Category: rant

About That Good Art Article at NPR…

So, there’s an NPR article making the rounds right now. It purports to be about whether the quality of art is primarily responsible for the popularity of art. Leaving aside that I don’t think the methodology of the study addresses the question the article seems to be claiming it does, this is a subject that makes my bones itch.

That’s because I’m not at all sure we can have anything like an objective standard of “good” for something as subjective as art. I strongly suspect that we can draw a line between bad and competent, but once you’ve crossed over into competent, I think that things go very very fuzzy.

First off, what constitutes good? For example, in writing, is great prose ultimately the true measure of good? Or is it something else entirely. Good or great pacing is also a skill. So is good or great character, or world, or story, or simply the ability to evoke emotional response. I have read things with very meh prose that are still amazingly excellent works do to other aspects of art and craft and vice-versa.

Also, who gets to decide what constitutes good? That’s a huge question, both in terms of expertise and of culture. There are things that I as a professional writer might judge to be bad prose because of my own personal context when I read it, while an inexpert or early reader might find the very same prose amazing because the writer is doing important things with simple structure and words.

On another axis, there are things that I may find deeply moving or fun because I’m a middle-aged, cis-gendered, white, straight, liberal, atheist guy from the midwest. Those same thing could be frankly appalling to someone who doesn’t share my cultural biases.

Audience matters, and good for me is almost certainly not good for everyone. While I absolutely want experts deciding whether a bridge design is sound, experts deciding on esthetics is a dicier proposition. Posit for a moment that “good” is actually a democratic proposition, in which case it may be that good for the many who are not experts is better than good for the few who are.

Mind you, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but every time I see someone trying to make objective decisions about something as subjective as whether art is good I get a little bit itchy. I’m not at all sure these questions have answers that aren’t entirely situational, and I’m skeptical of arguments that say that they do.

Patience is a Virtue—A PSA

So, Scalzi and Stross have recently commented on the heaps of shit George R. R. Martin has gotten for not producing his books with machinelike timing and I’m pretty much in perfect agreement with them. Martin talks about what’s been happening here. I wasn’t going to comment, but today, my friend Pat Rothfuss talked about his process and why he’s not producing his next book with machinelike timing and makes some fabulous comments that really point up why cutting the people who are writing the books you love some slack is a good idea.

I don’t have a lot to add here except to note that when a writer isn’t producing stuff at the pace at which they are expected to, it’s pretty much a sure thing that they’re significantly less happy about it than their readers are. Asking a writer who is late why that’s the case, or how their writing is going, or complaining about it to them is really really counterproductive.

I say this from the perspective of someone who writes insanely fast by many people’s standards and who typically gets books in several months early. I’m a fast writer. I’m an early writer. And even so, questions about production can get under my skin when I fall behind my own ridiculously early scheduling. And that makes me unhappy, which slows me down even more in a really bad feedback loop. I can’t imagine how much harder it is for those who write slower than I do or who are running genuinely late with a book.

If your favorite writer is running behind on a book that you really want to read and you want to help: Send them fan mail. Tell them how much you enjoy their work and appreciate the books that are already out. Pump their spirits up, make them want to work. Don’t mention the project that’s not done yet, it will only further depress and delay.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog February 27 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Don’t Worry About the Words

They’re just not all that important.*

I’m in a mood to commit writer heresy today. So here it is:

I don’t really care about the words.

Let me repeat that: I don’t care about the words. On an individual level they really don’t matter to me. Neither does the punctuation. Even the meaning is negotiable, at least at the sentence level and paragraph level.

What I care about is the story. It doesn’t matter to the story whether something is ebon or charcoal or plain old black. Any of those or none of those might serve depending on the surrounding words, the tone, and what I want the reader to take away from the story. Even then it’s not a fixed value.

When I first write the sentence containing the word meaning (black) I could use any one of dozens of words, depending on what tastes right, or nearly right, in the moment. If I really cared about the word as a unit, this is a point where I might end up slowed down or even stopped for a long time while I found the exact right word. But knowing that it’s the story that matters, not the specific word, I can just go ahead and drop in something that approximates what I need and move on.

Sometimes the initial choice is the word that I end up using. Sometimes it gets changed on the second pass, where I move through as a reader and try to make the whole thing feel smooth. Sometime the word goes away along with the sentence or paragraph that holds it as I realize that (black) would be better placed earlier or later, or implied, or that the reader doesn’t need to know, or that (blue) would serve the story better.

It’s not until my very last polish pass before sending something out that I start to get nitpicky about the words. Even then I don’t really sweat the details too much. I have been at this for a while and I know that nothing is final until it has gone to press, and even then there might be later editions.

