Laura Kinsale emailed us her comment regarding our discussion on “author as novel” and the encouraged symbiosis between the two, and said that it might make for a good blog post to provide another point of view on our debate about accountability, author-as-novel, and close connections between author, book, self, and readership.
Well, here’s my take on it.
Writing is not a service industry, because writing is an art. When I sit down to write, I am not thinking of my readers. I am thinking of the words, the story, the characters, the way it all goes together, the why and where it goes, this golden ball with the golden string unraveling and tangling and confusing me and frustrating me and delighting me.
Guess what readers. It’s not about you at all. It’s not about me either, except that in some unknown way it’s born of me and nurtured and driven by me. The old cliché about books being your children is true. They are -of- you, but you do not control them.
It’s about the writing. It’s about the world and story there, and sometimes you want it so badly to be something else and you try and you try and you cannot make it go that way. And you want to beat your head against the wall and scream. And nothing you do will make it what you dream that it can be. As good as you wanted it to be.
Like children, books.
So then it goes out there, whatever you made of it, and it’s a commodity. People say what they want to say, in whatever way they want to say it, because it’s no skin off their back. And they get really really pissed off if they spent their money and they didn’t like what they got. So now it’s corporate America and readers “voting with their wallets” and shut up if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, be a professional, suck-up to readers, always be polite, who-do-you-think-you-are, some kind of diva? Some kind of artiste? Be truthful to the depth of your heart in your work, but in your public persona, lie lie lie because otherwise you’re just another wuss who can’t take it. Learn to sell yourself, get a blog, get a website, that’s the future, son, it’s all out there, Wall Street, big money…hey it’s just a buncha damn words, what’s your problem? We can always find another writer, they’re a dime a dozen.
A book is a magic thing. It has a life of its own. Do you doubt it, in the small hours of the night when you sit up in bed reading and reading, living in a world you never made, unable to bear to leave it until the last page closes and it vanishes into thin air?
Do you think it is any different for me when I write it? It is magic, but so fragile. So hard to find and easy to lose.
Now there’s this internet, another magic thing with a life of its own, a million voices roaring whispering screaming over your shoulder into the quiet place where the stories come from. You can either shut it out entirely or try to open one tiny window and hope you aren’t washed away in the flood. It’s foolish to open the window, frankly. You do that when you’re stuck with no magic at hand, and you’re bored and discouraged and fretful but you have to stay at the computer just-in-case. It’s like having a bottle of liquor in the drawer.
I always loved books by certain authors. I loved the words, the way they were put together…“Language is like shot silk; so much depends on the angle at which it is held.” John Fowles wrote that in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and it awed me when I read it, the simple perfection of that image, the sound of it, and the way it fit into the story that he told. I used to love his books so much that I longed to write to him, like you’d write to a lover, as if I knew him and he must know me, and we could have long conversations and understand one another.
Lately I read a biography of him, and he was a silly mess. He was just a man, and did some things I couldn’t respect, but as an author myself I understand much better now that his books were not him. He lived in two lives, his real one, common and a little shoddy and full of all the
aches and missteps and selfishness and worries that we all bear, and in another one, a world that he created with words. They intersected but they are not the same.One is living, one is like a living dream, both created piece by piece, moment by moment, step by step and keystroke by keystroke, blood sweat and tears and run to the grocery store and by the bank before you walk the dog.
All the storm and fury of the internet and readers and critics and sales figures is nothing. It’s not out there. It’s in here. If I have to protect it from readers, I will protect it, viciously. That may be by thinking you are all a bunch of clueless babbling idiots, no personal offense. No more than you want to hear my personal woes do I want to know what your ten million conflicting opinions are.
I serve a different master. I serve this art, whether you buy it or not. I began to write because I loved to write. That is still the only way.
I as a person deserve no particular respect above the average. But the work that I do, the art itself which has been with us and served us and consoled us and given us wonder and joy and some little modicum of understanding here and there—that art deserves respect. From me, from
readers, from publishers. We should all give it the best that we have.That’s my take. Your mileage may vary.
Okies, I’m back from a short trip around the blogosphere and I need to make one last clarification, then I’m gonna sit on my hands. But I’ll post it here because I just don’t want this kind of misreading to get going and turn into an urban legend or something.
My OP is NOT about reviews, it’s not about whether readers have a right to voice their opinions, or should or shouldn’t comment or how polite or nice they should be about it. C’mon.
Of course readers can say anything they like about any given book. Jeez, talk about overreacting and defensive, lol, everything an author writes about the process is not secretly geared to shutting down readers’ comments. Say the meanest, cattiest, most vicious durn things you want to say, who am I to stop you? I’ve lived with that for *mumble mumble* decades, from the first anonymous poison pen letter I got in the mail telling me that UNCERTAIN MAGIC was the most horrible book ever published and should be burned. No reason, no name, no return address. You think the internet is bad, this person had my address.
My post is centrally about this idea of books as a consumer commodity, a service industry, and why I don’t think that’s what they are—or at least, that’s not all of what they are, not in my experience.
