Well, I promised to report back on reactions I get to the Book--the orange and green "Tell Me How to Write A Novel" book.
Arielle (names changed to protect the victim) saw me carrying the green and orange businessy
First Draft in 30 Days. We bumped into each other while waiting in line for coffee at Highland Coffees, right by the LSU campus. She snorted and widened her eyes.
"Aww, things are tough for you, huh? Guess your thesis isn't coming along too well." Pointing to the title, she said, "I've always wondered about books that pretend to tell you how to be creative. Let me know how it works out!"
Arielle is a successful writer by my standards--poems and articles placed in online journals. She also is one of those people who doesn't need to constantly change coffeeshop ambience to keep in touch with her muse. She's one of those people--you know, the sort that can just sit down and write, say at the kitchen table, right after dinner and before must see TV.
First Draft in 30 Days tells me it is important to continue percolating ideas at all times. First Draft also says if I brew coffee I will start thinking of ideas (and want to poo). First Draft in 30 Days is an example of what MFA programs can't offer--the idea that you could do this just fine without a degree. And for that reason, I believe my little businessy book threatens certain types of artists.
The cross-referenced worksheets which are xeroxable for your subsequent novels, the day to day plan on mapping out setting, conflict, and rising action--it just doesn't work for my spongy head, though it did get me brainstorming, albeit alongside major anxiety about how I was thinking about setting on Day 1, when that was supposed to wait until Day 2. But how sad is it that an MFA student two years into her degree felt so desperate for discussion on process that she blew $25 on this book?
Why don't we talk about process as artists in the academic MFA settings? If we're so pissed about arts funding being cut left and right, wouldn't it make sense for books like this one to gain popularity among the artist elite, and not be spurned as troglodyte formulaic nonsense?
Why are we all so uptight about our junk?
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Hummingbird: How the Way I Write Shaped My Memoir
19 hours ago
I wholeheartedly support the book. And I did not realize that the purse getting stolen also meant no car key, and towing... and probably a lot of other unfortunate things, too... but I am, as always, amazed by your strength and resilience. You carry that book, girl! It's not a crutch, it's a metaphor.
ReplyDeleteLast night I was having a conversation with my life partner about someone we know who sold something in a certain genre, not because he was interested in art but because he was interested in business and learned the business. I think we artists want to be artists, not businessmen. And yet we're in a business. I think we want our craft to have soul. And yet does it really? I think certain institutions focus on craft and certain more on business. There are good points and bad points to focusing a lot on either.
ReplyDeleteWe don't want to be "just anybody" and resent that art is made by "just anybody," and is it even art in some cases? Are bestselling and major label novels art? Are shows like the Simpsons and Family Guy art? There is certainly a lot of business involved but of course there is some art, and perhaps there is sometimes more art in certain things on television than in books. Although I can sometimes see humor in it, I abhor Family Guy. When the show comes on I have to change it in less than 30 seconds or I'll actually get angry. Some episodes of the Simpsons disappoint me, although I love many of them. The disappointing ones feel like someone is not being sensitive to what has been built up for me by previous, more character-and-ambiance-consistent episodes.
This is television. It of course happens in "art art" as well. I slightly wish I were talking about a book or a piece of visual art but this is the art that has made me the most angry in the last ten years. It's what makes me feel like insensitive and unconcerned business people run the world, and this trickles down into literature and other fine arts. This leads to all sorts of thoughts about capitalism and true democracy and the state of things, etc, etc, etc.
I think the how-to art books could help you be creative and not in an inferior way-- ANYTHING can help you be creative. As I learned from Claudia's artist friend Ashley, in the Babysitters Club series. You could look at that straw wrapper and say, "Look at that straw wrapper! That's so amazing!"
ReplyDeleteI think those books are kind of like playground equipment. Practical things that anyone can play on. You could play on them in an ordinary way or a unique way. Maybe the games you make up separate from the playground equipment, like running through a field with your cousins avoiding cow-pies and shooting dead cows with BB guns in an adventure scenario you have titled "The Twilight Zone," though you've never seen the actual show, are more unique, but people can still have fun on playground equipment.
Equally evocative of resentment is the type of person you describe in your post – artistically successful but in between television and terribly non-poetic and normal things. There seems to be a lack of passion. Some of us want to believe (or actually experience the fact) that art is our life, not just something we do here and there for attention and to be employable. It's our air. I think you should have to want it so badly, it takes over everything at certain times.
Another situation that could draw resentment is the "publish or perish" situation in universities. Artists should be working artists. But what if the art is being directed by the desire to hold a professorship? That doesn't seem right. It seems like you should do your art, and if someone admires it, they should want to hire you. You shouldn't do your art to get hired or keep your job. And futhermore isn't both the teaching and the art squelched by the artist having to do both at once? Aren't both kind of being compromised?
Thus the usefulness of grants, but if someone never seems to be teaching at a school why are they still considered a faculty member? There is a lot of seemingly unmediated unfairness going on -- sometimes a department in the humanities feels like Lord of the Flies.
Sometimes you wonder if you couldn't have a career in some other industry and perhaps nobody would bother you as you did the work you were qualified to do, nobody would bother with your private life, your writing life and you'd have a lot of individual space and could accomplish what you wanted to accomplish without having it relate to your livelihood. The artist has a hard task at hand. Who actually gets paid to do art? Nobody? TV people? Professors? It’s hard to say. Most artists have other responsibilities for which they are actually paid; the art is always a kind of second life. Perhaps it should be. I always like to think about Trollope working at the bank all day, never having the belief that his art would free him from work-work. We have to recognize this reality and succeed as best we can in the two or more areas we’re committed to, for our livelihood AND our life’s work.
@ Kristin: Thank you for posting! And now I follow your blog! (After several combinations of bluedoor/redbike, reddoor, etc. I am glad I now know it's blue bike, red door.)
ReplyDelete@ SKS: Yes. I'm so glad to see these thoughts and that you took the time to post them, which means so much to me and this enterprise. I am also very excited by how you worked this into your comment: As I learned from Claudia's artist friend Ashley, in the Babysitters Club series..
ReplyDeleteI love your brain. Have I mentioned that?
Yay Brain. I wonder if Ann M. Martin was a Hemingway fan, or a Margaret Mitchell fan.
ReplyDelete(The Sun Also Rises, Gone With the Wind)
That character was entirely the most memborable from that entire pre-teen series book.
I also wanted to add this: Art is such a pleasant experience.
ReplyDelete