So, yeah

[ann_leckie]

Rather unsurprisingly, all three of Nick Mamatas' guest-essays on Booklife are must-reads.

Against Craft:

“Craft” today is not a counter to the Romantic vision of an artistic elite chosen by the Divine, it is a quasi-proletarian flinch often designed to protect one’s work from being compared to art, thus protecting it (and one’s ego) from its near-inevitable failure to stack up to the idea of art as a superlative.

Against Story. Stuff like this:

I was called a Nazi—literally—for defending first person. I was just reading a review the other day in which the critic detailed a conversation she had with a graduate of the Clarion writers’ workshop. He denounced Flannery O’Connor as a “terrible writer” because in her stories she was “telling, not showing, the reader.”

I must lead a sheltered life. I mean, really, someone had the gall to say Flannery O'Connor was a terrible writer? Though I'm unsurprised at the "reason" since I'm all too well acquainted with the whole festering pile of crap that is "show don't tell." You can just insert my standard rant on that here, just to save us all time. And I've run into the first person thing before, too, as y'all doubtless know. But seriously? I mean, seriously? A Nazi? And....Flannery O'Connor?????

I mean....wow.

Anyway. Read both links.