A few days ago this happened on Twitter:
[Me:] My POV this why Pollyanna must rule. RT @guardianbooks: When authors attack http://bit.ly/6CiQyq But but BUT, maybe I’ll write blog rant.
[From] radmilibrarian @robinmckinley Saw that last week when it was still unfolding. Probably also why authors shouldn’t read their Amazon reviews.
[Me:] @radmilibrarian Was it you sent me the link? I saw it too. But that someone(s) went too far obscures that there’s a real point 2 b made.
[From] radmilibrarian @robinmckinley No, I sent you the Alice Hoffman one from a while ago. Also knew about Anne Rice one from years back. Point: authors r ppl 2?
Basically, yes: authors r ppl 2. Er. Authors are people too.* I’ve written about this before but it bears repeating**. We are not Other. We are you. What marks us out from the population in general is merely that we have cracks in our skulls where the stories come through*** as opposed to any other exotic/desirable/really weird thing that someone else might have. Cascades of black hair and a singing voice to die for, for example.† Or a sad predilection for elephant jokes†† and snaggly teeth.††† It’s all just a variety of takes on the concept of human.
I don’t read my reviews on amazon. Someone would have to hold a gun to my head first, and I’d really rather they didn’t. I’d probably find the reviews even more upsetting than the gun. I don’t think I’d be tempted to ring the FBI‡ if somebody posted that I should get a job as a florist or a peeler at a marmalade factory ‡‡, but allow me to point out (you will be having an easier time following me here if you’ve clicked on the ‘when authors attack’ link) that someone who is writing paperback-original romances probably doesn’t have any control over what’s on her book jacket, and probably does have a lot of absolute mandates from her editor. This doesn’t mean that she’d be a great writer if she were left to her own devices, only that she probably has some excuse for feeling frustrated and badly treated.‡‡‡ She’s still responsible for making herself look like a jackass in public, but people under stress don’t always behave beautifully—and for all we know her bank had foreclosed on her house last month and her husband ran off with the plumber.§
I am left to my own devices, mostly, and I would rather become a florist or a peeler at a marmalade factory than blame my editor for anything that appears on the printed page§§ but one of the permanent pains in the a . . . one of the inevitable and inescapable conflicts between writer and reader is that what you the writer are, or think you are, or think you are trying to be, doing, and what the reader reads are frequently two spectacularly, frellingly different things. This often causes . . . miscommunication.§§§ This is why criticism is so difficult to deal with . . . and for me it’s also why 95% of it is useless. Because the reader isn’t starting from where I’m starting. I can’t begin to tell you how important this is—and why therefore the writer’s responsibility for the story is so . . . well, stunning, which is an adjective I try not to use because it means blunt instrument to the base of the skull, but in this case that’s a very apt metaphor. Blunt instrument to the base of the skull. Yes. Stars, singing birds, swirly hallucinatory visual things and one gobsmacker of a headache. My first, last, and in-between loyalties are all to the story—and in my case 95% of the writing and the rewriting for me is listening to the story. It tells me what I need to do. The critical 5% I need from readers is where I don’t know that I’ve botched it—where the story may well be shouting at me but I’m not hearing it. There are lots of writers who like lots of input from the tottery beginnings of the first draft onwards. Not me. Other voices just make hearing the story harder. But ultimately, however the writer gets to the end, the story is the writer’s responsibility—no one else’s. And those of us who take stories seriously—and most writers and most readers do—take that responsibility seriously. This is a stressful situation by definition. For better and for worse. For clear-headed elucidation . . . and dark tangled ratbaggery.
It’s later than it ought to be (how did it get this late?) and I have to get up and ring bells at 8:45a.m. tomorrow morning again, but write this down: Authors are human. Just like all the other homo sapiens on the planet. Unfortunately this sometimes means we make idiots of ourselves. Publicly.
* * *
* I am driven mildly mad over the whole txt thing. Slightly less mildly now that I’m on Twitter, where 140 characters means that I have to worry about shortcuts. There will probably be a rant about this soon too.
** Although I fear that on this blog I am preaching to the converted. Oh, well, maybe there are a few innocent PhD combinatorics and ergodic theory lurkers out there somewhere who have got mesmerized by Days in the Life against their will for whom this will come as a blinding blaze of light and truth and change their lives forever.
*** The Story Council of course frequently sends them in non-standard envelope sizes so you wake up with another thundering headache because the postperson has folded the next instalment in half and banged it through the slot willy-nilly. And then you get the envelope open and discover that the font is Old High Gxyfylon and then you burst into tears.
† I’ve just been watching Angela Gheorghiu in La Boheme which may be what has put that thought into my mind. An opera every night for a month on Sky is starting to give me pink elephants.
†† So last century.^
^How can you tell if there’s an elephant in the room?+
How can you tell if an elephant has been in your refrigerator?++
††† Writers can have other individual characteristics too, you know.
‡ But I’m a wet knee-jerk liberal and not a big fan of the FBI
‡‡ But then I wouldn’t have read it, unless there was a gun to my head. The gun-wielder might demand I ring the FBI, I suppose.
‡‡‡ I myself am a lot more likely to take her internet connection away from her and send her for retraining as a widget-stamper for her misuse of quotation marks. http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/
§ Which is what I’m convinced happened with Alice Hoffman. I have no idea, but I’ve been a fan of hers for decades and met her a few times many years ago when the world, including her and me, was young, and I liked and admired her. And I’m sorry she had a really really really bad day . . . and if I were the reviewer I’d want her guts on a plate. But I have a certain tendency toward bad days myself . . . which is why Pollyanna has me on a short chain. A short spiked chain. And why I don’t read my own reviews.
§§ Although I would still be more than happy to peel and render into splinters the clever-clogs who tidied up SUNSHINE’s usage after I had signed off on the final proof pages
§§§ Possibly my pet authorial hate above all other pet hates^ is people who lambaste you not for the book you wrote, but for the book they wanted to read which is not the book you wrote.
^ This is rather drastic, but it’s probably the rabid wolverine to beat.
+ You can smell the peanuts on its breath.
++ Look for footprints in the butter.
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