I realized that I did use the word “ask” in my later comments, in terms of how I’d hope a reader or reviewer would publicly critique any given book, but that’s just MHO. It is by no means a clarion call to throw all readers off the internet and take away your keyboards so you can never snark again.
LOL, can I have a Big Mac?
My OP is NOT about reviews, it’s not about whether readers have a right to voice their opinions, or should or shouldn’t comment or how polite or nice they should be about it. C’mon.
Hmmm, now I’m feeling paranoid—is this in response to that last loooong comment of mine? Because I want you to know that I didn’t think you were trying to make that point at all. I pretty much agreeed with much of what you said.
Of course readers can say anything they like about any given book. Jeez, talk about overreacting and defensive, lol, everything an author writes about the process is not secretly geared to shutting down readers’ comments.
I’m wondering which post you’re reacting to, now—I’m re-reading all these comments, and I’m having a hard time figuring out which comment/commenter you’re addressing.
Apologies Candy, not your posts here. Just a couple of blog posts elsewhere. And you know how these things go, someone reads this in one place, and then goes and comments on it somewhere else, and the next thing you know it’s gospel truth on the net.
So I just wanted to make all that clear! Thanks! No upset, tho I probably sounded a bit exasperated; I guess I was when I posted.
I suppose it is part of the same thing in a way, isn’t it? People could say, well they have a right to interpret my OP any way they like, but then again I just have to say that wasn’t what I meant, or what I said.
Jorrie – I did not believe that LK was attacking me or the blog. I was just trying to stick up for the reader in this debate.
My post is centrally about this idea of books as a consumer commodity, a service industry, and why I don’t think that’s what they are—or at least, that’s not all of what they are, not in my experience.
I’m not sure I agree with this. Your book may not have been originally written with the consumer in mind, as per your retelling of your process, but a publisher paid you money for that book, to shine and polish it.
At that point it became a consumer commodity, because the publisher didn’t buy it so it could look great on the shelf, they bought it to attract the consumer to buy, to read, to spread the word of their love of the book to more consumers. To make the publisher money. They didn’t pay you for something they intended simply to have, as many patrons of the arts do, they paid you for something they want to profit on. And to profit, they need consumers. To continue to profit, they need the consumers to be happy. So your original intent may not have been to have the book be a consumer commodity, but once you signed the publisher’s contract, I believe that’s what it became.
So perhaps your book started out as your art, but once you sold it, it became less for you and more for the consumer. At that point of sale, assuming publisher profit is the goal, the publisher wants the best product possible for the consumer, so they remain happy and come back for more and tell their friends to go, buy, love the book. That is reminiscent of service industry to me.
Hmm…re-reading my response, I don’t think I communicated well that the book can still be considered art, during the creative process, during the editing process, and once published but my point is that it is also a consumer commodity and yes, part of the service industry. I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive from one another, and fear that to think so is a fallacy which can result in the “author/reader disconnect” being bandied about the internet.
So, basically: a reader shouldn’t come between an author and her book, and the author shouldn’t come between the book and its reader? Is this what everyone’s agreeing on?
To take the discussion back a step: I like the child analogy because it discribes something that is produced by you, but something that you have only a limited control over how it makes it’s way through the world! I don’t, however, think that books grow up and sit in the garage smoking pot (at least I hope not. their paper for God sake. They’ll burn!)
Actually on the whole, I’m fairly pragmatic about the whole process of writing where it concerns me. I’m not an artist so much as masocist pushing shit up hill with my nose. Yes, if someone reads my work and doesn’t like it, i get a little upset and start worry. I want to know what they didn’t like and how I could make it better. Maybe it was because I wasn’t breast fed as a child, or perhaps because I’m just a needy whiny bitch, but either way, I like my work to be liked. i can cope if you don’t of course, but…. Also I don’t beleive I have a muse (Or if i do it’s a fat little cherub that spends to much time eating out of the fridge) and I don’t literally think of my books as my children. If they were I’d be in jail for criminal neglect!
And I think that the term art is loaded. It implys a value judgement. This is good, this art. This is crap, this is only commercial art. Books are books. We read them, enjoy them (sometimes) and waste our money on them. Do we need to see this habit justified by calling it art? is the art v’s Commercial art argument really about snobbery?
And If we are agreeing that writers and readers should inhabit seperate universes as Maili suggests, can I jump ship and become a reader again. Please. If I ask real nicely?
But hay I’ve had a bad day and am feeling a little more cynical than normal. I’m sure my wally optimnist will be back and transmitting some time tomorrow!
There’s no doubt I’d like to write what people want to read all the time. The problem is, it doesn’t work.
I can say to myself “People want Chick Lit” and I can even sit down to write it. But _I_ don’t like it.
I can tell myself “people don’t like poverty, disease or unfairness in their historical romances . . . think costume drama” and I get so bored trying to write what people want that I can’t drag myself to the computer.
Each book has its own spark of life. Screwing with the story to make it more palatable or marketable seems to make it still born.
So I figure people who read books ‘takes their chances’. I always have. I’ve read thousands of books, some that have scarred me for life. There are writers I won’t read again—but I don’t blame them for the money I wasted on their book. God knows, they probably wrote the best book they could.
