Dammit! “I wonder if I can sustain
it,” I said last blog, and here I go with a blog entry that isn’t a short
story. My post is already late, so I don’t have the time to work on a new
story. I’ve been spending all my time working on the story I’m entering for the
Edith R. Mirrielees Prize in Creative Writing. In a strange way, this relates entirely
to Zen and the Art.
During class
discussion today, Nathan mentioned the importance of quality in writing. In his
reckoning, if I recall correctly, writing quality matters because we want to
temper our writing to the needs of the readers—that is, we want the quality of
our writing to resonate with what they perceive to be quality writing. This
came as a blow to me as I realized the weight of his argument. It’s not like something
I haven’t thought about, but when the beast in me tried to call out “Fallacy!”,
I had no rebuttal. If I want my writing to be worth anything, it seems I have
to conform to whatever those with the money perceive to be good. Fuck.
Now, prior
to my entry into this competition, I have been seriously fixated on who might
be judging it. The judges seem to be more important than the quality of my
writing. I know which of my stories are decent and which ones are shit, but the
general quality doesn’t really matter that much. Well, there will be a panel of
judges I’m sure, so there might be some creative space for me to stretch my
artistic limbs, but maximum, I bet there are 4. This is really not a lot of
room for determining quality.
This
competition is a snapshot of a moment in time. The same judges, whomever they
are, might judge the same entries differently a year from now. Man, my best bet
is to get caught up in the current and let it take me forward. Conform!
But
then again, I think about how when film first came out, folks had trouble
following certain narrative elements such as the flashback. If we just keep
conforming, how are we to produce writing that reconfigures conventions and forces
people to understand in new ways. I’m quite puzzled here as I ruminate on Zen. Like what’s the point of all this
anyway? Why is killing puppies bad? Why is killing people bad? I have no answers.
I like your analogy and your example on the Mirrielees Prize, and actually I am also trying to figure out what I should submit, heh.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction to your argument as I was reading was: well, we only have to worry about the audience if we are expecting to make a living out of it. For instance, genre writers not only know what their readers want, but they also follow a strict formula for what they're going to write. They make money because they tell people what they want to hear, because that's safe. When we do art -- that's where we can do whatever we want, follow our hearts, etc. It's finding that balance that's difficult.
But the issue of the awards in fiction...especially with ones with cash prizes; are we supposed to really write for them? or are we supposed to press those limits and change those myths that they are expecting to see and read? I have no answers either.