After more than a month of inactivity Tweeding has returned to it's dark little corner of youtube. Come and welcome it back as I bitch and moan about poor journalisma nd the gits who read it.
It has been brought to my attention that my video this week missed some major points I needed to make about fan fiction. One criticism received was that, although I make it abundantly clear I dislike the form, I did not do enough to outline why. In this blog I will endeavour to leave my temper to one side and explain just why fan fiction is a waste of our time.
Let me begin by clarifying some points made in the video. Firstly: the problem of fandom. I would hope I made it clear that fan fiction is inherently flawed as it stems from the obsessive world of fandom. We should be remorseful that an individual has allowed a book, film, game or TV show to overpower so much of their life. So much that, when they decide to embark on a creative endeavour, they feel their creativity must be shaped around the comforting model of their beloved franchise. Normally an act of creative endeavour would be a betterment to the individual, however, with fandom at its core, the creative effort is doomed to atrophy.
I imagine, if fan fiction advocates are reading this post, that they will now wish to inform me many fan fictions are quite the opposite from what I have described. I am sure most will be glad to explain how fan fiction is largely a vehicle entirely for movement, where the characters and events from an existing series are taking to new places and explored further than they were in the original context.
This is wrong I’m afraid but more than understandable. The distinction between creative movement and the work of fan fiction authors can prove to be a subtle one. However the distinction is much clearer after some scrutiny.
When I say that fan fiction hinders movement I am thinking of how artist must interact with art. To be an artist one must observe art to learn from it. An artist will absorb the work. They will read it, view it hear, watch it and then, having taken the art in, will use what they have learnt through their observation to improve their own efforts. This is how art is digested and used much as we take in proteins and starches and then use them to live and grow. However, fan fiction is like eating so we have the energy to eat again. It is a cycle that goes nowhere. When someone reads a book, decides they like the characters and decides to make new stories for those same characters they enter this cycle. They choose not to move on or learn from the piece of art, they instead decide to wallow in it. This of course returns us back to the first point about fandom. Fan fiction devotees cannot move on with their work because of their obsession.
I have spoken in a particularly highbrow manner here so it is only fair I address a highbrow argument. I claim fan fiction refuses to move on and only lingers on a treadmill of the same repeating characters and plots, but how can I say art is better when any and all forms of art are riddled with repetition. How can I ignore authors whose major themes repeat book after book? Am I ignoring that Van Gough painted the same Sun Flowers over and over again? Or every time the Madonna was painted during the Renaissance? Well of course I’m not ignoring or forgetting these things. Again, we must make our distinctions more subtle.
There are a multitude of reasons why an artist would repeat the same painting or the same themes. In the case of the painter it is often simply practice. The same arranged still life over and over again may show the painter the way. With each sunflower Van Gough finished his skill improved.
Then there is the bigger one. The artist simply has more to say. That would explain exactly why authors use the same themes in their books. It was clear that Asimov always had more questions about technology and the robot he felt needed to be asked. Poets and authors and film makers and musicians and filmmakers have things to say and it is unlikely that all the questions a human being can raise are going to be addressed in one four minute song or three stanza poem. Even a novel is a grossly limited thing. These repetitions are just another sign of the artist’s movement. They are proactive as well as retrospective. With each new Madonna painting the artist added something and said something about the Madonna that hadn’t been mentioned before.
Fan fiction, however, does not do this. Fan fiction doesn’t do this because, sing along you know the words, its roots are in fandom and fanaticism. Fan fiction is intended to move neither the writer nor the writing. It instead comes from a desire to see more of the same. The fan fiction writer wishes to indulge in more of their favourite thing, certainly not to consider its passing or the need for their own movement.
The difference between repetition in fan fiction and repetition in art is like the difference between a band singing a cover and a cover band. The band singing a cover had heard a song that they find inspiring or touching and they feel they have something to add to this song’s ethos. They take the song and adapt it in slight and meaningful ways to make it their own and to deliver a subtly different message from before. The fan fiction cover band however just plays the same song in exactly the same way. The lead singer dyes his hair to look like the original frontman and the entire band is obsessed with being someone else. Perhaps if they had more confidence in their own identity, they wouldn’t feel the need to take someone else’s.
So this week instead of a thought out post I'm just blundering through a half baked apology and a promise for something better soon.
