Monday, February 21, 2011

Someone Misunderstands the Purpose of Books

Did you hear an odd sound early this morning, sort of like dead souls weeping mixed with the sound of live people gnashing their teeth and howling? Yeah, me, too. I figured out what caused it.

Let me back up a bit to say that I believe the purpose of art of any kind- visual art, music, writing of all sorts- is to make us think and feel things we might not otherwise think or feel. I sing you a song about despair, and though you are not me, you know exactly how I felt. I paint you a picture of rage, and though you have never raged, you know it in your bones. I write you a book about failure and redemption, and though you have never fallen far enough down to need redemption, you appreciate it greatly.

That's the purpose of art, to open your mind and stuff things in there you didn't already know. Really, if you already knew it, why do you need to learn about it . . . oh, learning. That's right. Why would I want to learn anything, I already know it all? I just want it confirmed, over and over and over again.

You should be able to order books the same way - buffet style, almost. You should be able to call up a variety of authors and put in an order for the book that would suit your fancy to a T. You should be able to pick out the characters down to their nose and hobbies. "Yes, I'd like a strong heroine, but don't touch the feminist mold - she can be pretty if you like but not stunningly pretty - she's a good sort of person but don't bother making her an angel. Let her get into trouble and hurt feelings and learn from them, like any other human being. Oh, and do you think she could write blog posts on the weekend?"

You ought to have the freedom to direct the general plot of the story - leaving room for little surprises and of course a spectacular climax that not even the author saw coming. "It needs to have a mystery lurking beneath an almost benign (but not boring) everydayness - something that will pop out in the middle of the twenty-first chapter and scare the daylights out of me. Not anything gory - just something devastating and unique, something unexpected. And don't constantly hint at it, either. Let me be naturally curious and make my own speculations without the crippling help of the narrator."

And especially, you should be able to regulate the Secular/Religious flow throughout the narrative. "Don't even think about moralizing the ending. Oh, don't let that stop you from putting in true Christians - a good number of them wouldn't hurt, the real, faulty kind that genuinely love and often don't know how. Some unredeemed characters would be nice too. And no cheap shots against true Christianity but have no worries of offending me by pointing out the ridiculousness of empty religion."

Look, author, don't surprise me, don't teach me, don't challenge my presumptions, don't tweak my prejudices, don't show me anything but that I am always, always, always and ever right. And be fucking brilliant doing it. I want a masterpiece of pedestrianism, a work of bland art, cleverly pointless drivel just for me. I want to learn nothing, I want to leave this encounter unchanged, I want you to write the literary equivalent of Saltine crackers and Campbell's chicken soup.

Unfuckingbelievable.

16 comments:

  1. The fact that this blog is named after the first Laura Ingalls Wilder book in her wonderful series is... is... it makes me stabby.

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  2. Well, not named after, but you know what I mean. Clearly an allusion to.

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  3. Good gravy.

    I have a novel sitting around on my computer. I wrote it with the intention of actually doing everything the person in this post wants. I was attempting to create a book that fit all the desired conventions of Christian publishing while still offering characters who weren't just cardboard cutouts and a plot that wasn't just driven by the need to make everything work.

    It just. Didn't. Work.

    I'm seriously considering re-writing the book now. It will, in some ways, be a scene-for-scene rewrite, as the premise works and even after the book has spent five years gathering dust on various hard drives I still love most of the characters. There might even be some places where I just pull from the old version whole-cloth (plus editing since I'd like to think I'm a much better writer now than I was then).

    The book will be different, though. There are two or three scenes that will happen, but end up with completely different conclusions. There will be conversations that were left unexplored the first time because they took the characters to places they weren't allowed to go. In the end, if I do this, the book will be way better.

    It just won't be something that can be sold at the Family Christian Stores location down the street.

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  4. If LaHaye and Jenkins have taught us anything, Geds, it's that reading after the first draft is no way to get books written.

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  5. To summarize what Geds just said: ye gods, this person has no idea how stories actually get written, does she? 'Cause what she's laid out there isn't a description of a story. It's just a set of specs that seem designed to cripple any story that's actually trying to get out.

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  6. My mother used to say things like, "[This character] just will not let me get anywhere . . . oh, he wouldn't do that, would he?"

    You should plan out books in advance, but no book ends up the way it starts out. There is growth and learning in the writing process itself, that's where the growth and learning in reading comes from.

    It's not like building a bridge, in which growth and learning leads to cars flung into a ravine.

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  7. Translation: "Why doesn't anyone write horrible books, the way I would write them?"

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  8. I'm sorry, I'm just totally hung up on this person's utter unworthiness of using a Laura Ingalls Wilder allusion in naming her blog. Just for feminism as a jumping-off point (because there are so! many! more! points! one could make), if she doesn't want a heroine with feminist leanings, then I'm not sure what she's doing, apparently loving LIW. Both Caroline and Laura were equals in their marriages. (Their literary marriages, anyway; I don't know as much about LIW and her mother off the page.) Caroline and Charles spend pretty much every book of the series instilling the most "you need to pull your weight intellectually and physically" principles in their daughters. I am just flabbergasted at how this person must be reading Laura Ingalls Wilder. Flabbergasted.

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  9. Fundies never, ever, ever seem to get the essential feminism of either LIW or Jane Austen. Keep in mind, we're talking about people who think Stephen Colbert is serious. Anything below the surface is beyond them.

