posted
Blind as in a place of concealment; for example, a duck blind. Silence as in unsaid amid spoken volumes: subtext, so to speak. Silence of the Blind as in an invisible rough gem among a multitude of common glass fragments.
I see this Silence of the Blind when reading, the subtle signals a writer intends and means, or doesn't. I'm more curious about writers who are unaware of what to me has become second nature: clunky mechanical style, underdeveloped content and organization, lackluster discourse, unappealing appeals.
Occasionally, I'm inspired when a writer notes the silence felt when an expression principle is beyond reach, though glimpsed as if the eyes might hold the principle in the mind, only to see it evaporate. I feel that way myself oftentimes enough. Perseverance wins a firm hold in the end, maybe after hours, days, weeks, months, even years expended unraveling a mystery. The epiphanies are themselves rich satisfactions. I've felt like a waffle floundering its way through a dark forest understory bound for no particular destination, only knowing I've found the way by reaching a destination.
What I'm curious about here is whether writers see and seek fuller appreciation of any given writing principle.
What do you see that you can't yet touch and use in your writing? Do you look? If you cannot see what you're looking for, how do you come to sense it, grasp it, use it? Do writing shortcomings matter while you draft, write, revise? Can you see into the silent blind?
I am waffling around here, unable yet to put a thumb under what I'm seeing but cannot yet grasp.
posted
Shortcomings in writing are unavoidable since it's imperfect humans creating it. I think that trying to eliminate the shortcomings isn't the goal. The goal is to make the strengths so good that the shortcomings are forgiven by a number of readers the author is satisfied with.
I'm reading "Dune", and I don't particularly like it. The style irks me. In one chapter you'll have multiple POVs competing against each other in the narrative. Not only that, but instead of showing us what characters are thinking through subtle clues, actions, and dialog, the narrative straight up *tells* you what the character is thinking, whether they like something or dislike something, whether they trust something or distrust something.
I can imagine Frank Herbert drawing thought bubbles above character names in his text if he could have gotten away with it.
But, for enough readers (more than enough, this is freaking "Dune"), the strengths, which I guess is the incredible imagination behind this alien world, as well as the political intrigue, has captured the imagination of generations since it was released in 1965.
I'm not sure the problem with writers who have yet to publish is their shortcomings. I think it's that the positive aspects of their fiction is bogged down by all the negatives. But you'll never get rid of the negatives. No matter what, the vast majority of literate people in your language will be uninterested in your writing, published or not. And, as a published author, you're going to have your three, two, and one starred reviews on different book sites, some of which will be very eloquent in their dislike of your writing.
It boggles my mind that "Windup Girl" has a rating of less than 4.0 on a 5.0 scale on Goodreads. Like, seriously, are all these people giving this incredible novel stupid? How can something this brilliant and this innovative not be well above a 4.0?
But there it is. Harry Potter is revered by the world over, but "Windup Girl" has less than a 4.0 on Goodreads.
A playwright professor of mine in my MFA program said something once that I thought was profound, but it can also be seen as defeatist. I choose the former. He said (paraphrased), "Look, if in a room of people, you find just *one* who genuinely seems to get your work, that's all you need in the end."
If one out of every 30 readers love your work enough to buy it and talk about it, you've still got a bestseller on your hands. I'm horrible at math, but I'm sure it can be one out of a hundred or thousand or something, and the equation still stands: monumental success. There's no pleasing everyone, and there's no pleasing the majority of people, but if you can find just one person in a each group you engage in that really loves what you're doing, enough to buy it and talk about it, you're probably set.
posted
I'm afraid my years of lack of substantial feedback on my work have left a mark---things I can't see in the immediate process of writing and revising---bad writing that I don't notice until some time, months or years, have gone by. And by then I've moved on to other things and don't want to try to correct things.
And it's gone on so long I don't know if I can change if I had to. Or even if I want to. Some of you might be aware I've put up several busted stories on a website. There's one up there that I like better than the others---but it's a mess plotwise, having a villain without much of a motive or logical means of accomplishing his villainy---but I still like it better than the others, and, besides, can't see any solution to making it better that would satisfy me.
I've prided myself on, rather than fixing the story, instead taking what I learned and making the next one better. But I don't know if I'm learning anything anymore...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
When I write, I seek desperately the speck of light in the blackness around me. I crave the plain and precious, the balm that relieves and excites. John Steinbeck said he was never satisfied with a paragraph until it sang. (This suggests he went over them more than once. And he was Steinbeck.) He wanted life from non-life, creation from inexistence, pure healing from text.
The magic becomes visible, as if it were with you all along, when there is something good to tell and you tell it exceptionally well. This is what I’ve heard. Who can’t do that?
When I read what I’ve written I can separate the good from the bad. While I can write a page in an hour, I require a month (at least!) fix it. Of course, other pages are also in work and there are other demands in life such as a family and earning a living.
Yet, I desire to transform my words into spells that uplift one’s life simply by gazing upon them.
Anyone who does not seek such is not a writer but a stenographer.
I suspect all of us grapple with this overwhelming blindness.
Posts: 92 | Registered: Dec 2013
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posted
I framed a question last night that clarified my current struggles in a way that I can now access my next leg of the Poet's Journey.
Why do audiences find my narratives limitedly appealing? They are similar in some regards to the entire literary opus. In what ways are they disimilar? Am i hitting readers over the head with a message? I now do know what my message is. Or is my message missing the accessibility mark?
One core convention across the literary opus is an expression of a moral message. E.M. Forster famously disapproves of moral messages of the nobility rewarded, ignobility punished type: poetic justice. I feel the same way. Poetic justice expresses a limited dimensionality that is not "true to life," the latter, Realism and following literary era conventions. Ignobility is often rewarded, nobility often punished in real life. I like to believe time wounds all heels, but know in my heart that is not true. Avoiding poetic justice in and of itself limits audience appeal. Mass culture loves poetic justice.
The trail now blazed ahead isn't so much for me a matter of reflecting or deflecting poetic justice as one of packaging the message accessibly so that targeted readers feel common cause. The novels, short stories, and creative nonfiction narratives I most enjoy are ones where the protagonist experiences a profound identity crisis, a fractured identity and works through to a reintegration. I find this so very basic structural model in all that I've read or viewed narrative-wise, no matter what.
That structural formula is not what I realized; which is, readers with whom I want to find common cause, we derive reading satisfaction and fulfillment differently from mass culture craving poetic justice for feel-good appeal. We enjoy and crave the delicious ironies that real life is, that we are proportionately weighted in our nobility and ignobility measures and accept that's human. In narrative, we can vicariously and risk-free explore our ignobility and nobility.
Then the opening craft, voice, appeal that has up until now eluded me, is an antagonizing event that puts a protagonist into identity crisis fracture; the crisis causes questioning and challenging clashes with presupposed notions of moral propriety; a reintegration at great personal cost on a new-normal moral plane the outcome; underneath, an indictment against uncivil society alienating us. These are my people; this is my message; this is my epiphany.
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