I didn't say I wanted an elephant -- a set of muddy reflections on methods of writing

[pameladean]

David is fond of referring to the joke, or parable, or whatever it is, that begins, "I wish I could afford an elephant." The victim or interlocutor then responds, "Why do you want an elephant?" and the perpetrator replies, "I didn't say I wanted an elephant, I said I wished I could afford one."

All right, put that up on the shelf where it can wave its little trunk at you in a beguiling fashion from time to time when my sentences get too long.

When I looked at my Friends list entries today, I saw that both matociqualaand melymbrosia both have links to this set of remarks by Anne Rice about her working methods:



Discussion is quite brisk, and, the last time I looked, pretty universally condemned Rice for self-indulgence and having an elevated opinion of herself, or at least of her work. Since I have written and deleted about four responses as being too long and possibly too heated for other people's comments sections, I'm putting them here.

I don't actually like Anne Rice's work and never have liked it. This does mean that no matter what I may hear about her working methods, I will not have that moment when I realize why I had such a sense of betrayal when I read this or that work. I don't have any personal stake in whether she has gone off the rails or off the deep end into some mirrored cave, wasting her substance on navel-gazing and self-satisfaction rather than being humble enough to write better books; or whether she has made a difficult decision to trust herself and be true to her work as she understands it. I have in the past felt about once-adored writers that they had taken the trip over the cliff into the cave (miraculously not breaking any mirrors, metaphor being the flexible thing that it is), and it is indeed a painful sensation.

However, my sympathy in this matter is almost entirely with Rice. Writers operate along an infinite number of continuums, one of which has to do with what one might call feedback, or outside input, or merely consultation. Some can hardly function without it; others can bear it only at certain junctures in the work; others can hardly bear it at all. Some can move from state to state, depending on their mood or, more often, I suspect, on the work in question. That is the case with me -- I have finished some books only because I got constant encouragement, and others only because I completely disregarded all commentary.

Where I sympathize with Rice, however, is in her description of how she writes, of how everything is put into its proper shape as she goes along, everything is related to everything else as she conceives necessary; so that the finished work is one whole thing, not readily susceptible to requests to make this character older or add more stage directions to long conversations. I don't work the way she does, because I do in fact do successive drafts, recognizable as such to me and others. But my sense of the work as a whole thing, of its parts as connected at every level, so that a lack of stage directions here points up a plenitude of them there, and a character's stated age forms the way in which zie sees the world, is similar to what she describes.

This sense of the whole five-dimensional object is very fragile. It's hard to hold it in one's head. The very best and most necessary commentary disturbs one's grasp. I've refused to make changes to keep my grasp on the object I had made, and I have hared off eagerly to make changes I acknowledged as essential, and then found that there was no longer a whole object there and that in a number of ways I needed to start again from the beginning and envision the book all over again. This process is difficult and scary, and I have lost my grip on several books I was working on and had them plunge into the abyss, never, or at least not yet, to return.

I want my books to be good, and I understand that my conceptions of goodness in books, even in my own, are incomplete and askew and flawed. But sometimes it feels more important to retain my grasp on the whole living object, even if it has six eyes, than to let it go and make something with only two. I don't think that this is self-indulgence; I think it's a hard choice among imperfect outcomes.

I wish I could afford to do what Anne Rice has done. And because she can afford it, I am really not at all sure that it was the wrong choice for her to make. Some people really do want an elephant.

Pamela

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

This is a great post, by the way. And I also often have that sense of a book as a whole thing, once it's done--a completed story. Which is very hard for me to change as well.

I think what struck me as 'off' about Rice's remarks is the apparent arrogance of them. I've never in particular been a big fan of her work, but there's a real sense of a disregard for the reader in her statements that troubles me.

Probably because it totally contradicts the reasons why *I* write, and trips a squid of mine. I write to be read, and to give a reader as much of a sense of the stories I love as possible, and for me that's a gestalt thing.

The reader brings 50%, in other words. And it's often not the 50% that I anticipated, but as long as it's a 50% that turns my 50% into a story with an emotional and intellectual impact, that's all I want.

And something about the tone of Rice's essay left me thinking that she doesn't respect her readers, and their contribution to her stories. If that makes any sense at all.

