the writer's art

[chelidon]

For my writer friends, a post by John Crowley about an interesting post about writing -- meta-meta-writing! The article Crowley points to is well worth purusing, I found -- some good, chewy stuff there.

http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/39250.html

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

I love how you refer to ideas in terms of mouth-feel. I wonder if that's where I picked it up.

[morrigandaughtr.livejournal.com]

Some of it is, indeed, very chewy in a good way. And some of it made me search for my napkin.

The good stuff for me was in the way Smith talks about the writer's truth; the bad stuff is where she goes into all the angst over the perfect novel. There is no such thing, in fact, and in her example the writer Clive would in fact have been two or three or four books forward of that first novel, continuing to hone his craft and to tell the stories that he needed to tell, and likely not nearly as focused on the perceived perfections or imperfections of that novel. Water cooler discussions would more likely involve business and how are the wife and kids?.

As far as the critics are concerned, I have been taught never to read your own reviews, to have friends send you copies of the good ones. Anything else is inspirational suicide, even (and especially) if your goal is to be critically-acclaimed as a writer.

The discussion of personality in fiction is a worthy one. Personally, I am intrigued by the writer's voice, even if I also think it had better not overshadow the characters' voices. I'm even more intrigued by writers who disappear entirely in their novels, with only the characters and their stories to fall into. Regardless, what's distilled at the end is a truth or several truths, and without them the books would never have been written. From a magical and spiritual angle, to me that's where writers cease to be writers and morph into storytellers, and take their places on the great continuum of Story that flows through us from before the beginning of time, when time was only a twinkle in the eye of God Herself.

In any case, thanks for posting this link. Like you said, lots to chew on.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

John Crowley has an LJ!

That in itself is new exciting news to me.