Unfortunately enough I've had to take a job this summer working catering at my university to get a little extra cash flow into my account. This has woken me out of my usual childish stupour and I am no longer able to concentrate all my time on my personal endeavours.
I have had plans this week but time has hindered in their development. I had wanted to discuss the nature of narrative voice with examples of where it is effective and where it is less so. I was going to refer J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, undoubtedly one of the greatest and most natural uses of a distinct narrative voice. I would then compare it to the narrative voice in Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle which leaves a little to be desired although I will reccomend it as a wonderful book to read at least once. However, I am currently re-readingThe Catcher in the Rye and have yet to finish it. I alos have not had much time to sit and gather appropriate quotes or fully structure my argument. This proposed blog will be coming soon though perhaps not next week.
Instead I will mention just how I feel about the catcher in the Rye and make a heartfelt plea that all of you go read it. If you have read it before or have never read it doesn't matter just please pick it up.
It is a beautiful book about a beautiful character and touches on so much of what we may refer to as 'growing up in the west'. It is a wonderful book for a teenager but can imporve as you age as you beter understand the narrative, the character, yourself and the world you are living in.
Though, as a closing thought, as we discuss this influential piece of 'teen' literature, I have made an observation of teenagers. At my job the work is currently focussed around serving visiting European Students. These are students as in secondary school pupils. As I have served them lunch and cleaned up after them and listened to them chatter at the tables I came to realise something. Even if you don't understand what they're saying, their is something inate in the way a teenager speaks that always makes them sound as if they are bitching.
When looking around on Twitter, I saw Susan Arendt from The Escapist had posted a link to an Escapist article anonymously written on the subject of rape in gaming culture. It’s important that people read that article so please, at some point, follow this link to the site.
The subject of rape in gaming is, however, not what I wish to discuss this week. My thoughts on the subject are roughly so; yes I think the use of the word rape in gaming slang is inappropriate at best, games often have a blasé attitude to the concept and people are being fairly dumb about it. I don’t wish to get further into the discussion because frankly I don’t know enough about it to have any useful input. What I want to discuss instead is how I felt when reading the article.
I would imagine many of you find this offensive. It does not surprise me and I make no excuses. The quality of prose is not the issue in this case. The issue is that the author is writing about this subject and baring something traumatic to the world so people will pay attention. It’s a noble thing what this anonymous author has done. This is especially clear when he describes how painful the process of writing the article was. We cannot demand exceptional standards when the author is ‘dry-heaving over the toilet every half hour’ during the process of writing. Overcoming that hardship is already exceptional.
Though I don’t fully believe what I’ve just said. There is, always, a place for criticism. A piece of work, when so personal and so painful, is granted many concessions but it does not make it a good piece of work. This article is made for its message not its quality of prose. However, as literature has shown us, a message is best communicated when the prose is the best it can be. Hulme’s thoughts on communication are fast becoming my golden rules for writing but let me remind you ‘real communication is very rare, for plain speech is unconvincing’ and that is why we must think with a literary mind when writing anything.
I had a similar crisis of conscience before where I heard a woman reading a piece of prose she wrote about her son. He had been rendered comatose by a fight after a gig he performed. He survived but his mother wrote about the trauma of seeing her child in that state. I thought the language and phrasing she used was, frankly, poor when compared to the standard she should have been working at. I was very awkward about raising my doubts to anyone because I could already hear the voices telling me, “it was personal don’t be so harsh”. Though I decided to say nothing then, I admit now I thought it was shoddy. I have considered my posing during the months between then and now and I realised we must critique her, not just because she is a writer but because he was not writing to inform. The article I mentioned before was informative and does that admirably but she wrote about her son’s condition to write a good piece. Her work was intended as creative and expressive and the way she chose to express herself was remiss. She communicated poorly with confused metaphors and heaps of melodrama.
Writers have always written personally or of things that carry a deep meaning to them, cishowever, the quality of writing has always come first. Ken Kesey and Silvia Plath’s writing on mental health in prose and poetry are measured and precise in their delivery and much more powerful for it. We, as critical readers, must put the author aside. Though it is amazing how a man can dredge up such painful emotions and how a woman can make something out of her son’s peril we must allow the author to die as we read. ‘The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author’ and we cannot allow ourselves to forget our place as critical readers and be swayed by the author’s influence. If the prose is flawed we must acknowledge it and cast any guilt aside. To allow for a slide in quality, even if for a seemingly good reason, will harm literature for the sake of good intentions.
