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.

[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?

[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]

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

[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

*nod*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And her system does 'work' for her, where 'work' is keep enough of her readers happy to keep her in print. I can't really answer for the quality of her work, as I haven't read anything of hers since Lasher, which was enough to convince me She Wasn't For Me.

"perhaps are not really "my" readers at all, but unfortunates who have wandered into the wrong panel and wonder where the real author is." This made me laugh out loud. I've the good fortune to belong to a really wonderful online workshop and have a crit group that I think is just outstanding, and those are the readers I write 'to,' if that makes any sense.

But every so often I do get a response to which I have exactly that reaction: "Who are you, and what have you done with the story I thought I wrote?"

[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

Re: *nod*

[pameladean]

Oh, yes, I do know what you mean about writing to one's first readers, one's critique group, whatever. I still do that, though I haven't really had a writing group since about 1986. But even so, sometimes I blatantly disregard everything they say.

And yeah, the reactions from the fringes of one's audience can be just boggling, as if another universe had accidentally spilled over into this one.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I see your point. And, my god, if the woman needs to write books, then I don't care how she does it, if she has to hang upside down over a tank of sea otters and dictate in Mandarin Chinese to a team of trained wombats. That's fine. (What? Doesn't everybody work that way?)

I can't quite isolate what it is that irritates me--whether it's just that I have so little respect for Anne Rice as a writer that I'm offended by her pontificating, or whether that pontifical tone would irritate me from anybody, or what.

I think maybe what both matociquala and I are responding to is a tone we detect in that essay indicating that she doesn't actually give a rat's ass about anyone else's opinion: she knows that what she's written is Perfect, and that's what matters.

You don't seem to have gotten that from the essay, which may mean that I'm reading in something that isn't there. But I hope we can agree that there's a difference between saying, I cannot allow anyone else's opinion to come between me and this book, and No one else's opinion is worth anything. The first is something I'm totally on board with; the second is fine, IMHO, only for someone who isn't going to publish, and genuinely doesn't care, personally, financially, or in any other sense, whether anyone else reads the book or not. Publishing books, being wildly successful, knowing that you have a wide and fanatical fan-base, and then saying that no one has the right to criticize your books in any respect ... I'm not okay with that.

And what I saw her saying was the second, not the first. Which may be just me.

It's also true that I have very little patience for the more mystical ways of talking about the creative process, and her saying stories "poured" out of her got straight up my nose. That's a personal idiosyncrasy, and it may have caused me to read more harshly than warranted.

[pameladean]

It's not just you two who got something very arrogant and unpleasant out of the essay; that reaction seems to me to be the default. So I wonder why I'm so blind to it, if it's there.

I absolutely agree that there's a difference between saying that nobody else's opinion can come between one and one's book, and saying that nobody else's opinion is worth anything. I don't see Rice saying the second, as is no doubt wearisomely obvious by now.

The reason I don't is that she says she looks forward excitedly to hearing her editor's opinions of a finished work, and takes them seriously as indications of the direction she's heading and so on. Now, why I don't cynically interpret that as meaning that she excitedly awaits unstinted fulsome praise, I don't know, except, well, that I am just as interested in objections to my work as I am in praise, so why shouldn't Rice be too? It's just that some objections can't be encompassed during the writing of a particular book; they have to be applied to between-books cogitation, or to the next book, if they are generalizable.

I didn't like the mystical language either, even making allowances for how very difficult it is to talk about the writing process at all. And I can quite see that that language in company with a declaration that one asked one's editor to stop editing could produce a very decided negative reaction. As indeed it has.

I plan to ponder why I view the whole essay so tenderly, but I think I'll spare you all the intermediate steps.

Pamela

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I loved The Cat Who Walked through Walls.

[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.

[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 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.


Or because it is popular. Don't forget that option. There are people in my reading group who honestly pick out books based on the NYT best seller list. I've just been subjected to the latest media darling--something Umberto Eco did much better many years ago.

I blame Oprah.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Oh, I blame Oprah too. :)

What, just for NYTimes bestsellers? :) Oh, okay.

If I've ever read a NYTimes bestseller, it was probably by accident. I just read what I like.

[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.

[pameladean]

I dislike Rice's work intensely. But I think that's a separate question from whether the writing is bad. It's not my kind of writing, certainly. I don't even know if it's very useful to say writing is good or bad, absolutely; I think one has to ask, good at what, or bad at what, and is whatever it's bad at even what it wanted to do in the first place.

Pamela

[pameladean]

I love the phrase "my personal entertainment train," and I am extremely pleased at what you say about my sentences. But you know, a lot of people don't actually care for easter eggs in their prose, and I think it's okay if they have prose they can like, sans eggs.

Pamela

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I don't blame Oprah. In 1987 I noticed a jukebox where one of the options was to play the Most Played Song, whatever it was.

[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.

[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.

Aha.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I can tell you why it twigged my "urgh" sensors. Because the tone of that essay is very similar to the tone of people who write rebuttals to my (usually extremely polite and almost always personal, if necessarily brief) rejection letters about how I'm a cretin and I don't appreciate their genius.

And there are actually people who do this. Because obviously their golden prose needs no editing, no fact checking, no revisions for plot--

--and so forth.

Now, the people who write these missive of unearthly glory are probably one tenth of one percent of my slush pile. There are actually more people who send thank you notes for rejections. (Which is also a little freaky, from the editorial perspective.)

But I don't think it's a nonsignificant correlation that they represent a partially overlapping set with the bottom tenth of one percent of the slush I receive.

So I have it now, and it is a squid I'm choking on. A bad case of slush-hives.

Another data point--

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And now I realize that one of the things I dislike so strongly about her work is how tremendously self-indulgent and (dare I say it?) Mary Sue a lot of it feels to me.

Which may be exactly what her core audience loves about it. And would be something most editors would probably strive to reduce. Given Editors I have Known.

[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.