(Lolita . . . yeah, its a classic. Yeah, its got that cool unreliable narrator. It took me a year to get over that book. Ick.)
I also wanted to mention . . . I really don’t like it when I can tell a writer has fit his book to the market. Its lame when I read a subplot that has nothing to do with the main plot and is clearly an add-on. Its bizarre when a book should be over 40 pages before the author stopped writing. Its irritating when a character is vanilla-fied.
I just want to know the story the author wanted to tell me. I want them to tell it the best they can. If they do that, I got my money’s worth.
You know, there’s so much about this argument that doesn’t make sense to me. And, yes, I’m generally obtuse, so that could be the problem. But I honestly don’t know a) what we’re arguing about or b) why we’re arguing about it.
It takes two to tango. You can write and write for yourself all you want, the process simply isn’t complete until someone reads it. Be it your best friend or hundreds of thousands of faceless strangers, you still need at least one reader.
A writer cannot interfere in the reader’s experience unless the reader seeks her out. In which case the reader has no one to blame but herself. It’s not like you’re gonna just flip through the channels and see us jumping up and down acting like a lunatic on Oprah. Yes, some of us may get all pissy on internet boards where you lurk, but the act of reading is not passive. If someone starts to act stupid, you can easily go somewhere else. She’s only human, and everybody’s stupid sometimes. At this moment, this post might be a prime example of that. 😉
(That said, dear GOD authors PLEASE don’t defend your books on the internet. Bitch to your friends and have a glass of wine, but people are entitled to their damn opinions and you jumping in all pissy just dampens conversation. Unless they say something that is factually incorrect – like that you plagiarised, or that you lead small children into gingerbread houses so you can cook and eat them – then LET. IT. GO. Yargh.)
This works both ways. An author can easily avoid reader white noise. We have to seek it out, too. And we do. We check Amazon, we read reviews, we chat with readers at book signings and events, etc. However, for the most part, we are completely capable of shutting it out entirely, or at the very least, controlling the volume. We are not victims of reader opinion. We either seek it out or we don’t. If we get smacked in the face while seeking it out well… they certainly didn’t come looking for us, did they?
(Speaking of which: Robin – darling, sweetheart, you do not have to feel bad if you don’t like my book. You are not responsible for how I feel about your experience. Yes, I want you to enjoy it, I thank you for buying it, and I hope it’s a good experience for you. But if it isn’t, that’s not your responsibility. You take on too much responsibility in this writer/reader relationship. Let it go. It’s not your job to protect our fragile feelings. If our feelings are fragile, we’re in the wrong line of business, and that is certainly not your fault.)
So, since we all each individually are in complete control of the author-reader relationship… what is all this discussion about?
Oh. Respecting the art. Another argument about which I am also horribly obtuse is the respect thing. I don’t demand respect from anybody for anything I do. If I do it well, I’ll get respect from the people who read me. If I don’t, I won’t. The people who don’t read me (aka, the mainstream literary world, Curtis Sittenfeld) don’t matter because whatever they have to say about me is just so much blathering because they haven’t read me. My readers are the people who matter, because they know of what they speak. Some literary wanker who judges me because my books are pink or have a happy ending or involve s-e-x is not my concern, because he knows nothing about me. The people who read me? They are my concern.
As far as a book not being a burger – yes, you’re all right. It’s not a burger. And in order for me to serve my reader, I need to be the story’s bitch, bottom line. So, if a reader says one thing and my story says another, I go with story all the time. But, the thing is, the really good readers, the smart critics, they know story. They may not study it consciously, but they know what works and what doesn’t, and if something doesn’t work, then I didn’t serve story so well, did I? So I rarely find that story conflicts with the good feedback. But if it does, crack that whip – bottom line, I’m story’s bitch.
Which is the trailer park way of saying what Laura did about following her muse. It just doesn’t interfere with my process to hear what people have to say, so I do it. For her, it seems to, so she doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter if someone thinks we’re artists or waitresses. We provide story, and God willing and the creek don’t rise people will keep coming to us for it. If everyone does her part, no one gets hurt. So all this nattering about what is art and what deserves respect and etcetera makes no sense to me whatsoever. I just don’t see how it matters if Candy (for example) thinks I’m an artist or not. What matters is, did I write a story that fulfilled its promise to her as a reader?
And that’s the way I see it. Not that any of you asked… 🙂
I don’t think I’ve made myself clear.
Respectfully—“It takes two to tango” is IMHO _completely_ inaccurate when it comes to writing.
Writing takes _one_ to tango. The writer. The writer sees pictures, hears voices, has feelings, writes the best story they can. They take care mastering their craft and developing their voice because those things make writing more fun. The first “reader” of a book is the writer who wrote it.
When it comes to selling books, it takes thousands to tango.
On a really good day, the externalized dream/nightmare of a writer makes that writer a few bucks because folks like what they wrote.
But . . .
