S.M. Carrière . com
Connect:
  • Home
  • About
  • Titles
    • Daughters Of Britain
    • Dear Father
    • Ethan Cadfael: The Battle Prince
    • Human
    • Skylark
    • The Dying God & Other Stories
    • The Seraphimè Saga >
      • The Summer Bird (v.1)
      • The Winter Wolf (v.2)
    • Your Very Own Adventures >
      • Skara Braens
      • Sky Road Walker
    • WIP Updates
  • Art
  • Other Projects
    • Editing Services
    • Charity Efforts >
      • Gàrradh nan Leannan
      • Have a Heart Campaign
    • Journal
    • Martial Arts
    • Silver Stag Entertainment
    • The Adventures of Grimglum the Nord
    • SMC Awkwardly Plays
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Art Prints
  • Contact

Writing is at War. Apparently.

27/10/2014

7 Comments

 
Good morning, Readers.

Someone has declared war on writing and (unpublished) writers.  Apparently.  Specifically, it's some guy named Tom Mitchell who has declared war on writing and writers, and he did so in THIS article.  Friend and fellow writer A. Laramey made his ridiculous screed known to me in her blog post last Wednesday.  She said she was conflicted about it.  I'm not.  It's a stupid rant from a frustrated writer who hates that the 'wrong sort of people' write and let it be known they're writing on social media.

He actually states that he "...realised the full extent of my hatred for unpublished novelists during an evening of drinking craft beer with a friend."

How horribly ironic, him being an unpublished novelist and all.  Perhaps he's trying to come off as ironic/funny hipster-ish but, as April said, he misses the mark.  By a wide margin.

He looses me completely when he starts in on genre, but I'll start from the very beginning.
This casual plan for a future novel-writing is indicative of the literary world’s failing health. We must wake to this imminent danger. Soon, more people will write fiction than read it. Much like my parents’ inevitable adoption of Facebook, I dread the day Dad announces he’s writing a novel set in an alternative reality where the Nazis won after all. I’d rather bring up my son in the Third Reich than a world in which nobody reads fiction but everybody writes it*.
Oh for Pete's sake!  This was his reaction when a friend told him that he wanted to write a novel.  This was Mr. Mitchell's reaction.

Dafuq did I just read?  People planning to write novels in the future are a symptom of the failing health of the literary world?  What?  Am I the only one who finds this nonsensical?  Not to appear rude, but people not writing would be far more indicative of the literary world's failing health.  After all, there must be people to write in order to have a healthy literary world.  There must be writers.  More, there must be new writers, new voices, new perspectives, else the blood of the literary world stagnates and goes stale.  People writing lots is ultimately good for the literary health.  Sure, not all of what will be written is good, but that is neither here nor there.

Like many people, he has a fear that more people will be writing fiction than reading it.  I'm not sure that that has not already come to pass myself.  However, in general, people who write also read.  People who hope to write well should read a lot.  Those who are serious about the craft soon come to realise this, and they start reading.  A lot.  Even if they never become serious about their craft, what's the harm?  Let them write.  What's it to you?
The internet has mutated reasonable people into wannabe writers. Starting a novel is the middle-class equivalent of getting a fake tan and manicure, sure that you’re only an audition away from pop chart success.
This is actually more loaded than I think I can handle without loosing my temper.  I find the most problematic aspect of all are the grossly overt classist overtones of this sentiment.  Working class people starting a novel?  Say it ain't so!

