How Writers Do It: A Writing Process Series – Part One
The idea: A 4-week blog series in which nine (9) writers give their views on nine (9) different writing process guides. For more details, visit here.
This week’s topic: Writers as Artists: How do you define yourself as a writer? Are genre writers artists?
The contest: Join in the fun by blogging about the week’s topic on your own site. Be sure to post the link in this thread for a chance to win a free book! More details here.
The writers and their guides: Click on any of the writer’s names below to view their blog.
Cory Jackson: Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream
Kate Hart: Stephen King’s On Writing
Jamie Blair: Thomas Monteleone’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Writing A Novel
Laura McMeeking: Natalie Naimark-Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within*
Debra Driza: James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure
Stephanie Jenkins: Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel
Leila Austin: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird
Sarah Harian: Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey*
Jennifer Wood: Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing*
*A few of our bloggers couldn’t get their books in time, but they are offering their insights on this week’s topic. Next week they’ll pick up the discussion on their guides.
——————————————————
Writers as Artists: How do you define yourself as a writer? Are genre writers artists?
“Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.”
There are few gray areas in Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream. He has definitive ideas on writers and the writing process. Love it or hate it, this book forces you to define your personal writing process. Every page shouts for you to get off the fence and decide who you will be as a writer. I highly recommend this book and believe writers can gain insight into their work by reading it. Over the next few weeks, I will share what I loved about. Having said that, I have to admit the first chapter provoked me, starting with this comment:
“You must…have the highest aspirations for yourselves as writers—the desire to create works of fiction that will endure, that reflect and articulate the deepest truth about the human condition.”
My comment in my book’s margins: Huh.
This idea is so enormous and abstract – the idea of the human condition – that I wonder at anyone’s ability to define it, let alone set out to tell the truth about it. My aspiration has always been to touch someone with my writing. You know that moment when someone tells you that your book reached inside of them and played over their guts like fingertips thrumming guitar strings? That’s what I want. A moment of connection. A thrum of understanding. As a reader, the books I hold in highest regard are those that sparked a moment of kinship that I can return to again and again – that is the standard I will hold myself to as a writer. Charles Dickens, Nora Roberts, and JK Rowling all rank within this category for me.
Butler does not consider genre writers to be artists. There are writers who are artists – who aspire to that lofty human condition truth-telling – and then there is everybody else. The main distinction is that artists access the world through their senses, and intellectuals understand the world through thought. Also, while a genre piece inspires you to “fill in the blanks” with yourself, a work of art inspires you to “leave yourself.” Butler believes:
“Fiction, inescapably, is the art form of human yearning.”
When I read this, a light bulb went off. I suddenly understood why my novel had come so easily when I struggled to write a work that meant something to me. The idea for my story was born the minute I dreamed up my MC – a girl who yearns to belong to someone. To share a thrum of understanding with someone, if you will. Butler admits that genre writers “have never forgotten this necessity of the character’s yearning.”
Now, my book is a young adult urban fantasy, which would fall into genre fiction. My negative reaction to Butler’s ideas stems from this idea that by his definition I am not an artist. Oh, I beg to differ!
I was lost in that “white-hot center” of me during the time I wrote my novel. I don’t know that I’ve written something that will endure, and I don’t believe every genre book is a work of art. But are they nonexclusive? I wonder if Butler’s ideas don’t conflict somewhat. After all, if I were to begin to describe the human condition, I would begin with human yearning.
What do you think?
Post Navigation
Leave your own thoughts
12 Responses to "How Writers Do It: A Writing Process Series – Part One"
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
I don’t understand his reasoning that genre writers aren’t trying to tell essential human truths.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Yep, I had kind of an angry/disbelieving response to his discussion of “artists” and “non-artists.” Fortunately, once you get past this he has a TON of great writing advice.
His point is that genre writing allows the reader to lose themselves in the book – like how a reader can stamp their personality on to Bella in Twilight. A literary novel, on the other hand, forces the reader out of themselves. I don’t agree, but there it is.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Yay! Count me for the contest. Here is my post!
http://karlanellenbach-lastword.blogspot.com/2010/03/writers-as-artistsmy-take-on-this-weeks.html
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Writing is art, full stop. The fact that it’s lumped together with drama, sculpting, music and painting as one of The Arts should be a big clue for anyone still doubting the fact. There is no argument here.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Ah, that makes sense, although I respectfully disagree. That’s the whole point of reading– how else would you understand literature except through your own experiences?
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Interesting distinction between genre writing and regular. I’m with yuo, Cory–not sure I agree, but certainly thought provoking.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Of course, if the real distinction is that “real” artists can spell “you”, I”m obviously screwed.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
What an interesting take on writers being artists. I have to jump on the boat of those who disagree. I may have to pick this book up, although I think I might find myself annoyed quite a bit if it continued along this vein. To me, that’s like saying the blank canvas in the modern art museum isn’t art. I mean, I guess I never have considered it to be art, but it’s making a statement. It evokes emotion and pulls the person in or outside of themselves (with me, it’s a little of both, I think, if that’s possible). I look forward to his take on the other topics!
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
I would agree with you – human truths begin with yearning. Genre fiction is a reflection of the human condition–it has to be or readers won’t relate and you have no story to tell. How is there conflict with out want and yearning?
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
Oh, this is Jamie by the way…not sure why I’m logged in as OPWFT – guess I need a disclaimer. This statement is not representative of OPWFT or its contributors, blah, blah, blah.
on March 4, 2010 | to this post
I love that first quote. I read it and re-read it many times. It sums up writing for me and proves the whole artist point, imo.
on March 5, 2010 | to this post
“My aspiration has always been to touch someone with my writing. You know that moment when someone tells you that your book reached inside of them and played over their guts like fingertips thrumming guitar strings? That’s what I want. A moment of connection. A thrum of understanding. As a reader, the books I hold in highest regard are those that sparked a moment of kinship that I can return to again and again – that is the standard I will hold myself to as a writer.”
I especially liked this. It’s what I look for in books, and it’s what I want my own writing to achieve as well. I think the closest we get to the big scary abstract ‘understanding the truths of the human condition’ thing is in having this kind of connection with characters. It’s less epic, more personal.
And yeah. I liked a lot of what Butler had to say, but the idea of genre writers somehow being a different lesser category always irked me. You know, what with writers like Ursula Le Guin and Philip Pullman and Margaret Mahy.