Interview with a Vampire wasn’t written to make money. It was written cause that woman’s child died and she wished she was dead too. She put into that book a host of metaphors:
* The lover who says you have to get over becoming the living dead.
* The “half life” of eating rats and worse which seems honorable when compared to killing again? Why love anyone ever again? Why have another child. Why go on? Dying is very hard, but living with yourself for having a kid and letting them die of a trully horrible disease is almost as hard.
* The dream child trapped forever in a half life. Fearful, angry, wanting to grow up and dead before their time.
* The mother who _does_ get to die with that child.
Ad infinitem.
Its not about the reader for many, many writers. When you read their books, you are coming to their world. You are free to hate that world. You are free to love it. But that world was not created for you or with you in mind. To the writer, the people in those books are as real as they people they knew in highschool. They are more real than 99.9% of readers will ever be.
Some writers do “write for the money”. I write technical training material for the money. Books and scripts I write for the same reason I breathe. I have to.
Its 4:16 so I’m punchy. Sorry if I sound cross. I’m not. I’m just emphatic. Its actually more interesting to read books (IMHO) when they are the best work a writer can do undiluted with any fear of what a reader might think.
Andreya wrote:
No problem, punkin. You have to work really hard to offend me. And disagreement is fun for me. It makes me either back up my argument or shut up. It helps me hone what I really think about things. It’s all good.
That said, I do believe that writers need readers to complete the process. One or many, it doesn’t matter. But the reader needs to finish it. That’s just how I see it. If you see it differently, that’s cool.
And sure, Anne Rice came to the page to talk about things that have nothing to do with her readers. So do I. I don’t come to the page thinking, “What do my readers want me to write?” I come to it thinking, “How can I have the most possible fun with this story?” Then as I write, I try to write to the best of my abilities. If there were weaknesses in earlier books, I try to work on whatever skill I was lacking. But there is a point in the process where, yeah, I consider whether what I’m giving the readers is worthy of them. My goal is to give them the best story I can, because that’s what makes it fun for me, and that’s what they want. It’s a win/win.
And, oh, man, are you ever right about not writing to the market. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the fact that readers matter, that they are an active part of the whole process, whether we as writers choose to think of them or not. Yes, you have to write what matters to you, write the story you’re called to tell. If you’re writing to story, if you’re doing it right, you can do that and please the readers. They’re not mutually exclusive. S’all I’m saying.
“Readers.”
So who is your reader?
That’s one question. That could be, yourself, your best friend, etc. That’s fine; it’s not really a problem. Sure you write to communicate; the words mean something. The craft itself is in how those words communicate. In that sense, the reader is taken into account, as to the words you choose to convey the setting, characters and story. Otherwise you’d paint or play an instrument to convey this “thing,” this feeling. But as a writer, you choose words.
Who are your readers?
In the plural. Now we are into a wholly different mechanic. Who are these “readers?” There are way too many of them to possibly please them all, or even communicate with; that’s just common sense. So which ones do you target your story to? Romance readers? What if your story is about an erotic romantic threesome, and romance readers “don’t like” threesomes? (As I’m told over on AAR.) Or rather, many do, and many don’t. Then how do you move your story? Do you sit there writing and worrying about the ones who won’t like it? Do you piss about the awards you’ll never win because “some” readers won’t like your stuff? That you’ll never be “a success” because you know you aren’t writing to market? But what if the next big market IS for threesomes, but nobody knows it yet? The only way that market ever happens is because some writer somewhere said THE HELL WITH READERS AND WHAT THEY LIKE, -this- is the book I am going to write.
And they write an erotic romance about a threesome, and they write it so well and so brilliantly that it just blows “the market” away.
That’s why it’s not about readers. That’s why it’s not a service industry. That’s why it is an art.
Some of you guys are getting all tangled up in the words “art” and “respect.” Don’t drag in all that baggage about authority and pleasing and who’s in power and who gets to say something is valuable.
Those are just the words I used for the dynamic that I’m talking about. For art, I mean the dynamic that a writer experiences when he or she is gifted with whatever it is that comes in the wee hours and tells you what to write.
Any writer knows that it isn’t some white shaft of light that you just sit there waiting for. It comes through the sweat work and out of the sweat work. If you aren’t sitting there working, in the truest sense, choosing words and thinking and editing and creeping along, then it will never happen. But it does happen.
It’s happened to me, and to many other writers. My best work comes out of that, and I don’t even take credit for it, because I can’t produce it on demand, it’s just there or it’s not. Call that art, call it a muse, call it cream gravy. It doesn’t matter.
I realize this is a humbling thing both for readers and writers. To realize that, like in a marriage, what you want, what you think you deserve, may not be what you get. And that no matter how much therapy you pay for, how many reader surveys you run, how much you think of your “reader” and “the market” and what that man wants (what DO men want??) that you don’t get to it through those means.
It comes as a gift. The gift comes first to the writer, not to the readers. And the writer takes it and runs with it or sits there shaking in her boots and is too scared of the market and the readers to take it. It happens.