[pameladean]

I didn't get that impression from Rice's remarks, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

My squid in this matter inhabits the other side of the ocean, I think. I believe that I respect my readers, but truly, I don't even, when I come to break it down, know what that means. Of the ones I know about, I respect most of them -- some of them are a lot smarter than I am, so that I feel honored when they take my work seriously; some of them are a lot like me; some are very different but able to leap the gap, or generously to say that I have done so. A few are, if not actually complete idiots, yet completely idiotic about my work, and perhaps are not really "my" readers at all, but unfortunates who have wandered into the wrong panel and wonder where the real author is.

In any case, I haven't any notion whatsoever of future readers or readers who have not communicated with me. I can't respect them, or not; I don't know anything about them. The only way I can respect them, it seems to me, is to be true to the whole work as I see it, to make it as good as I know how. It seems disastrous to proceed by trying to figure out how they'll react to anything. I'm sure that's not what you mean. Well, maybe it is. I am extremely sure that for some writers it would be disrespectful not to try to divine unknown readers' reactions, while for others it would be disrespectful to think of it for a moment.

I can see an argument that Rice doesn't respect editors. But really, it looks to me as if she is trying to reassure her readers that she does respect them, that she does the very best she can for them, and that she thinks that means not being edited. This may be misguided, but I don't see it as disrespectful.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think, for me personally on the inside of my own head, what irritated me about that essay was that she's ... well, what it looks like to me is that phase that all writers go through where we think we're god's own gift to the English language and nobody has the right to suggest we aren't. Only she's never come out of that phase to recognize that, in fact, she isn't god's own gift to the English language. Her books just aren't that good.

So the egotism and self-congratulatory back-patting, the quasi-mytiscal language, the defensive dismissal of critics as "slobs," and her persistently putting "copy editor" in quotes as if it were some quaint kind of ritual her publishing house had dreamed up just to annoy her: that's what rubbed me the wrong way.

So, for me, it's not necessarily that her method is bogus (although considering my opinion of her works, I can't really bring myself to believe that they wouldn't be better for some editorial input), as it is that her tone and language, the world-view implicit in what she writes, are deeply wrong-headed and pernicious. Especially in that she doesn't so much phrase it as, This is the only way I can work, as I don't need anyone else's opinion as long as my ego is gratified.

It's a language thing more than a writing philosophy thing. If that makes any sense?

[pameladean]

If I'd seen that in what Rice wrote I would certainly be pretty irate; and I do see your distinction between objecting to her methods and objecting to her tone.

It's really not about whether the books are good enough to justify the attitude, though. A working method is a working method, whether it produces diamonds or mud.

I do want to reiterate that sometimes it really seems that the choice is not between dealing with editorial input (whether that comes from an actual editor or from a writing group or from other beta readers) and ignoring it, but between producing a book without it, and not producing a book. Anybody's judgement of when what condition is in effect is liable to be flawed, but that's just the nature of the game. I don't think it works to say that certain working methods are only justified if the books are good. What control one has over how one works is awfully varied.

Pamela

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The question I wonder about, with Anne Rice, as with Heinlein and King: Apparently, she still sells. Are her readers getting intermittent reinforcement, with just enough of what they crave to wish that the next one will be better, or do they actually like the long-winded stuff? Inquiring minds want to know.

[pameladean]

Well, I like the long-winded Heinlein. At least, I like the long-windedness of it. What drives me crazy about later Heinlein is the way he handles metafictionality and satire. It doesn't work for me in the most complete fashion. But I don't mind how long he goes on, I just kind of wish he'd gone on inside a different structure. But what I really, really, really wish is that he'd figured out what structure he wanted, because I think he could have come up with something completely different that I would have found satisfying.

I don't think editing would have at all addressed the place he was in in terms of fictional structure.

Pamela

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Like I said on someone else's journal, I've only read three of Rice's books, and the three were enough, because I sensed something basic about her writing that I hated, and no story could be good enough for me to subject myself to her writing. I love Heinlein, I grew up reading him, and even my hatred for some of his later stuff in no way affects my love for his earlier work.

He had a knack for telling a story about people, about people that I cared about, that let me ignore things like his sexism and his procreation fixation and love the stories. King, I love his stories, and I watch the movies made, but I have a really really hard time reading his books. To date I have only successfully read The Running Man and...hm. Something else, let me go look at my shelf. Hm. My memory is not jogging. But anyway, I cannot force myself to read his books because there is something about his style that I just can't bear.

I don't know if the people who continue to read Anne Rice do so because they don't know the difference between good and bad writing, or because they don't care, or because they have less demanding senses of the aesthetic than mine.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

I read The Interview with the Vampire when I was fifteen and wishing to be edgier, darker, or just less blonde and giggly. It appealed to the giggly blonde goth in me. It was different from other things I'd read, and the boy of my then-dreams liked it so I thought it was terrific.

