myths

[truepenny]

People (namely matociquala and arcaedia) are talking about professionalism and writing and why the two so often part company. In response to matociquala franzeska suggested that the problem lies with a misalignment in the writer's head: namely the confusion between writing as capital-A Art and writing as a job. Which is apparently one of my hobby-horses, because I have Things To Say.

Now, don't get me wrong. Writing is art. I'll man the barricades on that one. But if you want to be published (as most writers do, no matter how ill-equipped they are for it), then writing is also a job and it requires you to treat it as such. Which means you can't get your nose out of joint when editors exercise their inalienable right to reject you, and also means (and slowly but surely we approach my point) that you can't delude yourself about what you're doing.

Which brings us to the Muse, and the terrible, pernicious myth of the Writer as put forth by the Romantics (some of whom at least were not practicing what they preached). I think it's deeply damaging to think of creativity as something that has to be inspired. Sometimes that happens, yes, and it's a fantastic feeling, but as aspects of creativity go, it is profoundly unreliable. The Romantics stuck us with this idea that Real Artists just ooze inspiration, that they can't turn around for the ideas crowding up behind them. But Neil Gaiman shows where that idea leads, in "Calliope," and it's a madman scrawling on the walls with the blood from the remains of his fingers.

And the obverse of this Romantic ideal is the notion that if you have to work at it, you're not a real artist. And its corollary, that working (as in, frex, writing more than one draft) will somehow revoke your membership in the Real Artists Club. Hacks work; artists somehow simply create. This is, of course, complete and utter nonsense. But it's insidious nonsense, and it's hard to get rid of.

Victoria Nelson, in On Writer's Block, makes the incredibly sensible comparison between writers and musicians (pointing out along the way, iirc, that another disservice done writers by the Romantics was to divorce writing from the other arts, as if somehow it was a special kind of creativity, with rules of its own). Musicians, even the geniuses, have to practice--the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall. So why, Nelson says, should we expect writers to have a Get Out of Jail Free card? Why should writers not have to practice? And the answer is, no reason, except that we've been culturally conditioned to think that writers don't work that way.

Like I said, insidious nonsense.

The Romantics also gave us the Tortured Artist, curse them, and we're still not free of that, either. It may be that artists of all stripes deserve special treatment (which is what the myth of the tortured artist is all about), but I think we get special treatment. We can create art. If we're good enough at it, we can be paid for what we have created. We aren't entitled to be paid, or praised, or even noticed; we're entitled to create. Everything else, as far as I'm concerned, is lagniappe.

And the fact that it's incredibly hard work?

Well, you know, if it was easy, it wouldn't be fun.

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Brava! <waves teacup wildly, dodging splashes>

Note that the whole '20s thing of having to get drunk to write flows directly out of this legend -- you can't get inspired unless you're loose and free. I don't hear of composers drinking before they work; perhaps it's that I haven't read enough biographies of composers. Ditto painters; drinking is something you do after the day's work is done.

Something I've been thinking about: do Livejournal postings count as daily writing, or are they a distraction from the hard work? I haven't made up my mind yet. Livejournal is obviously not fiction, but it can (see your comment above) be a form of essay.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think of LJ as part of the ensemble that is my creativity. It's not word-count, but it's writing. And one thing I know (which runs directly counter to the idea that you have to wait for inspiration before you can create) is that the more I write, the more I write. The more time I spend stringing words together, the easier it is to find the right words when I want them. When inspiration does hit, I'm ready for it.

And, after all, it's not like anyone gets allotted only so many words per day. I'm not gonna run out. *g*

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Delurking:

Last spring, when I had my first-ever story publication, the editor sent it back to me saying (in slightly more detail): 1. "Love it! Great story!" 2. "Now, completely rewrite the second half because it meanders, your characters wander off-character and that particular plot twist has been done completely to death." And she was right, though I couldn't really see what she meant until I began rewriting it, and maybe I was just high on the new-writer fumes but rewriting to spec didn't feel like an insult but rather like a fun sort of wordplay challenge. There must be something wrong with me. ;-)

I don't believe in the Tortured Artist or Great Inspiration theories, but that might just be a personal preference for seeing writing as a job, my daily mental calisthenics. It makes it a manageable sort of challenge. If I sit around thinking, "My entire soul must be poured into this story," that's a guaranteed writer's block.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think that writing is a lot more fun if you think of it as craft. So many toys to play with!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And yet, and yet, and yet...

