Anne on vampires; they are the most powerful metaphor for the outsider I ever encountered. I, a woman with no clear gender identity, strong erotic drives, great ambition, and a fractured cultural background, felt "normal" when I wrote about vampires --- intelligent outcasts who refused to accept the world's contempt as their story. I didn't inject philosophy into my vampire novels; it was just there; Lestat, Louis, Claudia, Armand...they were living breathing allegories, all crying for the right to live, to have a place in the universe. If you give all you have to your writing, if you tell all you know in every novel, you can't escape the deeper philosophical questions, meanings, possibilities.
When I came of age, nobody thought "a vampire novel" was worth that kind of commitment and depth. Genre fiction was presumed to be shallow. Same with the historical novel. I saw "Feast of All Saints" panned because it wasn't a simplistic melodrama. Nobody even knew how to classify "Cry to Heaven." But I kept giving all I had to my strange books, ignoring the denigrating labels and frankly getting downright angry about them.
Today, you don't hear those complaints so much. Seems the whole world knows you can learn a great deal about "everything" from a good episode of "Game of Thrones" and that there are profound truths in "Gone Girl." Daniel Silva packs his beautiful spy novels with deep moral concerns. Any type of novel can be a great novel. ------- What a wonderful thing to have lived long enough to see the power of labels broken, the "rules" of genre thrown to the winds, the bias of high culture ignored or stood on its head.
Of course the science fiction readers always knew these truths. In the 50's they were looking to their great writers for poetry, heart wrenching reflection on alienation --- the use of plot and setting for lofty and undeniable truths. I love being a novelist. ----------- I love being the producer, director, set designer and star of my weird, unclassifiable stories. I've grown to love being laughed at, sneered at, ridiculed, questioned as to how I, of all people, dare to write about Jesus! And you know why I love it? Because I've been lucky enough to have many, many readers over the years, readers who give each new book a chance, readers who say simply that they enjoy my books, readers who quietly "get it," wonderful readers from all walks of life --- They are priceless to me, and they are my real critics, reviewers, judges, etc. I long ago left it up to them to decide whether I was any good, or just a crackpot or a trash writer. And I just go on writing about vampires, witches, telepaths, ghosts, angels, werewolves, and yes, even Jesus --- for them and for me.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Writing for the "marketplace"
Anne on writing.
One thing I believed early on: readers have a right to pure enjoyment. If you won't give them plot, spectacle, suspense, some glamour, then don't complain if they don't want to read your work.
I found myself amongst disillusioned academic writers who felt they were "better" than those topping the bestseller lists, alienated from a public who didn't appreciate their fine small realistic psychological novels about upper middle class life and its endless small frustrations. I never had much sympathy with all that. Yes, there were crude writers atop the bestseller lists but when you took the time to read bestselling novels, you could see the skill, the passion, the relentless storytelling, the appeal.
I figured I could offer spectacle, plot, suspense and glamour -- the things I loved -- and still write a novel with depth. I took Aristotle's reflections on successful tragedy to heart; I wanted my work to have heroes, real heroes, and plenty of spectacle and plot, fine writing (the finest I could do) and to arouse pity and fear and produce catharsis.
I saw a total absence of these elements in the "better" serious fiction of America, the pedestrian realism anointed as the national literature with its "ordinary" folk in inevitable situations, striving for small insights. Understand, there was much great writing in these "better" serious "realistic" novels. But I wanted wider appeal. I have some deep constitutional aversion to elites. Yes, they may be the custodians of artistic values, but I admire and desire the art that moves "the people." After all, I am "the people." I love Elvis and Maria Callas; Jackie Susann and Charles Dickens; "Splendor in the Grass" with Natalie Wood and Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet. I read literary criticism and comic books. I crave poetry and night time soaps. I wanted my books in student backpacks and on kitchen shelves in trailers and other homes, in libraries and in drugstores. I was actually terrified of small, limited, respectable success. So I wrote big bizarre and unwieldy books in which vampires or witches talked of "souls" or "eternity."
Well, it paid off for me with the audience I love and respect and identify with. So my advice to other writers will always be: do what you want, do what you love, write the books you want to read. Never study or reflect on "the marketplace" and try to craft a fiction to meet its demands. And if you want to write for literary critics, good luck with that. I know nothing about it.
One thing I believed early on: readers have a right to pure enjoyment. If you won't give them plot, spectacle, suspense, some glamour, then don't complain if they don't want to read your work.
I found myself amongst disillusioned academic writers who felt they were "better" than those topping the bestseller lists, alienated from a public who didn't appreciate their fine small realistic psychological novels about upper middle class life and its endless small frustrations. I never had much sympathy with all that. Yes, there were crude writers atop the bestseller lists but when you took the time to read bestselling novels, you could see the skill, the passion, the relentless storytelling, the appeal.
I figured I could offer spectacle, plot, suspense and glamour -- the things I loved -- and still write a novel with depth. I took Aristotle's reflections on successful tragedy to heart; I wanted my work to have heroes, real heroes, and plenty of spectacle and plot, fine writing (the finest I could do) and to arouse pity and fear and produce catharsis.
I saw a total absence of these elements in the "better" serious fiction of America, the pedestrian realism anointed as the national literature with its "ordinary" folk in inevitable situations, striving for small insights. Understand, there was much great writing in these "better" serious "realistic" novels. But I wanted wider appeal. I have some deep constitutional aversion to elites. Yes, they may be the custodians of artistic values, but I admire and desire the art that moves "the people." After all, I am "the people." I love Elvis and Maria Callas; Jackie Susann and Charles Dickens; "Splendor in the Grass" with Natalie Wood and Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet. I read literary criticism and comic books. I crave poetry and night time soaps. I wanted my books in student backpacks and on kitchen shelves in trailers and other homes, in libraries and in drugstores. I was actually terrified of small, limited, respectable success. So I wrote big bizarre and unwieldy books in which vampires or witches talked of "souls" or "eternity."
Well, it paid off for me with the audience I love and respect and identify with. So my advice to other writers will always be: do what you want, do what you love, write the books you want to read. Never study or reflect on "the marketplace" and try to craft a fiction to meet its demands. And if you want to write for literary critics, good luck with that. I know nothing about it.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Thank God for "genre fiction"
Anne on writing:
As far as I know, the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries are the ONLY time in the history of the West that people have thought high literature had to be pedestrian realism about the everyday lives of the middle class.
Imagine someone taking Shakespeare aside and saying, "Now, Will, you've never known a prince of Denmark, or a Scottish witch. Isn't it time for you to write something serious, something about what you know? Write about your hometown, Will, your family, about real people in real situations that people can relate to."
Yes, pedestrian realism has created classics like Kings Row, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Sun Also Rises. But it is not the ONLY path to greatness in literature.
Thank God Mary Shelley pursued her man-made monster in Frankenstein and the Brontes did not stifle their larger than life Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester; and that Dickens boldly gave life to Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding gown. Thank God Poe wrote his grim metaphorical short stories and poems, and Hawthorne created Goodman Brown, and Bram Stoker gave life to Dracula. Thank God for Melville's great white whale and Conan Doyle's genius Sherlock Holmes (and Sherlock's brother Mycroft!)
As far as I know, the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries are the ONLY time in the history of the West that people have thought high literature had to be pedestrian realism about the everyday lives of the middle class.
Imagine someone taking Shakespeare aside and saying, "Now, Will, you've never known a prince of Denmark, or a Scottish witch. Isn't it time for you to write something serious, something about what you know? Write about your hometown, Will, your family, about real people in real situations that people can relate to."
Yes, pedestrian realism has created classics like Kings Row, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Sun Also Rises. But it is not the ONLY path to greatness in literature.
Thank God Mary Shelley pursued her man-made monster in Frankenstein and the Brontes did not stifle their larger than life Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester; and that Dickens boldly gave life to Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding gown. Thank God Poe wrote his grim metaphorical short stories and poems, and Hawthorne created Goodman Brown, and Bram Stoker gave life to Dracula. Thank God for Melville's great white whale and Conan Doyle's genius Sherlock Holmes (and Sherlock's brother Mycroft!)
Sunday, July 24, 2016
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