I have this bad habit, though. As a reader, if I don't like a sentence, I'll just skip to the next. Times I end up skipping whole chunks of story just to get to the next part that interests me. When I went back to reread that book (years later, after trying to read other of her works and being horribly disappointed or completely grossed out) I realized that I'd pretty much skipped through anything that wasn't dialog and moved on with my personal entertainment train.

Her sentences are boring. Some are very descriptive and pretty, but pretty in a vapid supermodel sort of way. Set decoration. It works, Kate Moss sells--put it out there!

What I've always liked best about your work is that your sentences are exciting. I don't mean in a jumping up and down excitement, but I'm always finding easter eggs in phrases--that kind of excitement. It seems that you take the time to craft a line. There is art in the effort.

My friends and I agreed that Ms. Rice started believing her press a long time ago, so she just keeps writing the same book over and over again, and changing names. We also agreed that our greatest fear for the twenty-second century is that Anne Rice and Danielle Steele will be hailed as the classics of our day, based solely on sales figures.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Our greatest fear for the twenty-second century is that Anne Rice and Danielle Steele will be hailed as the classics of our day, based solely on sales figures

The long run and the steady seller are your friends here: if you look back over the list of wildly bestselling nineteenth century novelists there will be numerous names that only the dedicated literary scholar will have heard of. However, Jane Austen, who was only moderately popular with a discerning audience among her contemporaries (to the best of my recollection), continues to sell in large numbers and has not been out of print for decades. Some writers(e.g. Charlotte Bronte) did have both the runaway contemporary success and now have the classic status, but they are not inextricably linked.

Anne Rice, however, I suspect is more in the camp of Victorian bestsellers Marie Corelli and Ouida, one of whom (I think Corelli) was so popular with the public that she stopped sending copies to reviewers, who were universally sneersome about her work, because she didn't need them.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

The process itself is ok; I found the tone pretty self-aggrandizing and dismissive of other methods, and dismissive of anyone who didn't like the result. To me, she seems to be saying that the process is, in fact, more important for judging the result than the product is.

Too, I think her writing process is in fact very ordinary -- I do something similar.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think I would have more sympathy if she said, "This is the best way for me to work--the best way for me to try to remain true to my vision of a story--even though it also has downsides." But when she says,

"I asked this due to my highly critical relationship with my work and my intense evolutionary work on every sentence in the work, my feeling for the rhythm of the phrase and the unfolding of the plot and the character development. I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone. In othe words, what I had to offer had to be offered in isolation."

it sounds more like she's saying that what she does is perfect, and editing could only damage it.

But a lot of my reaction may be simply the response of someone who can't *help* but look at writing sort of intellectually after the initial draft, who finds that a very important and rewarding part of writing, to a more emotional and fluid sort of writer.

[cofax7]

What she said (naturally, at this point: I tend to follow Mely around the internet and parrot her).

I understand the desire to produce something in isolation, particularly as one gets more experienced in the craft. You want it to be your own vision, uncolored by others' expectations or desires.

I get that. I also get that Rice's work sells, regardless of its quality. But I just don't get the conviction I hear in that statement that her work needs no improvement other than spelling and grammar corrections.

Nobody's that good. There's not a novel in the universe that couldn't have been improved, a little or a lot. And that's what another eye is for. That's what my editors are for.

If I'm ever at the point where I really think my prose is so perfect and jewel-like as to be in need of no review, that my narrative structure requires no tweaking, that my plot works perfectly and all my characters are fully-fleshed and engaging, all without outside review? ... Actually, I can't think of a suitable punishment because I can't see it happening. Nobody would ever let me get away with it.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

"This sense of the whole five-dimensional object is very fragile. It's hard to hold it in one's head."

How _do_ you hold it in your head?

I "see" it as a five-dimensional tactile sculpture. I won't say it's the _right_ way for me, since I haven't yet had professional sales; but it seems to be working better than other things I've tried. For at least some people, being able to "visualize" with one or more senses makes things easier to grasp and to remember.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I love this image of the five-dimensional object.

For me, the process is different for each book. There was one where the process of uncovering it was like uncovering a fossil: the shape of the book was there already, and I felt as if I was just discovering it with my little brush and my painstaking work.

Then there is one that I built. I had all the pieces and the blueprint and it just went up like a house you build from a kit, 100K in 30 days. Bang. Minor revisions. It just fell together perfectly--and oddle enough, that one is my least favourite of everything I've written.

