Wed Reading Meme...well sort of
Jun. 8th, 2016 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWas thinking today about writing styles, and how subjective they are. What sparked this was a New Yorker Article about The Girl Who Circumvented Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - the crowd-source funded web series that got published, won various awards, and became a best seller. I tried reading it as a web series and just couldn't get into it. I did buy the paperback and give it to my ten year old niece for her birthday, she couldn't get into it either. Read a few reviews on Amazon at lunch and realized that my difficulty with the writer is her writing style doesn't work for me. It's too academic, too cluttered, and formal in tone. I read/write/negotiate/manage public works construction and architectural design contracts and technical specifications for a living, so...I like cleaner writing. Cluttered writing tends to bug me, I think? And for pleasure, I want emotion more than intellect, and Valient's stories are more about the mind than the heart, or the intellect more than the spirit. So when I read them, I feel like I'm at work or back in school. (I think it is a really good thing that I didn't become an English Lit Prof. Sometimes what we think we want isn't good for us.)
The negative reviewers pretty much said the same things -- that the stories would be great for linguistic and literary analysis, or that they fell a bit too much into allegory. One went so far to state that they are allergic to allegory and that Valiente's story was all allegory and thick with it. It's worth noting that I'm not a fan of allegorical writing either. It irritates me. It irritated me in high school, when I read Animal Farm, in College, and as an adult. And that I had somewhat the same reaction to The Master and The Margarita, it felt more for the head than the heart. It was more philosophical or allegorical than spiritual. It didn't speak to my spirit, which is what I craved.
The book that I'm reading now, The Power of Now is a spiritual book, not a good idea to analyze it or think about it too much. It's all about turning off the mind or brain and just going with your gut, finding that place of inner peace and silence. Being in the moment.
David Forster Wallace's style also requires a different type of thinking -- his style is cluttered, undisciplined, and comes razor close to pretentious. Too literary for its own good. And then there's Elmore Leonard who believed that you should kick to the side any phrases or words that readers tend to skip. Pretentious words had no place in his writing or archaic ones. He wrote like people actually spoke. Used slang. And focused primarily on character. Theme be damned. He'd have despised Neil Gaiman and Cat Valiente's writing style - which is often more interested in the theme, world-building, allegory, and setting than character. But then there are people like my co-worker who don't like Elmore Leonard, who felt he was just writing movie scripts, and perhaps he was.
People either heap praise or criticism on individual writing styles and are chock full of opinions. They often state their opinions in dogmatic or didactic fashion as if it is fact not opinion, which I guess in a way it is - if it is something that you feel absolutely. But I think it really is a matter of individual taste. For example? While I adored James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing styles, I did not much like Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley, or Pamela Deans. While I enjoy Neil Gaiman's style in some of his books (not all), I don't like Cat Valiente's who has been compared to him. Illona Andrews and Jim Butcher work for me, I love their sardonic wit, but I hated Charlene Harris' writing style. Liane Moriarity and Helen Fielding's style worked, but I found Jo Jo Moyes unreadable. I enjoyed Stephen King, but not Dean Koontz. Adored Jane Austen, found Charles Dickens to be ponderous. Mark Twain amused, while Henry James could cure insomnia with his wet and sticky prose. (Mark Twain oddly, agreed.) Edith Wharton was poetical, Nathanial Hawthorn jarring. Charlotte Bronte satisfied, while Emily Bronte aggravated. Chris Claremont entertained with tight character-driven plotting, while Brad Metzler bewildered with insane plot twists that fell out of the sky and winked at me.
Thinking about it too much makes me rather self-conscious about my own, which it did today. What if no one likes it? There's a sort of fear that I have that if I don't write like A, B. and Z, you won't want to read my work. But I've learned that's not true. There's no way of knowing who will read me or not read me. And worrying too much about one's own writing style is death to a writer. You can't think too much about what you are doing as a writer, art doesn't come from the mind, it comes from the heart, the spirit, the gut. Whenever the mind gets involved, the whole kit and caboodle shuts itself down, leaving the writer rending their hair in frustration, muttering, why, why, why.
* What I just finished reading?
Night Broken by Patricia Briggs - a quick read, with a clean crisp style. Not overly descriptive, as is to be expected considering the genre. This one surprised me a little because it was much better than her previous books. And I hadn't expected it to be. There's two antagonists or villains. One is Adam's ex-wife. Or rather, Mercy Thompson's husband's former wife, Christy. Christy is beautiful, manipulative, and put Adam through hell when he was married to her. The pack loves her.
And his daughter is by Christy.
Christy pops up requesting protection from Adam and his werewolf pack (hello, urban fantasy). She's being pursued by a stalker ex-boyfriend/lover. She also makes it clear she wants Adam back, even though he's remarried to Marcy and has moved on. Playing all sorts of manipulative mind games to get her way.
Enter the antagonist, Juan Flores, who is Christy's ex, and head over heels in love with her. He thinks she's the reincarnation of his one true love, the sun goddess. The metaphor isn't lost on me, a fickle goddess, who races from one place to the next, one lover to the next. Much as Christy has in the background of the books. Jesse's always talking about her mother's multiple lovers.
Juan, it turns out is a volcano god. He consumes in flames whatever he touches. And once he starts consuming, he can't stop...the hunger won't abate. And in human form, he looks like a sex god or porn star. He's lust personified.