Every single book that ever really rocked the market was something new and strange and wonderful and individual. Maybe it was simple, even clunky in execution, but there was something in it and about that that sang so loud everybody could hear it for miles. Knock-offs don’t sing that kind of solo. Knock-offs sing the background chorus. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when it’s all background chorus, then “the market” starts complaining about how blah and pedestrian and boring it all is. And they wait…
What they wait for is the art, and unless one of them happens to sit down and start writing it themselves, which has happened many and many a time, then they just have to wait.
That’s why it’s not a service industry. 😉 Readers don’t control it. Writers don’t control it. It’s not in service to anybody. We are in service to it.
It comes or it doesn’t.
Again, beautifully written and wonderful advice for writers to keep in mind. Thank you, Ms. Kinsale.
One quick bit about fine art vs. commercial art, and art vs. entertainment: I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t think I’m placing much of a value judgment on these categories. Commercial art can be excellent, whereas a lot of fine art is just plain shitty, and both can serve as entertainment, and the lines can get pretty fucking blurry all the way around, anyway. There seems to be a tendency for people to think fine art = good, commercial art = bad, but I don’t think it’s so. Commercial art is different from fine art, but it’s not necessarily inferior.
“The only way that market ever happens is because some writer somewhere said THE HELL WITH READERS AND WHAT THEY LIKE, -this- is the book I am going to write.”
Ms. Kinsale, I don’t recommend you write a book with a hero who has a stroke and is locked in a madhouse. That doesn’t sound like a romance at all. Who will want to read about that? No one, that’s who.
While I’m at it, I really don’t recommend that you write books set in a sort of alternate-medieval period. I mean, it isn’t a historical, and it isn’t a fantasy, per se. Readers will just be downright confused and we can’t market it. Oh, and for God’s sake, under no circumstances should you write any of it in old English or (shudder) iambic pentameter.
Also, you shouldn’t have a “sequel” (Shadowheart) come out so long after the first book. Readers just won’t remember any of the first book. This will turn them right off.
As a huge fan, I for one am so, so, so happy you never listen. Thank you for never listening to anyone.
Abby
There seems to be a tendency for people to think fine art = good, commercial art = bad, but I don’t think it’s so. Commercial art is different from fine art, but it’s not necessarily inferior.
And, as a number of posters have pointed out, what was once considered commercial art (Dickens, for example) can later land in the fine art category.
I think the tension over the *type* of art we’re talking about is related to the author/reader issue and that both, really, are false dichotomies. If an author views his/her own work as fine art, then maybe that’s enough to make it so for THEM, even if a reader finds it to be ‘merely’ commercial art. Same with a reader finding something to be fine art against the opinion of an author or other readers. The difficulty comes exactly from the fact that categorization is also a mode of discrimination (not in an equal protection or Title VII kind of way, but in the general ‘establishing a difference’ kind of way). And how those categories are composed and populated is driven by external judgments. As those judgments change, so do the categories and the nominees.
Now, as for the reader/author tension (do I write for a reader or don’t I), again, I think the tension comes from a sense of anxiety over how a work will be judged and who will do the judging. Anyone who writes, ANYONE, is both writer and reader during the process of composition, and in that sense, the universe of inside and outside is created by the act of writing. However, this doesn’t, IMO, mean that the writer writes for a specific someone or a set of specific someones or according to expectations that she, as the writer, feels bound to artificially import into her process or her writing. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that writing occurs without some sense of reading. I just think it has to do with how one experiences that process—consciously and unconsciously—and how the writer perceives that insider/outsider tension. There is, IMO, a difference between awareness of the fact that someone will be reading what you write and a conscious attempt to write to their expectations (whatever they may be). However, I’m not sure the *effect* is different (a distinction without difference?). Because, really, whenever one writes, even for a supposed audience, isn’t that writer still just projecting her OWN version of the audience’s expectations onto her work and thus ultimately holding a conversation with herself in both the guise of author and reader?
I know probably none of that made sense, so I’ll try to boil it down. A writer who sees herself as writing for no one but herself functions as both writer and reader, insider and outsider. A writer who thinks she’s writing for someone else must, necessarily, translate her own idea of what said reader’s expectations are onto the text, making her, again, both writer and reader (even if she thinks she’s writing for an audience, she’s inventing the audience in the process of writing, and therefore still writing to herself). This second phenomenon is best revealed, IMO, when an author is baffled when some readers don’t read her book the way she thought they would—well, of course! She was *assuming* their expectations or at the very least *translating* them herself.
So, in the end, it’s a false opposition, because the writer can never truly know the reader’s expectations and therefore meet them. She is writing to a reader, though—herself. How she pictures that, whether it’s in the guise of lots of bowing fans or one shy reader in the corner of the library or as the person in front of the comuter doesn’t matter because in the end it’s still the same process, IMO.
Hear, hear. That’s why I have such a high regard for really good commercial art. Not only does it cater to clients, but it’s done so well it knocks people off their feet.
Ms. Kinsale said: “Every single book that ever really rocked the market was something new and strange and wonderful and individual. Maybe it was simple, even clunky in execution, but there was something in it and about that that sang so loud everybody could hear it for miles. Knock-offs don’t sing that kind of solo. Knock-offs sing the background chorus. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when it’s all background chorus, then “the market†starts complaining about how blah and pedestrian and boring it all is. And they wait…
To that I say, Amen, amen, amen.