And is the desire to be a writer unreasonable?  I didn't get that memo.  I don't find it unreasonable at all.  Anyone can and should write a story if they feel they have the skill and discipline to get it done.  Does that mean they're entitled to be picked up by traditional publishers?  No.  But if it gives them pleasure and purpose to try, what's it to you?  If they decide to self-publish, well, good on them.  That's a lot of work and expense.  Again, if that's what they decide, how is that a problem?  They will be tried in the court of popular opinion, if they're seen at all.
It’s like the X Men but if the X Men had convinced themselves of their mutant powers through overuse of the #amxmen hashtag, rather than concrete proof of superhuman ability.
Wait, there's an AmXMen tag?  Get me in on that!  My superpower is not going postal when people prove to be snobbish, elitist jerks.  Joking aside, I have no idea what this complaint is about.  If someone is writing, they have every right to say so.  And if they write every day, be it only fifteen minutes a day, they have every right to identify themselves as a writer, whether or not they have a finished manuscript.  Whether or not they are published.  If they're writing, they're a writer.  Let me define writer for those who still don't understand:

Writer
noun
One who writes.

There you go.  That's all you need to know about what a writer is and who can claim to be one.
NaNoWriMo’s got a lot to answer for.
Yes, because encouraging people to follow their passions and give them a platform with which to achieve something is inherently evil/wrong.  Do I have an eye roll gif?  Where is my stockpile of eye roll gifs?

He then goes on to express 'almost' pity for agents, who must be flooded every December with ill-edited manuscripts, having to read piles and piles of drivel around the end of NaNoWriMo.  This, I concede, may well be an issue.  Even still I cannot fault these writers - and they are writers, whether any of us like it or not - for trying.
I’ve been trying to be a novelist for ten years....  #amwriting is constantly trending on Twitter and 75% of Twitter accounts use the word ‘writer’ in their profile bio. FACT. It doesn’t matter if you’re unpublished. The act of putting finger to keyboard is qualification enough. Writing ‘#amwriting’ is qualification enough.
If you have a completed, semi-completed or barely started manuscript, you, sir/madame, are a writer.  As it happens, you are currently an unpublished writer, but a writer nonetheless.  Given this is the case, please excuse my confusion as to what the point of this is exactly.  Is this a projection of self-loathing?

Then there is this sentence:
Being skilful, rather than a braggart, once held value.
Mr. Mitchell, I'm curious how you propose people acquire this skill without practice?  Writing, like all skills, must be constantly practiced in order to be improved upon.  Skill is not something that someone is born with.  It is learned, worked upon.  Like throwing a ball or shooting an arrow accurately, it must be practiced.  How are people to get sufficiently good at writing to please your obviously very delicate sensibilities if the very act of practicing - i.e. writing - irritates you enough for you to write an entire screed against people who do it.

So sure, what they're writing now might not be great stuff, but give these 'wanna be writers' a few years, and they'll be the next Steven Erikson (I chose a very good fantasy writer specifically because of the next quote)... if they're lucky enough to be noticed.

And yes, plenty of unpublished stuff out there is utter rubbish (and a lot of published stuff, I might add).  There is also plenty of unpublished stuff out there that is absolute gold.  Just because a work is currently unpublished does not mean that it is entirely unworthy.
Part of the problem is that the fantasy genre is becoming mainstream. Unpublished writers often write fantasy. Over seven million ‘normal’ people watched the last episode of Game of Thrones, for fuck’s sake.
At risk of being one of those people, OMFG!  What?  Fantasy gaining popularity is a problem?  For the record, he targets science fiction as well, with space opera receiving a special mention.  As a speculative fiction writer, I'm trying very hard to contain my current ire.  I fail to see a problem with fantasy becoming mainstream.  Do you know what that means?  It means that more people are reading speculative fiction.  Let me reiterate what is important about that sentence.

More. people. are. reading.

And if more people are reading speculative fiction, it means that publishers are going to be hungry for more talent in speculative fiction.  That means some of those currently unpublished speculative fiction writers will one day be published speculative fiction writers.  Is this what is really bugging Mr. Mitchell?  That these speculative fiction writers may be published before him?

