Monday, July 28, 2008
Feral Writer's Syndrome
I have a touch of it, I think, more than a touch of it, since I just now made up the condition. In my entire life I've taken exactly one creative writing class, I've never read book on writing from cover to cover (I doubt I've read fifteen pages of any one book in the genre). The idea of a writing workshop makes my skin crawl, and my gut response to the letters MFA is WTF? NFW! And I'm fine with it. I love, Love, LOve, LOVe, LOVE the absolute freedom of writing and producing my own work. There is nothing more satisfying to me than knowing that I have created something that's mine from start to finish. Love it? Great. I did it. Hate it? Cool. It's mine and I take the blame. No second thoughts, no regrets. I don't believe in writing as a collaborative process, at least not for myself. Writing is an expressive art, ideally a synthesis of stylistic influences, aesthetic concerns, and a hopefully a damn good story. If I could afford it (and there's the catch, yes?) I would never think twice about the publishing industry and the commercial concerns behind it. I would just write and write, design my own books and cast them out into the universe. It would be incredibly satisfying, I think.
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Very nice post!
ReplyDeleteI've read a lot of books about writing, which at least gives me the advantage of being able to recommend one of the better ones. I'll be talking about this soon on my site, but if you've a mind you should check out "Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular" by L. Rust Hills. It's the best book on fiction writing, period -- and it has a rather appealing absence of rah-rah motivation. (Rust Hills was a long-time fiction editor; many years at Esquire. He knew how fiction worked the way a mechanic knows how an engine works.)