One year ago today: July 15, 2013, link to "Tower" video!
Five years ago today: July 15, 2009, bicycle underwear?
Ten years ago today: July 15, 2004, the bubble.
Worried about what people think of you? Join a writer’s club; trust me, they’ll tell you. Essentially, my writing gets more than the usual amount of “advice”, and I’m about to tell you how that proceeds. Let me get my notes. Ah, here they are. I chose this writing club out of the blue, it was a blurb on Meet-Up, the on-line service. Other than a few coffee houses, I’ve zero experience with these groups. Here goes.
They like my plot, but not my writing. They say my characters are “not developed”. That here is so much information, it’s like reading a documentary. (I suspect from the choice of words, they mean a TV documentary, it’s not like anyone there actually reads anything documentary, is what I'm saying.)
My purpose of attending the club is learning. That applies even if I’m learning to do the opposite of what they say. Modern writing is watered down, not creative enough. I deduce it is some formula taught at journalism school. Words by the ton. And, as it turns out, learning by the ounce.
I can see now the group accepts this type mass production [modern hack writing] as normal fare. It was one of these “best stories” books that drove me to join the club. The book, “New Stories from the South”, was so bad I set out to find something better. Well, it does not exist in the hordes being turned out by contemporary journalism schools.
By and large, the group seems conditioned to a standardized pattern. Maybe they’ve been critiquing each other's material for too long, is what I’m suggesting here. No matter what the topic, they like dialogue to occupy 60 – 62% of the typeset page. I’m okay with 4%. When my writing includes the slightest amount of information flow, it can leave some people in the dust. They can’t follow facts, unless they are the superficial impressions of judging others. I’ll elaborate.
As a group, they attach extra, almost strange, importance to the writing of memoirs. Poetry is second, but you’d have to see their Pavlovian response to biographies. Let me count for a second here, yup, seven out of ten authors present tonight wrote about their past experiences. They say to write what you know about, but before you write about yourself, please consider the quality issue--from the other person's standpoint. I hope this message is reaching everyone.
It may be a defense mechanism. It is difficult to find fault with another writer’s childhood memories. But if I did, I would be compelled to state that most of their childhoods must have been dreadfully boring. All things, like punctuation, considered, the average educational equivalent in the room comes across at about a Grade Nine level.
Yet, there are good writers in the club. They have a definite flair for description. At the same time, they embellish a lot of the good times. Some can even make growing up in a working class Boston suburb sound like actual fun. It’s when the same themes return week after week that onward it plods.
What to do? Do I act on their advice to “develop” individuals in my story? That would appease the group but it seems synonymous with pointing out my characters pick their nose and have ingrown toenails. I’m saying that describing people is a matter of degree and I’m not kidding about this group’s fascination with bodily functions. Must I spell out that a German sailor puts his trousers on one leg at a time just to make the memoir people happy? You see, I’m not quite convinced my writing method is entirely wrong and I may just be unlucky enough to be in a roomful of average people types.
Afterward, I met up with my own people, who like my style. They counter by saying I should not dilute my characters to the extent that would satisfy others. There is, and I agree, already too much of that kind of “non-classic” trash on the market already. Danielle Steele and Dean Koontz come to mind. I find lapsing into each character's imperfections is a retrograde step. Even if I was good at it, I would not necessarily write it to death. Besides, all such writing comes out mighty cloned after a while.
If I’m right, should I continue with confidence that I’m right? Where are the camp councilors when you really need one? Are the ossified old ladies my target audience? There are kazillions of them, you know. This is what I get for always pushing my own life to the frontiers of experience. I’m always first and alone and not getting any useful help in new things that I try. And there are a lot of frontiers I have not even touched. Maybe the group is telling me it must be my own character that needs to be “developed”.
Because I can tell you for sure my writing is completely different than anything they seem capable of producing. Is it crazy to believe everything I write should contain at least a smidgeon of useful information? If so, tell that to the group organizer, who mentions at least once per week that he was a reporter for 26 years. He reminds me of one of my bingo patrons. When I call the number I-26, each and every bingo now for all these years, she says, "That’s my birthday!”.
And that's your dialogue. Four percent is plenty.
ADDENDUM
The Magna Carta?
I stand by my contention that all politics should have been outlawed in America in 1865. Those who require politicians to lead them around by the nose do not belong in a free country. I know what brand of mass ignorance I’m up against on that one. Every stump-jumper and pension-builder will disagree—but what did I just say about sheeple? What brought this up was I admit it, I finally word-for-word tried to read and understand the Magna Carta.
To my amusement, there was article 50. It actually names the people that are not allowed to hold certain political positions. “. . . Geoffrey de Martin and his brothers, Phillip Mark and his brothers, and Geoffrey his nephew, and the whole following of them.”
I cannot find any data on what these people did, but we can assume they have nothing on DC. My point is that our system is derived from English customs, and they recognized 799 years ago that there are those unfit to hold office. The primary difference is my definition of unfit includes all who, once elected, represent their own interests instead of the majority will of those who voted for them. That would encompass around 99% of all American politicians since 1865.
How do I know they are not representing the people? Because if they were, it can be shown (not here, mind you) that all foreign wars and foreign aid would be cut off, the Mexican border would be sealed, illegals would be mass deported, Muslims would be prevented entry until they stop terrorism at home, privacy laws would be enacted, income taxes would be abolished, police would be held liable for false arrest, there would be prescribed damages for slander, and so on down the list.
That comment on denying entry to Muslims is not insignificant. The best way to stop terrorism is to stop support for it where it originates. That means enforcement of anti-terrorist means from every layer of Muslim society. It doesn’t make sense for our immigration system to allow the intellectuals and business layer of their society into our country, where they can distance themselves from terrorism, but still preach it and send money back home to support it. Those are the very Muslims that should be back in Arabia applying pressure to stop the radicals. As the saying goes, not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It follows that they should deal with the problem between themselves collectively before even one is allowed into our country.
In case you haven’t heard, they have declared war on us. What’s happening now is the equivalent of Britain allowing high-ranking Nazis to enter England in 1940.
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