There are writers in the world who do need to be inspired and cannot move an inch otherwise. And among that number are good writers and professional ones.

I do have a personal Muse, and not one who can be relied upon to turn up an appropriately sized shovelful of idea every week; I am glad she tends to provide me more with large-scale stuff, so that I can fill in details constructivley if she doesn't seem to be around at any given time. Or have been able to thus far, anyway.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, if one NEVER got inspired, there would be no point. Nothing to say. And I wasn't trying to say that inspiration doesn't exist or should be squelched or anything of the sort. But, at least for me, inspiration will get me started, but around about the middle to three-quarters mark of any given story, I'd better have something else to take up the slack.

I think my point was maybe that inspiration isn't enough.

[pameladean]

I don't know. I used to get my nose out of joint all the time when I had a day job. I certainly would have been throughly put out had I ever been fired.

It's a bad idea to behave badly or to demonstrate a misplaced sense of entitlement, but I don't see a disjointed nose from time to time as anything but natural to human experience of all kinds.

I think there's a lot of room for human variation in this, really. Whenenver I try to think of writing as my day job, I choke up and get horrible corporate flashbacks. I hated having a day job, and all the little tricks I used to make myself continue to do it just make me sick now. Really.

I have to regard writing as a blend of a holy obligation, an obsession, an incurable medical condition, and a small daily necessity like brushing my teeth, or I can't get on with it at all.

Possibly I'm weird.

I do absolutely agree with you about the necessity of hard work, the lack of any kind of Get out of Jail Free card. And I agree that certain kinds of romanticizing the matter are recipes for both the exasperation of one's friends, editors, and colleagues, and possible creative disaster. But -- for me -- it's not a job. I've had those. They have dress codes, regular paychecks, relentlessly regular and disgustingly early hours, and conditions imposed almost entirely from the outside.

Pamela

Pamela

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I very much see your point there.

For me, thinking of writing as a job--the best job in the world--helps me to get off my ass and write even when I don't feel like. When I'm blocked--and I do get blocked--I write anyway. Even if it's awful. Even if it feels like teh worst thing ever written.

Usually when I go back and look, later, it's not so bad.

Ten thousand ways. *g*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Terminology issue, maybe?

Because I see exactly what you mean with the negative connotations of "job," although those are not connotations I suffer from.

Is "responsibility" a better word? Because I do feel responsible towards my writing, including the issues of self-preservation that were what got me going in the first place.

[infinitemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Yes.

On a side note, when I read of someone's "muse" forcing them to write something, and they are in deadly earnest, I want to take a hammer to their computer and afterwards insist that the little man who lives under my stairs made me want to do it. (But only if they are being po-faced and humourless about it)

Philip Pullman was on Desert Island Discs last year and literally snorked at the idea of writer's block.

Paraphrasing, he said that plumbers don't get plumber's block, they just turn up and work through it, and if it's not their best work, practice will make it better the next time. Writer's block is just a justification for laziness.

I don't have writer's block either. I am genuinely lazy *g*

[skalja.livejournal.com]

Continuing your side note, I tend to get mildly irritated when writers insist that there is no writer's block, full stop, and anyone who claims to be blocked is really just lazy. I mean sometimes that's true, yeah, but to use his metaphor, sometimes plumbers do get stuck as well. So they have to keep on plugging, and maybe end up having to reinstall all the water pipes in the house and it's a huge mess which takes forever. Just because it takes time doesn't mean the plumbing got messed up because the plumber was lazy, though.