“What they wait for is the art, and unless one of them happens to sit down and start writing it themselves, which has happened many and many a time, then they just have to wait.
That’s why it’s not a service industry. 😉 Readers don’t control it. Writers don’t control it. It’s not in service to anybody. We are in service to it.â€
Perhaps it would help to clarify if the “it” Ms. Kinsale is talking about was referred to as imagination. It would, I think, help to put aside the fine art versus commercial art thing.
Readers can not and perhaps should not, control the unpredictable wanderings of a writer’s imagination.
The imagination is not a service industry.
And I would guess that no one really wants the kind of “drive-thru” product that such a thing implies. “Yes, I’ll take a historical romance, extra virgin heroine, blond hero, evil step-mother, with a side of happily ever after. Yes, I’d like that super sized.”
Ms. Kinsale is absolute correct: those extra-special, super-duper, mega-deluxe favorite “keepers” on our bookshelves are there because we admire the nooks, crannies, twists, and wild turns of the imagination behind it.
What if your story is about an erotic romantic threesome, and romance readers “don’t like†threesomes? (As I’m told over on AAR.) Or rather, many do, and many don’t. Then how do you move your story? Do you sit there writing and worrying about the ones who won’t like it? Do you piss about the awards you’ll never win because “some†readers won’t like your stuff?
Well, first of all, the folks over on AAR need to get out more. 😉 Next, I “move my story” by writing the best characters and plot I know how for the readership who DO like threesomes, who were the only folks who were going to buy my story in the first place, given what I know about marketing.
That’s why it’s not about readers. That’s why it’s not a service industry. That’s why it is an art.
With all due respect—and believe me, Ms. Kinsale, you have my UNDYING respect—for me, it’s still about the readers. Because for me, that communication is the juice. And when I send my work to my critique partners, and they GET IT? They love the parts I slaved over? They laugh at the parts I think are funny, and are aroused by the parts I think are hot? There’s no better feeling in the world.
Yes. Better than the writing of it. Because that’s COMMUNICATION. That’s STORYTELLING. That finishes the act for me. To me, writing something and never letting anyone else read it is like the build-up without the climax. The more folks who read, the better, and a New York contract? Multiple orgasms, baby.
I don’t know about art versus service. I started out as an actress, so maybe I only know about entertainment. A whore for the spotlight—you know how that goes. :p
I can respect a different process. What I can’t respect (and I’m not suggesting you necessarily said this) is that somehow “writing for the sake of writing” is somehow loftier or more pure than wanting to tell a story, or make that connection with a readership. I think the value there is equal, even if the goal is slightly different.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “every single book” that rocked the market. People do new, original work all the time, but unless the execution is there, the work actually often falls flat and disappears unnoticed. People don’t realize it … well, because they don’t notice that it happens. A lot.
Then, there are those “knock-offs” that do so amazingly well. When Star Wars hit the theaters, for instance, man, did the world go bonkers. Never mind that it was actually so derivative of many old myths and legends, those epic stories people had long forgotten or never noticed, like an old RKO western or something. The execution was so brilliant, the combination of old elements so cleverly done that people THOUGHT it was new and original.
Shakespeare was derivative, too, in fact. Many of his plots are borrowed from old stories, obscure only because it wasn’t already written by Shakespeare. But the execution of his commercial art was so fine, so beautifully done, pleasing both the high brow theatergoers and the low brow throwers of rotten vegetables, that his plays couldn’t help doing well and living on.
It’s not the idea that grabs people. It’s the execution of the idea—whether for commercial or for personal reasons.
Lani—Thanks for not being cross. Something comes over me after midnight. Who knows what I’ll post.
I really don’t think of the readers at all. Just the characters. My first book took ten years to write because I wouldn’t listen to the characters.
I thought I was writing a “pirate romance” and tried to obey all the writers guidelines for the racier romances.
As it turns out, I was writing a story about a kid stolen from his family and sold into slavery who became a brilliant, brutal monster to survive. He was the one on a journey from damnation to redemption. The girl was our window to him.
I think some writers are concious of the “audience” when they write.
I’m the audience when I write. I want to communicate as clearly and precisely as possible what I see and hear.
Do I want others to read the story? Yeah, because I want to show them this “movie” I saw.
I have no sense of manufacturing the book. I don’t outline anymore. Because I don’t know where the characters are going to take me. I start writing only when I actually can watch large portions of the story in my head.
Is your process similar? Do you really have a sense of a “reader” as you write? Cause that’s a new thought for me. Writers who sense the reader as they write versus writers who feel like the “first reader” of a book. I write it so I can read it . . .
“If an author views his/her own work as fine art, then maybe that’s enough to make it so for THEM, even if a reader finds it to be ‘merely’ commercial art. Same with a reader finding something to be fine art against the opinion of an author or other readers. “
Hear, hear.