I will also add that he paints the average fantasy lover in a terrible light:
... fat middle-aged men with extravagant facial hair and weird dice and cards with pictures of unicorns on them.
As a fit young woman with little to no facial hair, I'd like to send a hearty 'piss off' to Mr. Mitchell.  I love fantasy.  I love science fiction.  I'm less thrilled by horror, but that's neither here nor there.

(And I have thus far played one game of a tabletop R.P.G.  I loved it.  I own a D20, and plan on acquiring a full set.  Come at me, bro.)
...if the thing has to happen (gaming and fantasy loving), I’d rather it took place silently, without drawing attention to itself. What ever happened to clandestine meetings in your basements? Why must everything take place in Starbucks, pimped through Facebook and Twitter? Dignity, as traditional publishing, as God, is dead.
RAGE!

What a tit.  Look, I would be apologetic that the wonderful unadulterated love of gaming and speculative fiction is bothering Mr. Mitchell, but I'm not quite that Canadian.  No one is forcing you to join in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  People enjoying themselves... in public (gasp)... makes you angry?  You think the harmless partaking in some games is undignified?  You need to seek a therapist.

Let me guess, a card game after dinner is fine, BUT THEY BETTER NOT BE MAGIC: THE GATHERING CARDS SO HELP ME (dead) GOD!

Seriously, where are my eye roll gifs?  Where did I put them?

And then there is this gem:
It used to be cool to be an unpublished writer. It used to be sexy. The witty, intelligent bookish type, bothering his/her imagination at unreasonable hours, taking Mexican amphetamines to keep the muse awake....  More importantly, the unpublished writer was unappreciated in his/her lifetime. John Kennedy Toole – there’s an unpublished writer, with the suicide to go with it.
I think this is the crux of the matter.  Somewhere in Tom Mitchell's psyche sits the archetypal writer; the lonely bookish type who knows his genius... and is lonely in that knowledge.  In Mr. Mitchell's psyche, that's sexy.  I'm going to leave alone the glorification and romaticisation of a life so unfulfilled it results in suicide alone.  I'm pretty sure I don't need to point out how incredibly wrong and twisted that is.

I'm not going to, actually.  Fuck anyone who reduces serious mental illness, reliance on drugs and tragic loss of life to some twisted aspiration.  Fuck that guy right in the ear.

I'll wager, however, that Mr. Mitchell envisioned himself as that sexy under-appreciated unpublished writer; that rakish bookworm with a good heart and tortured soul (excuse me while I barf, please).  I suspect that this piece is a reaction to finding out that he is not so special after all, not nearly as unique.  And he doesn't like it.  What's more, he doesn't like anyone who doesn't fit the embarrassingly archaic and archetypal image of an unpublished writer he's bought into heart and soul.  Those people are undignified, are fat and gross, they play games and have fun.  It may be that Mr. Mitchell had the sudden realisation that his exclusive club - the club of unpublished writers - has a broader membership than he wanted, and it includes some (in his opinion) undignified types; it includes types that do not match the extremely limiting image of the unpublished writer he has so clearly romanticised in his own mind.

The reality is, anyone can be an (unpublished) writer, and that makes us all less special.  I would contend that we most certainly ought to get paid for our work, just as plumbers, taxi drivers and check-out clerks.  I would also contend that we are no more special than plumbers, taxi drivers and check-out clerks.  Furthermore, just like plumbers, taxi drivers and check-out clerks, we are varied in our interests and hobbies outside of our occupation, including but not limited to playing tabletop R.P.G.s.  We're human beings, not gods.

The bottom line?  Writer's aren't special.  It's time to come down from our ivory towers.  It was time a long time ago.

That reality seems a little tough to bear for some.
Photo
Found one! Image courtesy of Giffy.com. Click for link.
Ciao!
7 Comments
Susan
27/10/2014 03:49:27 am

How do you feel knowing that you almost were categorized by this line: "But times have changed and the unpublished writer is now a middle-aged office temp writing dinosaur erotica. " How do you even write that? o.O Seriously this guy can go shove it where the sun don't shine. (It also just made me laugh... who fantasizes about dinosaurs? I digress...)