The problem is that "writer's block" is such a hopelessly vague term. When I say "writer's block," I mean the complete and utter severance between mental processes and my ability to write, over the long term, such that I'm getting lots of ideas but they become incoherent as soon as I try to put down the words, and my output drops and I keep trying and trying but it's always a mess and I'm hugely discouraged and keep butting my head against this wall from all angles and my life is worthless and then somehow while I'm doing something else something clicks. Then I start thinking about the whole process in a different way and slowly, over a period of months, things balance out inside my head and I can not only write but start making progress as a writer (well, I hope) again.

And then other people say "writer's block" and equate it with laziness. *g*

Of course, I'm definitely lazy, but when that affects my writing I call it...uh, being lazy.

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Re: inspiration - it takes practice to be able to recognize inspiration when it comes. Inspiration or the voice of the Muse is just fancy-talk for seeing, for finding the everyday moments that create richness and depth to fiction.

Re: Livejournal as assistant or distraction - it's both. Putting words together is practice, no matter what or why. Plus we writers can be insular creatures, eschewing social contact, which eventually makes the words dry up. Social contact online isn't quite as good as the real thing, but it's a nice substitute.

That said, last night I wandered aimlessly around on LJ for an hour instead of working on the silly tripe I'm supposed to have finished by the end of the month. So a little self-discipline is necessary.

Re: writing as a job. Are you a hobbyist or a writer? That's the real question. People who dabble in writing in their spare time can and do create. But if you're a writer, be a writer and treat it like your job, because that's what it is. Your work will be better, and you'll produce more of it.

I dabbled for a long time. Truly becoming a writer was both a pleasure and a pain. A pleasure because my "real work" is of much higher quality and is much more satisfying to me. A pain because it means occasionally writing stuff I don't really care for (i.e. my current smutvel) in order to make money and develop my name.

It's a conscious choice, and one each person has to make for themselves. But I can say this - with very few exceptions, only writers who treat it like a job, are willing to work hard and act professionally will get published regularly.

Stephen King addresses this quite brilliantly in "On Writing." He writes every single day, including Christmas and his birthday. That's practice. That's hard work. "If you write every day for ten years, you're going to be a good writer - if you've got any talent to begin with," he says. He said he expected to get flack for that from the literary establishment and he didn't care. "I'm no snob," he says. It's an essay worth reading.

King also wrote that he didn't get good writers who put out one book every five or six years. What were they doing all that time? he asks. Seriously, if you have the strength and the desire and the by-God talent to write, why wouldn't you?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

What were they doing all that time? Polishing.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

To be fair, not all writers work at the same pace. Merely because King can crank out words like a machine (and arguably has been for the last several books--but that's a different post) does not mean that all writers can do so. And I think it's a little disingenuous of King to pretend he doesn't know that.

[larryhammer]

Thing is, the Romantics knew it was work, and never denied that it was work—that it's never a matter of pure inspiration. Just look at the manuscript drafts of Keats, Shelley, Byron, et al. What they were after was to adjust the relative importance of free feeling and craft, compared to their predessors. Later generations have misread and distorted what they said and what was said of them, just as l.g. did of Victorians and their sexual attitudes.

That said, I generally agree. The reducto ad absurdium of the (pseudo-)Romantic ideal of Inpsiration is the Modernists—who can be quite fruitfully treated as fifth generation Romantics, the same way Tennyson and Flaubert can be treated as third generation Romantics.

Whether you call the necessary bit required for writing (or at least writing well) inspirtation of creativity doesn't matter to me. Nor does whether you personify it as a muse. Personally, I do most of the time, because it's a convenient lable, and because of my heavy amateur classics kick. Regardless, when it's not there—whether tired, tapped out, mixed signals, not recognizing what it wants to do, whatever—what I write is at best so unalive as to be useless and at worst isn't at all. I don't write every day, because I can't. If I manage a work-week's worth of writing every week, I consider myself doing well.

---L.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Okay, yes, fair enough. It's not necessarily the Romantics themselves who are at fault (although I still think they have a lot to answer for--but that may be because of my personal dislike for them), but the popular redaction of Romanticism.