Sometimes I outline and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I close my eyes and feel around in the stream until something flops against my fingers. Sometimes I start with a block of marble and carve off everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

There's that great Gene Wolfe quote via Neil Gaiman. "You never learn how to write a novel. You learn how to write this novel."

I dunno if anything on earth is more true.

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I personally can't comment on the way she writes the books, or even her refusal to take editorial suggestions on the work as a whole. That is entirely her right.

But the dismissal of basic quality editing bothered me. Anne Rice is big enough to have her sentances unchanged. But someone else should still be able to fix the spelling.


It is the disregard for basic professionalism that annoys me. She is welcome to plot, structure and word choice. But she seemed, just a little to ego driven on the things that everyone needs editing on before a professional work is published. The search for the bad spelling.

[firecat]

I haven't read the essay, and I stopped reading Rice once her books became voluminous.

But mainly I'm posting because I want to thank you for this, which made me relax a lot about my current lack of interest in seeking out feedback for my incomplete writings:

Writers operate along an infinite number of continuums, one of which has to do with what one might call feedback, or outside input, or merely consultation. Some can hardly function without it; others can bear it only at certain junctures in the work; others can hardly bear it at all. Some can move from state to state, depending on their mood or, more often, I suspect, on the work in question.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

made me relax a lot about my current lack of interest in seeking out feedback for my incomplete writings:

God, yes. I know a wonderful neopro writer who semi-regularly throws in the towel and swears she'll never write again because one of her first readers comes back with a bucketfull of write-your-own-goddamned-story comments on what she's working on. And she's good. Better than good. Amazing.

Just, not so ready to trust her stories yet.

You gotta do it your own way, no matter what. There was a big discussion around here a while back about George Elliot not ever wanting to see her criticism. You do what you gotta do to get through the day and get the words on the page.

I'm not sure there's another profession, even inside the creative arts, that's quite so much like haggling open a vein every morning as writing is.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating discussion and relevant to various thoughts I have been trying to get into a coherent form myself. I've made an initial essay at this in my own lj. But this is all still provisional - not that I think there is One True Answer, it's more about trying to formulate the questions.

[ionas.livejournal.com]

I rad the essay, thought about it, then finally realized that in my perceptive lense the empress was lovingly describing her new clothes.

That's okay, but I am not going to stand in line looking, because I really don't care for what I see.

*whew*

[pameladean]

This entire discussion has given me so much to contemplate that I am not coming out for a month. I'm trying to think of some non-gushy non-gooey way to say how great you all are, every single person who has contributed to this particular segment of the discussion. But it's too early in the morning.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a great discussion.

the whole five-dimensional object

I love that phrase.

I had the same reaction to the Rice tidbit many had -- I was very very put off. But after reading what Pamela had to say, I realized -- 1) I hate talking about work-in-progress specifically to people. I might say "I'm having real trouble getting from chapter three to chapter four" and that's about it. 2) Similarly, I hate showing work-in-progress to people. I like showing stuff that's Done. Now, this might be a Done first draft or Done third draft or Done nth draft, but it's very rare that I show "raw" draft Number Anything to anyone. I find it just immediately kills what I have to say. There's a certain point, and after I pass it, it's fine to show the work to people, fine for them to make criticism, fine for me to accept or reject it, whatever. And there have been plenty of times sine I've begun writing that I've realized I'm writing keeping one person's opinion, or what I think the market's opinion, in mind and have to go back and start all over again.

But. I think what put a lot of people off (including me) is not so much that Rice was saying what she wrote was too perfect to never need editing (which IMHO is a red herring), but that the draft she submitted wouldn't have any mistakes. In other words, the state of Done-ness in which she submitted her manuscript would have it be Perfect. I think all of us who write have had the experience of giving a Done, Perfect, Finished, I-Have-Done-It manuscript to a trusted friend/reader/critic/editor/whomever and had them come back two and a half hours later quietly saying, "I loved this but....the end doesn't work." We're stunned. It doesn't? But -- but -- and then we reread the work, with the benefit of someone else's eyes momentarily handed to us (yuck, what an image, as if they were St. Catherine or something) and realize: Damn. They're right.

There's that famous Faulkner line -- "Murder your darlings." It's as if Rice is saying, "My darlings are prefect and don't need to be copy-edited, let alone murdered." I think that was the tone that got peoples' hackles up. Or, at least, got mine up. (And what are hackles anyway? Are they like grackles at all?)

moi

As if it was a serious question...