I think part of the reason unpublished authors go straight into the Fantasy genre is because to get into the other categories is actually much harder. To get any traction as a *well paid* writer, is much harder. Take a look at the highest paid authors from 2010 [and I picked 2010 because I was looking for a different article that I have printed, but also because I refuse to have that shitty author of that horribly BAD trilogy being turned into a movie have any recognition for her tacky, non researched pile of horse dung (I'm sorry, I like horses.. no insult to them intended)] http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/19/patterson-meyer-king-business-media-highest-paid-authors_slide.html

With the exception of one author on there (there is only one or two I actually am not familiar with), every author has published something like 10 or more novels. They have refined their craft immensely. The chances of a new author making a lot is not going to, for obvious reasons.

This guy, Tim Mitchell, is likely just butthurt that his novel of 10 years has not been published. Clearly he hasn't put any effort into other novel ideas. Everyone who is serious about writing in even a part time fashion has more than one novel on the go.. I'm almost a hundred percent positive on that one. If they don't, they'll always have more ideas later on. Inspiration will hit them. This guy needs to get off his high horse thinking he's the big dog because he's not. I want super authors to wreck this guy just for fun but that's just me...

Off to job hunt and get ready for school stuffs!

Reply
S.M. Carrière link
27/10/2014 04:13:23 am

Dinosaur erotica is actually a thing, and I think that's HILARIOUS!

http://jezebel.com/dinosaur-erotica-exists-and-its-just-as-amazing-as-you-1438081697

It's not my cup of tea, but people get a kick out of it, who am I to judge?

The thing is, most writers these days hold down a 'day job' because there just isn't much money in writing. There simply isn't.

And I do think that Mr. Mitchell is a very frustrated writer. To be fair, so am I, but I don't feel the same bitterness, I guess. Le sigh. To each their own, I guess?

Have fun at school!

Reply
Susan
27/10/2014 04:22:30 am

I....what?.... my god.. I'm now horrified...

That's worse than half the romance novels out there o.O

Thank you! I'll have fun when I go :) (on Wednesday... I am doing some tidying and stuff in prep for it so that I'm not all chaos. lol! )

Eric Desmarais link
27/10/2014 06:49:22 am

I read the article a few days ago and tried to comment on A Laramey's post.

I assumed he was being sarcastic until I read the part about genre.

He comes off as a wannabe hipster who probably spends more time complaining then writing.

I strongly believe that the more people write the more they will read. Also it takes me (a slow reader and writer) 1 to 2 wells to read a book but 4-6 months to write one. So if I complete 1-2 books a year but a read 30+ that means I need lots of other authors to fill my year.

I don't think people write genre because it's easy or because it's popular I think they wire it because it's fun. A "literary novel" will be about an alcoholic man who beats his wife. A genre novel will be about the same thing but set in an abandoned haunted hotel that wants to ear their souls.

I also think that we, people in the wiring community, have an exaggerated idea of how many people are writing. Or feels like 99% want to write and 80% are writing. I'm sure the numbers are way lower.




Reply
S.M. Carrière link
27/10/2014 07:13:55 am

You might be right about the number of writers. I would imagine that if you consider the number of serious writers (those who are looking to make a career of the craft) and the number drops lower still.

Reply
April Laramey link
28/10/2014 02:07:07 am

"tried to comment"? Uh oh. Did you get an error I should know about?

Reply
Eric Desmarais link
28/10/2014 07:05:20 am

April, it's not you but my work computer. It's special and only runs ie8...

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    S.M. Carrière, a Celtic Studies enthusiast, writes fiction.  And this blog.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Book Reviews
    Events
    Gaming
    Human
    Life
    Rants
    Reading
    Seraphimè Saga
    Seraphimè Saga
    Skylark
    Television
    Training
    Travels
    Writing
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly