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.

Comments

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

I've just had a thought. Some writers are like baseball players. A baseball player goes out and has a good day, but doesn't understand why. Sometimes they realize what they really did better, but others develop a superstitious belief in a lucky glove, or refuse to wash their uniform until their streak breaks, or think they have to stratch their butt before throwing a pitch. In the same way, some writers develop a strangely powerful attachment to third person, or a particular chair for writing in, a favorite pen, or some other thing that seems like nonsense to others. I've been told I could never be published if I used a "said-ism" as if the ocassional use of the word "whisper" would matter if I wrote a kick ass story.