Dude long time no speak! Loving the blog, what happened to the bondage video though? Have I just missed that or did it get replaced?
I honestly can't remember if I ever embedded it here on my tumblr page. I will do so now. If not the bondage video can be found on my Youtube Channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/MrHarrisonB/videos
I'm just about to move house. Of course that means I am currently going through the motions of folding all my possessions away as tightly as possible and pushing them into a corner.
I lifted up my bed this evening to clean out all the junk underneath it. There were a few things in needed to pack away and a lot of things to be binned. One of the things I was keeping was DVD. It was a home made DVD from an amatuer filmaker I know. Last time I paid this DVD any attention was when a relationship had crashed and burned and it had been left in the girl's house. Her flatmate delivered it back to me and I was so insulted the girl hadn't given it back herself I put it away and never paid it any attention. That was in May of last year I think. Maybe June. Today, at least a year later, I looked at it, rembered what the short film was about so I took a look inside the box. It was quite a while before I examined the slip of paper tucked beside the poorly printed disc.
She'd left me a note. It reads; "We'll talk when you stop hating me... again."
Tonight I had to reassess the last twelve months of my life and the assumptions I had made in that time. It was not a pleasant experience.
I feel incredibly touched now that I've found this note but I'd like this to serve as a warning to us all. When we have something really important to say - we need to say it. We have to find that person and tell them to their face; let them know immediately what they need to know. Try a round about way of doing it and you never know how it could end up.
The last time someone left me a note like this whas when my father left home. He left a scribbled note in the drawer of my bedroom desk. I found it eight years later.
Like John Green says to his son Henry, use your words people.
This week I would like to refer back to a quote I included in last Thursday's blog post. It was a quote by T. E. Hulme where he said, 'it is in this rare act of communication that you get the root of aesthetic pleasure'. The quote was part of an extract discussing the mastery of language as a means of communication. In this sentence Hulme seeks to dispell the myth that the supposed "elegance" is the root of pleasurable reading. Instead he contends that it is the use of language as a precise and exact tool to effectively communicate that brings pleasure to the reader. He believes that, though language must be selective and exact, it is the moment the writer tells the reader something better than he could in a conversation that the reader is truly pleased.
Though his thoughts on language are astute and always relevant, I wish to focus instead on the act of communication in story telling rather than the craft of writing. Directly before the sentence I have quoted Hulme says 'real communication is very rare, for plain speech is unconvincing' and praises "creative wiriting" as a more effective means of communicating than everyday talk. When he says 'plain speech is unconvincing' Hulme is speaking of an honesty that we lack when we speak to one another. The ways we use our language, both written and spoken, reveal more about ourselves when we must encourage empathy and sympathy in others. Hulme refers to it in writing but I wish to extend it to aural communication as well as I promote the postive qualities of story telling.
As I have moved away from my family home and rarely see my mother, now when I do I ask her to tell me stories. I ask her for stories about her life or my brother's; stories that I wouldn't know. I prefer for her to tell me about the years before I was born, because that element of my mother's life is almost entirely alien to me. Whenever she speaks to me about any of these things, from her realtionship with her aunt to which school she attended, I learn so much I never knew about a woman I have known my whole life. Almost like Hulme says 'this rare act of communication' brings me great pleasure. Though she doesn't painstakingly choose her words for the greatest effect, the very act of learning even a little about my mother's life is a pleasure to me.
I have found this with almost everyone I meet. The more I am told stories of the people I know, the more I know them and the greater the relationship becomes. I love to hear any and all stories at least once, though I will admit the greatest joy is derived from hearing something I had no prior knowledge of. This is why I love talking to people older than myself. My friends who are the same age as me have lived through the same days and the same systems with relatively little variation. I love to hear about things that didn't happen when I was in school or can't be done anymore.
I believe now I may have made my first point for the week; "ask people to tell you stories." Your connection to these people will be richer and and wonderful for it.
However, there is a second point and that is you must begin to tell your own stories. Pleasure is derived from communcation and we as humans best communicate when it goes both ways. Tell people stories and they will come to understand you. If they learn about your past or just even the way you tell an anecdote they will come away knowing you better. It is ood for all of us to understand eachother more and showing yourself to someone by telling them any story about your life - anything - is an experience that will enrich your life as well as theirs.
