>>You can't "walk a mile in someone else's moccasins" if you're not allowed to even look at the moccasins.
Now there is a line everyone involved in the mess needs to read. If we can't write about anything but our own genuine real-life experiences, people are going to get mightily tired of reading nothing but boring memoirs.
It made me very sad, that controversy. I never commented to it because I always felt anything I said would be the wrong thing. Usually words don't fail me, but they surely did in that case. I'm afraid there's been such damage done that it can never fully heal...or, at best, there will be some dreadful scars. What a shame.
I had only recently posted about what writers "owe" readers on my blog. These are weird times for writers, aren't they? We're expected to know everything, be everything, give everything because we "owe" it. Bound to be scaring a lot of new (and not-so-new) writers half to death.
Me, too. Because people chose to twist words to spin them to the worst possible light and they chose to be offended and hurt instead of saying, "well, you got this wrong and this wrong, have you tried that to get a better perspective?" because really, when anyone tries to see something from someone else's perspective, no one's ever going to get it totally right. Yes, it's work for the ones wearing the original moccasins to give those moccasins to someone else for a while and to help them evaluate their mile walk, just as it's work for someone to ask to walk that mile and then to evaluate it afterwards. If the moccasin wearer not only refuses to give up their moccasins but attacks both those who do give their moccasins and those who wear them to understand, we'll never get anywhere.
I was involved with a car accident and am facing possible permanent disability over it, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to this when it sprang up and I haven't and won't read the comments on people's post about it, just the posts as they appear on my Reading List. But, since I have occasionally been in confrontations for daring to write a character from some other culture, I wanted to point out that, for me, anyway, every culture is "other" to me and it wasn't the characters who were important. They aren't real people, they are tools to tell the story and they have to have whatever attributes I give them in order for the story to be that story.
These are weird times for writers, aren't they?
Oh, yes! We aren't allowed to just tell a gripping good story anymore. We also have to have absolutely sterling characters with no history of any wrongdoing in a our past, we have to be absolutely gracious to each and every reader no matter how awful we feel, we have to accept being stalked and threatened by strangers as mere charming fannish adulation, we can't have any kind of personal opinion whatever, because if we offend even one reader, we are horrible, evil fascist meanie pooh-pooh heads who should be ripped from limb to limb and our books burned.
It's stories. Who I am is unimportant. I rather prefer that no one can associate me with what I've written because then my stories are out there exactly as they should be - starkly alone, unsupported, open to anyone's interpretation and need. I don't want people to read my stories and go, "Hey, wait! This fat old woman can't know what it's like to be a 14 year old male prostitute on heroin. How dare she write a story like that! Burn her!"
So, yeah, anonymity is the way to go these days if you want to avoid stompfests like this one. Even my children don't know all the stories I've written and published, all the books I've authored. And they never will, just because of crap like this. I don't want my children attacked because of stories I wrote.
Of course, the non-fiction I write comes under totally different rules. This almost requires people trust me as a person for them to be able to trust my words. In matters of non-fiction, I must indeed be impeccable in character, dedicated and meticulous in research, honest and clear in the words I write.
But fiction? The characters, no matter how apparently well-rounded and written, are still plot devices. They are tools to move a story forward, and they are often stereotypes, archetypes, and/or creations of necessity, imaginary people in imaginary situations. They aren't real people, they don't represent real people, stories aren't anthropology texts. Fiction authors create characters that are blends of people and things they know, stuff they've read, bits they've overheard, experiences they had or heard other people have, and these characters are not real - they are story tools, plot devices, not much more than a Prince Charming or the witch in the forest. You can't switch the prince and the witch, but neither are they Every Prince and Every Witch.
But we authors know that. It's the readers who seem to expect too much, and we are right to talk about what authors owe readers (a gripping good story).
Few people speak about what the reader owes the writer. Maybe we should address that topic?
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(no subject)
Now there is a line everyone involved in the mess needs to read. If we can't write about anything but our own genuine real-life experiences, people are going to get mightily tired of reading nothing but boring memoirs.
It made me very sad, that controversy. I never commented to it because I always felt anything I said would be the wrong thing. Usually words don't fail me, but they surely did in that case. I'm afraid there's been such damage done that it can never fully heal...or, at best, there will be some dreadful scars. What a shame.
I had only recently posted about what writers "owe" readers on my blog. These are weird times for writers, aren't they? We're expected to know everything, be everything, give everything because we "owe" it. Bound to be scaring a lot of new (and not-so-new) writers half to death.
(no subject)
Me, too. Because people chose to twist words to spin them to the worst possible light and they chose to be offended and hurt instead of saying, "well, you got this wrong and this wrong, have you tried that to get a better perspective?" because really, when anyone tries to see something from someone else's perspective, no one's ever going to get it totally right. Yes, it's work for the ones wearing the original moccasins to give those moccasins to someone else for a while and to help them evaluate their mile walk, just as it's work for someone to ask to walk that mile and then to evaluate it afterwards. If the moccasin wearer not only refuses to give up their moccasins but attacks both those who do give their moccasins and those who wear them to understand, we'll never get anywhere.
I was involved with a car accident and am facing possible permanent disability over it, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to this when it sprang up and I haven't and won't read the comments on people's post about it, just the posts as they appear on my Reading List. But, since I have occasionally been in confrontations for daring to write a character from some other culture, I wanted to point out that, for me, anyway, every culture is "other" to me and it wasn't the characters who were important. They aren't real people, they are tools to tell the story and they have to have whatever attributes I give them in order for the story to be that story.
These are weird times for writers, aren't they?
Oh, yes! We aren't allowed to just tell a gripping good story anymore. We also have to have absolutely sterling characters with no history of any wrongdoing in a our past, we have to be absolutely gracious to each and every reader no matter how awful we feel, we have to accept being stalked and threatened by strangers as mere charming fannish adulation, we can't have any kind of personal opinion whatever, because if we offend even one reader, we are horrible, evil fascist meanie pooh-pooh heads who should be ripped from limb to limb and our books burned.
It's stories. Who I am is unimportant. I rather prefer that no one can associate me with what I've written because then my stories are out there exactly as they should be - starkly alone, unsupported, open to anyone's interpretation and need. I don't want people to read my stories and go, "Hey, wait! This fat old woman can't know what it's like to be a 14 year old male prostitute on heroin. How dare she write a story like that! Burn her!"
So, yeah, anonymity is the way to go these days if you want to avoid stompfests like this one. Even my children don't know all the stories I've written and published, all the books I've authored. And they never will, just because of crap like this. I don't want my children attacked because of stories I wrote.
Of course, the non-fiction I write comes under totally different rules. This almost requires people trust me as a person for them to be able to trust my words. In matters of non-fiction, I must indeed be impeccable in character, dedicated and meticulous in research, honest and clear in the words I write.
But fiction? The characters, no matter how apparently well-rounded and written, are still plot devices. They are tools to move a story forward, and they are often stereotypes, archetypes, and/or creations of necessity, imaginary people in imaginary situations. They aren't real people, they don't represent real people, stories aren't anthropology texts. Fiction authors create characters that are blends of people and things they know, stuff they've read, bits they've overheard, experiences they had or heard other people have, and these characters are not real - they are story tools, plot devices, not much more than a Prince Charming or the witch in the forest. You can't switch the prince and the witch, but neither are they Every Prince and Every Witch.
But we authors know that. It's the readers who seem to expect too much, and we are right to talk about what authors owe readers (a gripping good story).
Few people speak about what the reader owes the writer. Maybe we should address that topic?
(corrected typo)