    It's hella frustrating.

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  10. "You should be able to call up a variety of authors and put in an order for the book that would suit your fancy to a T. You should be able to pick out the characters down to their nose and hobbies."

    Okay, if you want to do this then you shouldn't be reading books: you should be learning how to write them.

    And even that doesn't always work. Most of my current setting ideas involve 'supernatural' phenomena (okay, at least one is explicitly supernatural, the rest usually have a higher explanation that involves 7th dimensional physics and quantum. Lots and lots of quantum), and they often include skeptical characters. One of them even has the atheist meeting actual gods (she doesn't take it well). Effectively, that's me writing a story in which I prove my own skepticism wrong.

    As an infrequent producer of lame-ass fiction, and a less-infrequent consumer of less-lame-ass fiction, I call bullshit on that blog. The okay suggestions all seem to be lifted from a Literary-101 class, and the bad ones are really, really contradictory. "I want a strong female lead, but not a feminist." So, what, a strong woman who doesn't believe women are as capable as men? "Criticise religon, but not mine." Huh?

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  11. Quasar: "I want a strong female lead, but not a feminist." So, what, a strong woman who doesn't believe women are as capable as men?

    I dunno. Ever read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I'd say that Lisbeth is a strong woman who isn't a feminist. It is possible to be individually strong, or at least individually strong-willed, without then attempting to make a political point about the whole thing.

    Of course I strongly suspect that the person who wants this custom-made book wouldn't be calling Steig Larson for her desires even if he were still alive...

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  12. Also, does this woman have any idea how much it would cost to get a book to her stupid specifications? The writing alone would take a minimum of one month. If you want the author to, y'know, re-read and edit/re-write the whole thing then that's a minimum of another month or two for a decent job of it. If the person wants, say, a real editor to do the editing process it would certainly take two or three months to make everything happen.

    Anyway, I guess my point is this: if crazy internet lady wants to send me $30K to write and edit a shitty book, she can go right ahead and do that. Of course a part of that $30K would go to pay whoever was brought on to edit that puppy. Anyone out there want $10K for a couple months worth of copyedit work? I'll cut you in on the understanding that you only have to do as half-assed a job as I have to do. And you're required to accept, "The dipshit who hired me wants it this way," as a response to any edit you make to things in the book that don't make a lick of sense.

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  13. I'd say that Lisbeth is a strong woman who isn't a feminist. It is possible to be individually strong, or at least individually strong-willed, without then attempting to make a political point about the whole thing.

    Sorry, I was using the fundyefinition of "feminist", namely "every woman who isn't a submissive-housewife/submissive-housewife-in-waiting", as opposed to a reference to the political movement. I haven't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so I can't really comment.

    "Anyone out there want $10K for a couple months worth of copyedit work? I'll cut you in on the understanding that you only have to do as half-assed a job as I have to do. And you're required to accept, "The dipshit who hired me wants it this way," as a response to any edit you make to things in the book that don't make a lick of sense."

    I'd go for that, on the proviso that I'm allowed to use the same excuse when you ask me why the edited copy is even worse than the first-draft.

    She'd never pay a liberal author, though. You'd have to approach her under an assumed name, something like "Jeb Nixon McChristyTits."

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  14. this person could easily realise that warped dream by becoming a hollywood producer. that's exactly how the sad denizens of screenwriter hell work.

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  15. Hey, Geds, *I'D* do it - and i even almost have the "credentials" to do it [two German classes, a random "history of journalism" and an internship between me and my BA/BS in poli-sci/journalism] plus, it'd be good "experience" if i'm ever allowed to work again, PLUS i've been editing for varioous friends.


    back to the point;
    anyone else notice that ALL the things that she says "We now have" are things that A) have been around forever and B) things people have been fighting to KEEP AROUND?
    like tailors and dressmakers - almost GONE because of industrialization, but if you can AFFORD one, you can find one. personalized service in selecting candy - go to Godiva. or other "chocolate stores"

    just - JESUS lady, pay attention to LIFE


    ALSO: the thing she wants? IT ALSO ALREADY EXISTS!!!
    there's an entire book industry, based around "boilerplates" and dropping in the characters the customer wants [my dad bought my step-mom one of these.] there are several broad categories - there's "romance" and "science fiction" and "fantasy" and "mystery" and "thriller". within each of these, there's about 20 boilerplate "plots" to choose from. you pick your genre, you pick your "plot", and you send in the "bio" they ask for [names, physical characteristics, top 3 hobbies, job. and then each asks for different things - romance wants specifics on the lingere you wear, sci-fi wants to know what planet you'll live on, etc etc etc]

    the company plugs your info into the places it goes, and then prints and ships it to you.

    a paperback is "only" about $40 [which IS actually cheap, considering HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO PRINT A SINGLE BOOK!]


    and it sounds like EXACTLY the wannabe LIW wants.




    i keep being told that "OF COURSE Laura Ingalls Wilder wasn't a feminist; she TOLD Manny that she didn't care about voting!"
    except... that's NOT what it's about. women wanted the vote because they wanted the things that came WITH it - like Laura informing Manny that she would NOT "Vow to Obey". THAT was feminist!!!! just, JFC, i don't even know if these people KNOW WHAT WORDS *MEAN*

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  16. Hey PF!

    Here's some new material for you!

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-mcmillan/why-youre-not-married_b_822088.html

    ReplyDelete

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