My agent might ask for changes. My editor might ask for changes. I might write a sequel or a related piece before the original is published, and that might necessitate changes. I might put it aside for a time and come back and make changes.

All of those changes will affect the words, shifting meaning, nudging flow, altering tone, restructuring scene and paragraph and sentence.

I don’t really care about the words.

I care about the story.

2013 update (adding in material from my comments on the original post):

1) For me looking at the words is all about story, not about phrasing. Attention paid to the words is a side effect.

2) My contention would be that story is the sum of words at the aggregate level and that too many writers spend too much time worrying about words on the individual level, focusing on making a specific sentence work exactly right rather than focusing on how groups of sentences go together to convey information.

I write poetry as well as novels, and for poetry I care about the individual words in a way that I don’t at novel length. The process of writing poetry is fundamentally different for me. It’s much harder and orders of magnitude more time consuming, because with poetry I’m looking at things at the individual word level as opposed to the paragraph or scene level.

With a novel I can usually find a half dozen ways to convey a bit of information any of which is roughly as good (in my eyes) as any other.

3) Here’s another way to look at it. Write a novel in German. Get three really good translators, one English, one American, one Australian. Have them all translate the original novel into English. There will be significant differences in the words from translation to translation, but the fundamentals of the story should come out reasonably close. That core story is what I really care about.

4) Don’t get married to one particular word or phrase.

Books aren’t static creations, not until the very last instant before going to press. Writing is a dynamic process and losing sight of that is a good way to tie an anchor around your ankle.

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*Your results may vary. All normal restrictions apply. Caveat emptor. There are a thousand ways and one to write to a book, every one right. Etc. etc. etc.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog December 18 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Sci-Fi! Say It Loud, Say It Proud

What is it with grousing about the term Sci-Fi?* This morning Jay Lake links to Andrew Wheeler doing a fabulous snarky take-down of the latest SF Signal Mind Meld which is all about changing one aspect of the science fiction publishing world. I haven’t read the whole piece, but in it someone once again wants to get rid of the term Sci-Fi. This is a pet peeve of mine–the stressing out about Sci-Fi, not the term itself.

For some rather large subset of the folks inside the science fiction and fantasy genre world the term is considered pure poison and terribly derogatory. In the rest of the world it’s at worst a neutral catchy phrase to talk about the genre and more often a term of admiration, as in “I’m a Sci-Fi fan.”

Frankly, I like the term. It’s short. It’s catchy. It’s immediately understandable, unlike SF where everyone outside the genre assumes you’re talking about San Francisco, or SFF or F&SF where no one outside the genre knows what you’re talking about. It has no major constituency for it being derogatory outside the field—I live in academia and when Lit-Fic folks and anti Sci-Fi academics talk about our field they don’t say Sci-Fi, they drawl “Oh, you write…sciiieence fiiction, how…interesting,” or “oh, a genre writer.” Sci-Fi doesn’t clunk like “speculative fiction” or even “spec fic.”

Even if I didn’t like it, I’d still use it. It’s effective communication just like “Big Bang,” another term that was originally intentionally dismissive. Even more than that though, by owning the term and making it a badge of pride, it robs it of what little power it might have left to hurt.

In short: Sci-Fi! Say it loud and say it proud:

Sci-Fi. I’m a Sci-Fi fan. Some of what I write is Sci-Fi.** I love Sci-Fi.***

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*Usually pronounced with a rhyming “I” sound when I encounter it, as in C-Sci or Comp-Sci.

**The majority of course is fantasy, which has even bigger terminology problems.

***And, no I’m not a late joiner of the genre. I’ve been active at conventions for 30+ years—I started when I was 15. I’m also a third generation fan–my mother and grandmother were part of the letter-writing campaign to save the original Star Trek and the letter they got back from the show’s creators along with a black and white publicity photo are treasured possessions in my family.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 21 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Zach Braff Kickstarted This Headdesk

Not getting the Zach Braff Kickstarter freakout at all. Oh noes, popular people are using Kickstarter to fund popular things! And? The main thing it is going to do is bring new people in to Kickstarter. And, while they’re there, they may fund other projects. Sure, it will drive some hipsters away, but it’s also going to create new casual Kickstarter backers, and new backers is a good thing.

This seems like a variation of the whole fake geek girl/casual fans aren’t real fans, purity cooties thing. Which drives me crazy. Yes, some people don’t love the stuff you love with the same intensity and purity. Get over it. Them liking it casually means more funding. More funding means more of that thing you love. It means shows not getting canceled and book series getting renewed. Casual fans are good.

I make a more coherent version of this argument over at Apex Magazine in my I Married A Fake Geek Girl Essay.

This Real Life comic is also relevant.