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

(And what are hackles anyway? Are they like grackles at all?)

"Hackles" are the hairs on the back of a carnivore's neck that stick up when the animal is reacting to stress in an aggressive manner.

You see this on 'Halloween cats' and on strange dogs squaring off against each other. It means something very like, "You wanna rumble? You wanna rumble? Bring it on, dude. I'm ready."

Grackles are crow-relative birds.

- hossgal

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, after reading the Guardian article, I was taken back to my days at the Interlochen Arts Academy when I'd had my first piano lesson with a piano teacher that had made me cry, ever, and I finally admitted this to an oboeist friend of mine who said dismissively, "Oh, the best teachers all make you cry." I had issues with that, and still do. But I also don't thrive on really spirited debate, as a number of friends of mine do (i.e. arguing every little tiny point in a very aggressive manner) to the point where I've gotten uncomfortable being around them because I feel every thing I say has to be debate-proof. (It's a Socrates Complex, I suppose.) But....but....it seems to me there's a big difference between that kind of knock-down criticism, and editing. -- I did remember that in the memoir the movie Hilary and Jackie was based on, Hilary claimed she was actually seen as the more musically talented of the two sisters until Jacqueline des Pres found a teacher who was supportive of her very emotional, sweeping style and didn't concentrate on things like "Don't sway while you're playing!" while Hilary had a teacher who was the exact opposite ("Start all over, you play everything wrong, you have to begin at the beginning"). She felt her musical career was basically derailed after that. But I do think such harshness is more typical of musical teaching rather than writing advice (or maybe it's just that I haven't run into any ferocious editors).

moi

[vass]

Re: 'the best teachers make you cry'

I think the best teachers in the world won't help you if you can't learn from them. I had a teacher - I've sacked her since - who would say "No, no, not like that! Have you not looked at the music at all?" and fail to notice that I was crying so hard I couldn't get the notes out. Most other people I know who've learned from her think she's wonderful, though very severe.

such harshness is more typical of musical teaching rather than writing advice

I've heard of people whose confidence was savaged by their English or Creative Writing teachers. I think editors, in function, might be more equivalent to music directors. They might be harsh, but they do have a job to do apart teaching one.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I'm shutting up now. No, really. But did anyone else remember the claim that "Shakespeare never blotted a line"?

moi

What, never?

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I remember that in Robert Penn Warren's Paris Review
interview, Warren brought this up and had unkind things to say about Ben Jonson.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think her essay could also be improved by some good editing. She seems to be jumping back and forth among 1) how she writes, 2) that she is able to insist that her publisher accept this method of writing, and 3) that she's proud of that fact.

1) Speaking as someone who has 100+ people read my book drafts, her writing methdology does sound bizarre.

3) It also sounds arrogant.

2) On the other hand, she's a best-selling author, so I suppose she's entitled to some measure of arrogance.

1) Still, I can't believe that any book isn't improved by good editing.

3) I once drove by her home in New Orleans. It looked arrogant, too.

B

[vass]

that they had taken the trip over the cliff into the cave (miraculously not breaking any mirrors, metaphor being the flexible thing that it is)

This passage immediately made me think of the Lady of Shalott.

[(Anonymous)]

Based on what I've read of Rice's fiction and on what I managed to read of her biography (http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?kw=prism+of+the+night&;pokey=skeptopotamus), her novels seem to be more like pornography than literary fiction. I don't mean this as an insult but as a description of her attitude to what she writes. She's not making a work of art, she's inventing an imaginary world that she would rather live in. Many people (of whom I am not one) would like to visit that world.

In other words, if she submitted her work to her editor in the ordinary fashion, it might end in better books but they wouldn't be her fantasy any more.

You also might say her books are what Mary Sues look like when they're original fiction. She is Lestat (or whoever).

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Whatever sells.

B

subthread moved

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

This ways-of-thinking sub-discussion has been moved to my web journal.

Another writer heard from

[(Anonymous)]

I have two thoughts on this:

1. There are many different ways to write, and what works for me is the "fly into the mist" method. I don't, in fact, hold the five dimensional object in either my head or my hand I just throw it ahead of me (like a frisbee? a discus? a feather in the wind?) and try desperately to follow after.

2. Anyone writer who catagorically dismisses editorially imput is a fool. Maybe a RICH fool. (ie Rice, Rowling) but a fool nonetheless. I'm still revising after the book is printed, for ghu's sake. There's always room for improvement.

Jane Yolen