Both antagonists are, and they are both narcissistic, it's all about them. Mercy at one point thinks they are made for each other. Except Christy is human, so..
I found that dichotomy rather interesting. Also, a few of the female characters are better developed than they'd been previously.
What I'm reading now?
The last in the Mercy Briggs series, Fire Touched. There's probably going to be more, but I'm stopping here. Actually no, there's one left, I've bought. A series of short stories about various characters in the series that I wanted to learn more about.
The negative reviewers pretty much said the same things -- that the stories would be great for linguistic and literary analysis, or that they fell a bit too much into allegory. One went so far to state that they are allergic to allegory and that Valiente's story was all allegory and thick with it. It's worth noting that I'm not a fan of allegorical writing either. It irritates me. It irritated me in high school, when I read Animal Farm, in College, and as an adult. And that I had somewhat the same reaction to The Master and The Margarita, it felt more for the head than the heart. It was more philosophical or allegorical than spiritual. It didn't speak to my spirit, which is what I craved.
The book that I'm reading now, The Power of Now is a spiritual book, not a good idea to analyze it or think about it too much. It's all about turning off the mind or brain and just going with your gut, finding that place of inner peace and silence. Being in the moment.
David Forster Wallace's style also requires a different type of thinking -- his style is cluttered, undisciplined, and comes razor close to pretentious. Too literary for its own good. And then there's Elmore Leonard who believed that you should kick to the side any phrases or words that readers tend to skip. Pretentious words had no place in his writing or archaic ones. He wrote like people actually spoke. Used slang. And focused primarily on character. Theme be damned. He'd have despised Neil Gaiman and Cat Valiente's writing style - which is often more interested in the theme, world-building, allegory, and setting than character. But then there are people like my co-worker who don't like Elmore Leonard, who felt he was just writing movie scripts, and perhaps he was.
People either heap praise or criticism on individual writing styles and are chock full of opinions. They often state their opinions in dogmatic or didactic fashion as if it is fact not opinion, which I guess in a way it is - if it is something that you feel absolutely. But I think it really is a matter of individual taste. For example? While I adored James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing styles, I did not much like Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley, or Pamela Deans. While I enjoy Neil Gaiman's style in some of his books (not all), I don't like Cat Valiente's who has been compared to him. Illona Andrews and Jim Butcher work for me, I love their sardonic wit, but I hated Charlene Harris' writing style. Liane Moriarity and Helen Fielding's style worked, but I found Jo Jo Moyes unreadable. I enjoyed Stephen King, but not Dean Koontz. Adored Jane Austen, found Charles Dickens to be ponderous. Mark Twain amused, while Henry James could cure insomnia with his wet and sticky prose. (Mark Twain oddly, agreed.) Edith Wharton was poetical, Nathanial Hawthorn jarring. Charlotte Bronte satisfied, while Emily Bronte aggravated. Chris Claremont entertained with tight character-driven plotting, while Brad Metzler bewildered with insane plot twists that fell out of the sky and winked at me.
Thinking about it too much makes me rather self-conscious about my own, which it did today. What if no one likes it? There's a sort of fear that I have that if I don't write like A, B. and Z, you won't want to read my work. But I've learned that's not true. There's no way of knowing who will read me or not read me. And worrying too much about one's own writing style is death to a writer. You can't think too much about what you are doing as a writer, art doesn't come from the mind, it comes from the heart, the spirit, the gut. Whenever the mind gets involved, the whole kit and caboodle shuts itself down, leaving the writer rending their hair in frustration, muttering, why, why, why.
* What I just finished reading?
Night Broken by Patricia Briggs - a quick read, with a clean crisp style. Not overly descriptive, as is to be expected considering the genre. This one surprised me a little because it was much better than her previous books. And I hadn't expected it to be. There's two antagonists or villains. One is Adam's ex-wife. Or rather, Mercy Thompson's husband's former wife, Christy. Christy is beautiful, manipulative, and put Adam through hell when he was married to her. The pack loves her.
And his daughter is by Christy.
Christy pops up requesting protection from Adam and his werewolf pack (hello, urban fantasy). She's being pursued by a stalker ex-boyfriend/lover. She also makes it clear she wants Adam back, even though he's remarried to Marcy and has moved on. Playing all sorts of manipulative mind games to get her way.
Enter the antagonist, Juan Flores, who is Christy's ex, and head over heels in love with her. He thinks she's the reincarnation of his one true love, the sun goddess. The metaphor isn't lost on me, a fickle goddess, who races from one place to the next, one lover to the next. Much as Christy has in the background of the books. Jesse's always talking about her mother's multiple lovers.
Juan, it turns out is a volcano god. He consumes in flames whatever he touches. And once he starts consuming, he can't stop...the hunger won't abate. And in human form, he looks like a sex god or porn star. He's lust personified.
Both antagonists are, and they are both narcissistic, it's all about them. Mercy at one point thinks they are made for each other. Except Christy is human, so..
I found that dichotomy rather interesting. Also, a few of the female characters are better developed than they'd been previously.
What I'm reading now?
The last in the Mercy Briggs series, Fire Touched. There's probably going to be more, but I'm stopping here. Actually no, there's one left, I've bought. A series of short stories about various characters in the series that I wanted to learn more about.