Metaphors for the creative process are important. I don't like the Muses myself, but that may be because I know a little too much about the misogyny of the culture that dreamed them up. YMMV to the max. It's gotta be what works for the individual artist (meaning the term broadly, to encompass all creative endeavors), because otherwise it's no use.

My metaphor is a mix of the Great Grimpen Mire and the Dead Marshes, but I freely admit that's probably not for everyone.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm more inclined to see that stereotype arising from WOULD-BE Romantic dilettantes and art students than from the Romantics themselves. My impression of the true writers among them is that they worked very hard at their crafts, and took that work quite seriously. Granted, it certainly helps when you have servants to tend your everyday needs - what I would give for a porter, maid and cook, sometimes! (Then again, I often get my best ideas while doing housework!) But from everything I've seen and read, the image of the tortured author drinking himself sick and puking up ART is the wishful thinking of wannabes.

[franzeska]

I was also thinking specifically of the sort of people who expect that everyone should read (and pay them for) whatever they choose to spew out and particularly those who write novels. (I'm more willing to acknowledge the supremacy of The Idea in microscopically short stories and so on, but a 300 page novel requires more stamina and substance.)

I'm not knocking inspiration, but that produces ideas, not word count. Your butt in your chair in front of your favorite writing equipment for many hours produces actual text.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. A thousand times yes.

kudos

[katwrites.livejournal.com]

I'm new at writing. I started when I was 12, six years ago. I've been earning enough pennies at it to keep myself in pencils and notebooks for four years, and the more I work with words, the more I see how much I have to learn. Thanks for leaving your writerly community transparent, so that I can listen in on your moaning and exultation and your dialog about our craft. Thanks for new words like 'lagniappe' and for introducing me to realm of deeper appreciation for what I read. When I found you and the good people you banter with, I found something I needed in my word-dependent soul as much as I need the clear, earthy smell after a rain.

Re: kudos

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Um. I'm not quite sure whether to say thank you or you're welcome. Both, probably.

Although if you've been earning any kind of money at this for four years, you're not a "new" writer. I made my first sale less than two years ago.

And "new" in the sense of having so much still to learn? Welcome to the boat. Here's a can--start bailing. :)

[vass]

A-MEN.

My pet hate? People assuming that because I'm a singer, I don't have to practise. I'm serious. They think it's a God-given talent, and that that means there's nothing they or I can do to make it better or worse. Like, I make that awful squawking noise every day for fun. Like they tell me "Oh I wish I could sing," and I have to bite my tongue on "So why don't you?"

Uh, well, yes I do sing for fun, but practising isn't often fun, and you have to do it whether it's fun or not. It's usually boring, it disturbs the peace, and people get the idea you're doing it on purpose to annoy them, that really you could get up and perform with no preparation, and you'd be *fine*.

I think I just proved to myself why I'm a better singer than a writer. I'm more willing to stick with it when it isn't fun. Or maybe I need to more.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think I just proved to myself why I'm a better singer than a writer. I'm more willing to stick with it when it isn't fun. Or maybe I need to more.

Yes. I have this whole spiel I won't launch into right now about how you (generic) can tell what's important to you by the degree to which you're self-motivating about it. And, new corollary, the degree to which you're self-motivating even when you'd really rather not.

That's how I figured out that the fiction-writing was the important part and the academic writing not so much. Because the fiction happened without deadlines or assignments or anyone breathing down my neck. But for the academic writing, as soon as there stopped being some outside impetus to MAKE me do it--I didn't. I haven't had an idea for an academic article in five years, as opposed to fifteen short stories I've written in the same time frame. (And that doesn't count the novels and the fragments and the other miscellaneous crap I write.) The need is all over on this side. And I'm glad.

[larryhammer]

I must say, though, I'm glad no one here is ranting against the idea that characters are alive, in the sense of independent (semi)autonomous entities that sometimes do things against the conscious desire of their creators.

---L.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

For me, they had better be semi-autonomous if they are going to work as characters.

When I write a sock-puppet, everybody can tell it's a sock-puppet. :-P

Dammit. They're on to me.