In the spirit of this my Youtube channel will include several videos where I will share stories with my viewers. The first one goes up today and I will tell the story of the weirdest way i ever got a date. There will be a link on my Tumblr page, please take a look.
I've really gotten into Twitter recently and I'm quite enjoying everything I'm doing. I love that fact that, if I follow Musicians, Actors or Comedians I like, I'll find out what everyone's doing becasue they'll tell me themselves. It means I don't miss out on the things like I used to.
However, I recently began following the Writer's Digest because it looked pretty interesting. They Tweet links to articles and I read some of them are they are indeed interesting. However, the Writer's Digest publishes lots of 'X ways to Y' articles. They're stuff like "7 Ways to Write a Stand-Alone Book". Then there's the "4 Weeks to Break Into Copywriting" and the "Plan Your Novel Writing Journey with WD Start Writing That Book Kit!". When these all come together I'm suddenly and regrettably reminded of certain emails and pop-up adds. All of these Tweets by WD are just one step away from "7 Ways to Make her Want You!", "Get Ripped in 4 Weeks!" and "New Formula Male Enhancment Pills!" Am I the only one seeing this?
Now, I don't want to dismiss the WD. It has masses of followers with a huge readership and obviously deserves some respect. Yet so do women's magazines like Pick Me Up and Heat all of which hock bullshit products and schemes - usually some celebrity and her diet.
I would give the WD the benefit of the doubt but "4 Weeks to Break Into Copywriting" is a bullshit marketing line and they know it. I don't believe the WD are scamming people, but they're sure as hell implying results that their magazines and products are cannot produce. I keep telling myself I'll click on one of those Tweeted links and find out how true or false the claims are but after years of avoiding any pop-up or bullshit email I cannot bring my finger to click.
Maybe someone else can go and scout ahead, for me and people who write everywhere.
I would like to preface this blog entry with the disclaimer that, as said in my Video Blog on 7th June, I believe the word writer to be inappropriate in many, if not most, incidences. As a result, I will be using the phrase ‘people who write’ where many would say writer. I will also refer extensively to, the mature and immature writer as I believe a distinction must be made between the two.
In the preface of his book The Writer’s Voice, Al Alvarez writes ‘a writer doesn’t properly begin until he has a voice of his own’ and, if not this exact quote, the self-centred people who write will soon discover this notion. It is unfortunate that many do not discover it through this quote. If they did they would continue to read ‘young writers hoping to cut a figure on the scene often confuse voice with stylishness’ and in doing so would be warned of a coming pitfall. Instead they are charmed by the concept of voice as identity and their identity as authors. They will be woefully unaware of how Roland Barthes stated ‘writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin’ and will instead believe, for a period at least, that the voice is the writing.
Hulme described writing like drawing with an architect’s curve made of springy steel. He wrote, ‘the ingrained habit of technique, may be represented by a man employing all his fingers to bend the steel out of its own curve and into the exact curve which you want’, referring to the mastery of language in writing. However, I feel the same image, with a different emphasis, would aptly describe the actions of the immature writer as he or she forces his or her preferred identity onto their writing. The immature writer believes he or she must establish their voice, style, identity, and believe this may be done by arbitrarily deciding on one and vowing only to write in that manner. In this instance the architect’s curve is still language as a tool, however, instead of being manipulated to perfection, the curve is forced into discordant shapes. They enforce their perceived identity and in doing so neglect the quality of their writing. The result is similar to the strict regulation of poetry prior to the Modernist movement. Alvarez said ‘metrical virtuosity had almost taken over from meaning’ and in this instance voice/style/identity is taking over from quality. Just as poets like Pound and Eliot found the rules of Georgian metre to be a restriction on poetry’s growth the immature writer will be constricted by his or her own desire for an established voice.
In order to develop away from immature writer people who write must recognise the principles that ‘it is in this rare act of communication that you get the root of aesthetic pleasure’ and ‘style, in this basic sense, is a discipline that you acquire through hard work’. In short they must realise that voice, style and identity are not preordained and must be grown through work as a person who writes. Barthes said it best; ‘voice, is not the true place of the writing, which is reading.’
However, we as people who write may observe that, just as reading makes the writing, through the work of developing in style and voice, it is the writing that will eventually make the author.
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