The Grasshopper #56: Writing About Writing

Is this useful? I think so. Here’s why.

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash

Writing The Grasshopper two times a week was never the intent. It was going to be weekly but there always seemed to be more to muse about, so now there’s two issues weekly. And this doesn’t include The Witness Chronicles, weekly compendiums of some of my Medium writing.

It’s a lot. But it never feels like work and I like to think writing about writing, for an audience, has helped all of my work. I’ve tried to avoid this being a confessional thing because there is, frankly, too much of that in online writing.

I’m not really a confessional guy and writing here is about as close as I get. I have mentioned the issue of writing as self-therapy, and I certainly get some therapeutic benefits from my writing here, which is less structured than my other stuff.

Some of the most popular newsletters out there right now focus on various forms of recovery, from cancer survivors to addicts and victims of abuse. These tend to take the form of a support group, with readers encouraging progress or commiserating.

My writing here is a different kind of support group, in that I want to encourage those who write to write and to trust that thing inside that wants to express itself, whatever it may be.

I’m just starting a recent novel by Salman Rushdie called Victory City, on a strong recommendation from a friend. I have never read any of his work because I had the mistaken idea that he aspired to high literary fiction, whatever that is. Though I’ve only just started the story, from the get go it was obvious I had been wrong to write off Rushdie as an intellectual.

He is a classic storyteller through and through.

It’s always dangerous to pigeonhole any artist before you experience their art. This is the problem with criticism. Criticism is a personal response to art that is delivered as though their experience is a universal reaction. A judgement, which is why nearly every writer I have admired over the years claims to not read their reviews.

I don’t believe that for a minute. Writers are introspective by nature and this habit of thinking about our work from every angle means we are going to be curious when offered another’s view. Reviews are just like anything else; a few are insightful while most are average to bad.

Bad would be the review that tells the whole story, blow by blow, rather than conveying the essence of how the reviewer personally responded to the book or story (or film, or gallery show, or performance). Telling the story from beginning to end is just a cheeseball way of filling word count and a gravely disrespectful way to treat a reader.

The only reviews I get these days are in the form of comments and they are really a dialog with the writer, not a review of the piece. And no, trolling is not a review, it is just being a jerk. It’s ok to not like something but hating it or using a comment stream to indoctrinate readers to your position is just lame.

I’d like to think I have a thick skin when it comes to reviews. It probably comes from performing live original music for years when I was younger. You know immediately if you’re connecting with an audience. Performance can be frustrating or amazingly gratifying and that gratification is instant. Writers have to wait for something that may never come.

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Civility

I’ve been pondering this word. Civility means acting civilized. But in looking it up you get many variations on what that is. Politeness is one. But what is civility in writing and is it necessary? 

A lot of writing these days is more about the lack of civility in the world than the virtues of being civil. I understand that; darkness sells. There is a term that shows up in online writing, the doom and gloom writers, those who seem to only see darkness in everything.

I’ve been accused of this in my opinion writing, and to some degree I acknowledge that I write about a lot of difficult subjects and often highlight controversy. But I am not a doom and gloom person. I love the world too much for that.

But the reality is that civility seems out of fashion these days. You certainly rarely see it in politics or discourse on controversial topics. Civil people used to agree to disagree to maintain a dialog and keep things, well, civil. 

I’ll admit to a bit of existential weariness with the world these days, probably because I inhale too much news. I was writing about that this morning when I was struck by the paradox of writing about darkness, while outdoors it is a peerless spring day with blue skies and singing birds just outside my windows.

The beauty of the world lies in these contrasts. When you only go to one extreme or the other, you get out of balance, both mentally and as an artist. Depicting the world as a place where unicorns dance with bunnies is not my thing, but neither is a life of gore, zombies, and bad guys out to destroy the world just because they are angry.

The idea of happy endings is pretty interesting when you think about it. As readers we need them but sometimes writers strain to find them in their stories when those stories reflect the darkness all too often found in humans. We have all seen a happy ending glommed onto a movie script, likely by the studio, when such an ending is unlikely.

A prime example would be the original studio release of Blade Runner, in which an ending was grafted on that ignored the basic premise of the film (it actually had a unicorn!), which is that life is limited yet still beautiful. The director, Ridley Scott, hated that ending. But when the rest of the movie took on a growing cult following, he was allowed to do a director cut and restore the more ambivalent ending.

Actually he did two cuts separated by years and the second one finally seemed to reflect 100% of his original intent. No more unlikely happy ending. 

The interesting thing about that example is that the final version was the more civil one because it resembled reality. 

These days, I’m trying to find the good in things and most of the time it is when individuals show respect for each other. Exercising civility in other words. Unfortunately sometimes it’s just not there. That’s reality too.

Did you write today?

Thx, Martin

1107 words

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