wouldn’t we end up writing in 140-character chunks of text?
In counterpoint to the style dogma that he and others preach, Hilary Mantel offers an enlightened approach:
“If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.”
Mantel gets it. Her holistic view accepts that fiction is wide enough to incorporate many different styles. It’s a little concerning that so many writers seem to think there exists a Holy Grail, One True Style—these same people wouldn’t dare tell musicians that jazz is the one true music, or painters that Realism is the one true art. Yet writers, curiously, seem befuddled by the myth that prose serves only to communicate events, and that it should be clarified and distilled down to its atomic essence in order to be absolutely transparent, easy to swallow, and unequivocal.
This seems rather McDonaldsian to me. If prose never challenged my palate, fought me as I tried to digest it, sat funny in my stomach and gave me time to ponder just what it was all about and what it was doing inside of me, then I’d stop reading it.
Margaret Atwood (whom Elmore Leonard refers to as a writer who has permission to write like a writer) offers humble suggestions:
“Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.”
And this is truth. As John Scalzi realized when dealing with one-star reviews of his books, you can’t please everyone. Don’t try—it’s painful and difficult to cure yourself of, like inserting things into bodily orifices. And when you try to explain what you were doing, you’ll realize how silly it sounds.
I particularly like Zadie Smith’s tactic of forcing objectivity on yourself:
“Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.”
For a writer with a fragile ego, this might seem dangerous. The point is not to use it to further abuse yourself, but to be able to objectively identify strengths and weaknesses in your writing. Don’t just single out what you already know is weak—though being honest about it is vital—but also recognize the good, the parts that would make an enemy jealous.
Michael Moorcock’s final tip:
“Ignore all proferred rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say.”
And if you are great at what you do, you will still be successful when you ignore the rules.
The New Yorker comments on the latest in a string of literary plagiarism scandals, that of German teen-author Helen Hegemann’s wholesale plagiarism of a novel:
“If a d.j. can thread together twenty different songs and package the end product as her own, why can’t a writer?”
Well, New Yorker, I would say it’s because language is a more discrete and precise method of communication than any other which human beings presently employ, being inextricably linked with narrative and experience; thus products of its art possess an individuality that is unrivaled by any other medium.