Art is subject to interpretation by whoever is looking at it. It’s one of the reasons why art is so powerful. It speaks to people in different ways, and no one person is absolutely correct in labeling it.
Andreya – no problem, luv. Like I said, if you want to offend me, you have to work at it. I come off as gruff all the time when I don’t mean to, so I cut people slack when I read online. I always assume good humor unless they say, “Lani, you ignorant slut.” In which case, gloves come off, baby. 🙂
You know, I’m not even sure if we all disagree. Who was it? Robin? Who said that even if a writer is thinking of the readers, it’s still the writer imagining the reader, and so it’s still just the writer alone in a room? Well, that person was right. And I understood exactly what she was saying. The writer still filters the reader through her self, so there you go. Although she said it better than me.
Here’s the thing. I write what I want to write. I don’t write to formula, and saying that considering the readers automatically means you write formulaic crap is simplistic and misguided. When I serve story, I serve the reader, and serving the reader matters to me. I’m not saying that market forces or reader trends dictate what I do specifically in the story. I’m saying that I am conscious that I owe the reader a good ride, and I bust my ass to give it to her.
Way I see it, the only difference between me and Laura Kinsale is that she serves story and lets it go at that. I serve story, and am concerned in turn that it pleases my reader. She pleases her readers. I try like hell to please mine. The end result is the same.
Write good story. Good story = happy readers. We’re all on the same page. But, yeah, every minute that I write, I’m thinking about my readers. I want them to like it. I want this effort to be worth their six bucks. That helps keep me focused. For other people, it appears to interfere with their focus. So who cares? If the end result is a good story and a happy reader, what does it matter?
Laura said—What if your story is about an erotic romantic threesome, and romance readers “don’t like†threesomes? (As I’m told over on AAR.) Or rather, many do, and many don’t. Then how do you move your story? Do you sit there writing and worrying about the ones who won’t like it? Do you piss about the awards you’ll never win because “some†readers won’t like your stuff?
To which I reply—Been there, done that.
I wrote an 80,000 word menage a trois romance set in 1750 or so. Sells pretty well actually.
I stopped visiting AAR because lots of folks get testy if you say “I’m not writing for the reader and as a reader I don’t want to be _written for_. I just want people to tell me the story they see in their head.”
Do people write for awards or for money? If I wanted to make lots of money as a writer, I’d write books about saving money on taxes or computers or something. That pays pretty well right off the bat and is way easier to market.
I think most romance writers probably don’t write for the market. I think many do adjust their plots/characters to make them more palatable to reviewers and readers who get mad.
Lani – I thought we might actually be in agreement.
And if you have a “sense” of a reader as you write, I think we just have different writing processes.
I have no “reader” in the room with me when I’m watching the characters in my books. Its just me and them.
I’m watching a movie and writing it down. When I run into trouble (or out of inspiration) I know its because a character did something out of character. I stop writing and wait for the image to shake itself out.
I think its cool you have a reader in mind. Its almost like you have an invisible character in your books 🙂
Well, hallelujah. Someone says what all of us have been thinking! Thank you, Laura. Especially for getting out and saying what you feel, under your own name, hang the consequences.
It’s moved me to look up your books. And that’s a real writer-to-writer compliment.
I write because I have to, not because I want to—although I do want to. It’s not about ambition, it’s not about selling books, it’s not about even making a living.
I make less than minimum wage. I live with my parents. I worked in Blockbuster Video. Are these the actions of someone who is in it for the money?
Yes, reader love and great reviews are nice. But that’s not why I do this. I do this because there’s no other way: because the voices in my head are loud and exciting; because they paint pictures brighter than I’ve ever seen; because at the end of the day, I’ve been doing this since I left school, and there’s nothing else I could possibly do, even if I wanted to.
Readers: speak up if you love me. Speak up if you hate me. Or don’t. It ain’t gonna stop me.
Thanks, Laura.
I’m into the 4th day of the Romantic Times Booklovers convention in Daytona Beach, Florida and I gotta say, this post is almost surreal considering what I’ve seen this week.
Nothing like a large group of writers, readers, booksellers and publishing industry people to slap one upside the head with the commercial aspects of this business.
Art is such a subjective term, isn’t it?
Great post. Thanks SBs for sharing Laura’s words of wisdom.
I believe that art, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I consider art may differ from the next person. However, great art is judged to be beautiful based on the public discourse about it. It is defined by the informed critics and peers, the admirers and the masses which may view it only for personal consumption. I understand how that may be a huge burden for the artist, but I cannot see how you could have art without consumption, even if it crafted solely for the consumption of its creator. Discussing a work of fiction is not disrespectful; if it does not meet the standards of art as defined by its consumers, then it will only serve to elevate those works of fiction that do meet those criteria.
It occurs to me that maybe the easiest way for me to help people understand that I am not calling for any lack of discourse or criticism of books (as art or trash) might be by just inviting you to check out my message board where that’s a big percentage of what goes on—discussion of books, mostly mine and some others too.
