Why I Don't Put My Oar In--Oh, and Happy Solstice

[dr_pretentious]

That big Communal Dialogue about where the line falls between Science Fiction and Fantasy is still going on. It's been going on for months, all over the blogosphere. All the Cool Kids Are Doing It. (If you haven't seen it for yourself and want to, go visit matociquala, who has posted links to what seem to be most of the notable essays and discussions over the past several weeks.) twoeleven even tried to get me to have a Professional Opinion on the subject. And I gave that a try, in my head, because I used to write very pretty criticism. It turns out I'm still allergic to it. I can enjoy the successes of my friends who've stayed in academia, and I'm a fine dissertation coach for other people's dissertations, but the minute my brain starts constructing new paragraphs that footnote Jurgen fucking Habermas, I start to feel nauseated, like with real nausea and stuff. Sometimes also shaking. At one point, as I was driving from DC to Jersey on the Turnpike, I was on the verge of deciding to post at length on the genre boundary issue, and my revulsion at academic discourse was so great, I had to pull over. I Won't Go Back to Jail! Knock yourselves out, guys. Ask me again in five years.

I tell stories. I build sentences. That's the work that makes life sweet. I think about that work, but theorizing is not the only form thinking can take. Theorizing, in the lit crit sense of the term, is, in my experience, the least useful form of thinking for a person who wants to insinuate her images into the dream lives of strangers.

What I find almost heartening about the ongoing debate among the Cool Kids is that my longer book is exactly what the more interesting people in the debate seem to want: a fantasy novel of democratizing revolution; a fantasy novel whose what-ifs challenge, rather than fetishize, the order of things; a fantasy novel whose setting is more like 1789 than like 1066. My longer book does, or with revision is on its way to doing, several of the putatively enlightened things the Hard Science Fiction True Believers claim fantasy can't do.

Wouldn't it be fun to be smug right now? I wish I had more hope that the big book would ever see print.

***

Happy Solstice, to those of you who celebrate it. This year Dan and I decided that, rather than try to find individual Yule gifts for the Pagans in our community who are not actually part of our coven, we'd give a big, chunky donation to the ACLU. We figure the Bill of Rights is one-size-fits-all. And, in the one-size-fits-all spirit, Happy More Light Real Soon Day.

Comments

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

hm. my memory of what i asked for must be getting hazy. either that, or you're thinking of something much longer ago than i am.

oh dear god yes, working title does indeed do all the right things. even i can recognize that. i hadn't heard of those as the things fantasy can't do, but i also lost interest in the debate, after del_c simplified it. all i want now is a good story, well told.

:tips hat in dr. p's direction.

[wayzgoose.livejournal.com]

Hooray for you! Why should anyone get sick over what separates SciFi and Fantasy. One wise person told me, "If Barnes and Noble puts it on the Science Fiction shelf, it's Science Fiction." As far as I can tell, B&N makes no distinction whatsoever betwen SciFi and Fantasy. But what do they know?

Having just finished my Yule celebration (last guest is asleep in the guest room and I'm drinking the last glass of champagne in front of the computer), thank you for the lovely gift to the ACLU. I've tried it on and it looks stunning; fits like a glove. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and "Here Comes the Sun" to you!

[dragonlaire.livejournal.com]

After Nano, I joined a dozen or more writing communities and found myself critiquing almost every post. I've gotten pretty tired of that activity; it's dull and dead writing and can only harm my own efforts. I used to write technical papers for an actuarial firm and it took a few years to get the ossified language out of my system. Now I find myself back at it. I truly believe that there are those who write and those who write about writing. It's an easy choice, I think.

[catpaw67.livejournal.com]

The ACLU is perfect. We're doing likewise with the ASPCA. :-) Thanks!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Be smug anyway. And the book may indeed see print someday; it sounds like exactly the sort of thing there's a readership for.

Wrap it up and get it out on a street corner!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I truly believe that there are those who write and those who write about writing. It's an easy choice, I think.

Oh, I dunno about that. I find I can't internalize craft until I try to explain it to somebody else--or get into a great big argument about it.

I was stalled for years as a not-very-good writer because I didn't have a community to haul me over the hurdles.

There are indeed some writers who can't talk about writing, especially when they're doing it. But for a lot of us, it's part of the learning curve, and the idea that ART is a black box into which you put talent and inspiration, and genius comes out without thrashing or hashing things out is pretty much Romantic (capital-R) tomfoolery.

'course, one doesn't learn just by talking. There's also that million words of shit to get through. Just talking about writing means one is a poseur.

Writers write.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The First Amendment is especially flattering on you. Brings out your eyes.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

There are ways to talk about writing that I still find enjoyable. Writing about the craft of writing, for instance. When I think as an artisan, I have ideas about the object of my scrutiny, but they're not the same kinds of ideas that I have when I think as a theorist/critic/scholar. Really, these various approaches to the writing under examination require distinctly different states of consciousness. I hope that, maybe in five years, I'll have got over the decade-long mistake of my career in academia, and I'll be able to use the skills I developed as an academic without feeling I'm in danger of getting trapped indefinitely in scholar-mind again.

I think it's a fine thing that other people are having this discussion of genre boundaries. Boundary policing is, in itself, not all that useful, but it seems to be producing a lot of other interesting ideas, as a sort of side effect.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I have reason to hope for a straight answer from an agent soon. It may not a favorable answer, but a straight answer from someone in the industry, based on actually having read the ms, will be an unprecedented milestone.

And thanks, too, for the generous spirit of your blog. When people ask me why I think lj is more than just a time-sink, I describe the kinds of things I've learned from reading your posts.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*nod* I think the most interesting posts are the ones that are about knocking down the genre boundaries, really.

Poetry grows from the cracks, as somebody said.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you. *g* It occurred to me ages ago that the writer blog I really wanted to read (before I was published) was the one about how you do it. By which I mean, how you survive writing for a living, and its many pains and pleasures--including the sensation of parading naked down the high street.

So that's kind of what I try to write.

In between the frothing.

And yes, just allowing things to be read--declaring them complete--is a huge milestone.

I am really sorry, by the way, that your trip through academe was so traumatic. Mine was frustrating in different ways, but it is handy in that it's given me a useful critical vocabulary.

[dragonlaire.livejournal.com]

I think your remarks about the usefulness of discussing the work habits and techniques of writers are absolutely correct. Personally, I enjoy talking with other craftsmen about tools and how to get things done. I've simply been doing far too much critiquing of very amateur work, almost as an obligation. I don't mind doing it, even on a regular basis, but I've got to budget my time better so community participation doesn't interfere with my own work. You might say I was having a bad day when I last posted.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Bad days happen to everyone, and critiquing beginner work...I only do it as a teacher, which is to say, when people pay me. Read that stuff without some kind of reciprocity of value, and it'll strike you blind.