Since I am there, and posters know I’m there, and I insist on a high level of courtesy overall on the board no matter what the topic, it’s pretty civilized. Probably it’s not much fun in the way the SB’s are. (Candy is too nice to say so! 😉 ) But it is full of critiques and things I don’t happen to agree with myself about my books and other books.
I really have been interested here to see this reading of what I wrote that keeps coming into this discussion. It’s similar to a reaction I often get about my books…a reader will say, such-and-such character is this way or that way, and I think, wait a minute, that isn’t what I wrote. What are you seeing?
And that makes me wonder if I wrote something different than I thought I did. But my yardstick for that includes ALL the readers. If one reader got it, even only one, then I know it is there to be read if the reader wishes to see it.
If they wish to see something else, that is their right. But what some people keep seeing here, apparently because I used the word ‘art’, that I meant no one should criticize it, is not what I was getting at in the least, and the fact that the whole topic came up at all is very interesting to me.
Some people have understood what I meant. So I figure it was there. My focus was on the process of writing, “producing the product” if you will, not on the reaction to the product.
And that makes me wonder if I wrote something different than I thought I did. But my yardstick for that includes ALL the readers. If one reader got it, even only one, then I know it is there to be read if the reader wishes to see it.
If they wish to see something else, that is their right. But what some people keep seeing here, apparently because I used the word ‘art’, that I meant no one should criticize it, is not what I was getting at in the least, and the fact that the whole topic came up at all is very interesting to me.
Actually, I think most everyone in this discussion understood what you meant to a fairly substantial degree (and many of us routinely echo your regard for the power and potential of the written word). But at the same time, your piece sort of entered a conversation, or rather a series of simultaneous conversations, and IMO became part of that larger inquiry, producing tangents and variants and questions and concerns, many of which seemed to loop through and around and outside of both your intention and the substance of your declaration.
Reading the various and varied posts on this topic (and its relatives) have made me reconsider a long held belief that any writer can count on saying something that is unambiguously understood to match exactly the writer’s intent. I think it’s a necessary fiction we have created, and one that maintains itself through a certain normative idea of what language can and is supposed to do. I will continue to insist that some things are perfectly clear in just the way I’ve said them, even though I know that clarity is, to a large degree, a function of *my overall* thought processes and belief system. Those who share similar ideas and processes will likely find what I have to say clear, and those who are approaching my words from a different perspective may not (am I the only one who sometimes reads other people’s posts and can’t figure out if they’re talking about my posts or not? Boy, is that frustrating).
Basically, I guess, I’ve just adapted my understanding about the project of analyzing fiction more broadly. Did Sam Clemens, for example, write in Huck Finn a tale about the evils of slavery or about the corrosive qualities of “civilization”? Is Huck racist or egalitarian in his beliefs? Is the author always in complete control of what he or she wants to say in a book, and how is it that sometimes mutually exclusive readings of one book can find adequate textual support?
I’m not suggesting that what we say isn’t actually intelligble to one another or even that some people aren’t better readers at a literal level than others—merely that even in consensus, it may not always be clear that we’re ever truly understsood in the way we want to be (the worst, IMO, is when someone purports to agree with you but seems to have read your point very differently from what you intended). In terms of your point about art and respect, though, I think there may have been more musing on the various issues related to what you were saying than actual misunderstanding of your point. Of course, I could have misunderstood everything! 🙂
Laura,
Thank you for a beatifully expressed core of truth. I understand what you say completely.
Indeed, a writer is an ordinary person. But their work on the other hand is something else—a gossamer fabric that exists on a finer airy plane of thought.
In order to be created, for best results, it ought not be manhandled, smeared and even kissed by criticism, adulation, or any other external influence (positive or negative), because just like a spiderweb it will be damaged in the process of handling.
Simply allow the spider to do its pattern of delicate lace. The moment you touch the web, it comes apart.
And it is so damn easy to touch the spider too, to make them falter. Any little thing, even a breeze can do it….
And the finished product, the work itself remains cohesive only on its own fine dimension that is sort of as place between worlds, a space between minds. The moment other minds intrude in a tangible way, the fabric of the work is undermined.
Anyway, I am rambling, but again, thank you.
Ok, actually I do see maybe how this aspect of the whole discussion comes up out of my OP, I think. I stated that I didn’t want to hear the millions of conflicting opinions, and then in the next paragraph I said the art itself deserves respect. I can see how some might feel that meant I thought there should be no judgment or critique.
Hopefully I’ve clarified that. Those two points are not related in my mind, though they came in sequence in my OP. Respect for the art itself—or at least for the elusive and powerful nature of it—does not mean respect for any given work, and in fact there are plenty of works that DON’T respect themselves, and I don’t blame readers for either their disappointment or their irritation.
And Robin makes many good points. It may be that it was me who wasn’t reading some of the comments as they were intended and putting my own spin on them.
LOL, well I’m sure I have beaten this poor horse enough, thank you all for a great and insightful discussion that has made me think and question too. 🙂
LOL, well I’m sure I have beaten this poor horse enough, thank you all for a great and insightful discussion that has made me think and question too. smile
I prefer to think of it as just one more way you’re serving your own process and voice—that way I can apply the same excuse to myself ;).