What qualifies me to be a critic?
Here is some advice from a famous fellow:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt.
Right now, at this very instant, I am considering a sudden stop to all of my supposed suggestions for story-writing improvement. For all I know, there might be some slyly clever and knowledgeable scholarly soul out there who, after craftily submitting a work of fiction for my evaluation (as a joke) sits boozing it up with a clutch of his literate friends -- and they all laugh and laugh and laugh at my pedestrian comments regarding his latest effort.
The endeavor known as creative writing is too serious to be taken lightly.
. . .
Yesterday I accompanied Mike to the local public library and while he completed his business inside I browsed the For Sale shelves in the lobby; I bought two books: The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver and Wet Work by Christopher Buckley. The were hard cover and in excellent condition, and they cost only $3 each. Didn't even have to go inside to pay for them. There was a small slotted box attached to the shelf with a sign that read: Drop Payment Here.
How about that?
. . .
One line I read in a fiction-story excerpt from a Work In Progress on a Writer's blog: "You need something else to compare it too?” caused me to stop reading, and that damnable inner-editor of mine said to myself: "Should that not be 'compare it to' instead of 'compare it too' -- and I replied to myself, "Oh, it's probably just a typo..."
. . .
Poetry fascinates me, but I am so damned ignorant of its many facets. Some of the older works, the rhyming rhythms of lesser-known poets who wrote of down-home country folks always makes me sigh (in a sickeningly nostalgic way) and murmur (No... mutter) "Now, that's poetry." But much of modern poetry seems, to me, to be nothing more than prose with arbitrary line breaks to signal that it is to be labeled a poem.
I must admit, though, that I like to occasionally try my hand at my own style of modern poetry, trying always to use imagery to illustrate nostalgic but emotionally charged recollections that spring up from some private place in my memory. In doing this I tend to use too many words, to attempt a detailed description more amenable to straight prose than to any form of poetry. And the poems suffer for it.
After receiving helpful criticism from those who are well-versed (pun absolutely intended) in the (formless?) forms of modern poetry I try to pare down my stuff and make it conform to the suggested scholarly formless-forms, but in the process the poem at hand seems to cease being my work and instead becomes the product of the times.
Something like that.
Perhaps I should do what I have done at times in the past: merely write my poems (and my stories) the way I want to write them, then publish them on my website and just not worry and fret with perpetually petulant pursed lips (grin) as to whether or not they are read by anyone else but me... after all, what is accomplished by being a successful highly-read poet, or even a well-known author of prose? A slight heightening of personal vanity? After I am dead and vanity is vanished it will certainly not matter (to me) if my writings continue to be read by the phantom (non-existent, to me) wraiths of the still living.
Right?
. . .
Raggedy Red Wild Flowers Growing Alongside The Road
(Click for larger view)An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, Can I also sit like you and do nothing? The eagle answered: Sure, why not. So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
"What qualifies me to be a critic?"
ReplyDeleteAre you a reader who tells a writer whether or not a story flows? Or are you a writer who takes part in the process of writing?
Are you criticizing something you don't like in the first place by saying more than I don't like this? If so, then what's your purpose?
"For all I know, there might be some slyly clever and knowledgeable scholarly soul out there . . ."
Might be, but probably not. Will you entertain such paranoid consideration?
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . ."
Yes, and if inside that arena you refuse to experiment, if instead you hesitate too long, then you die.
". . . and instead becomes the product of the times."
There is no "product of the times." If you don't want to edit, then don't. If you want to edit according to your own advice, given to yourself, then let that be the path you choose. The work belongs to you.
"A slight heightening of personal vanity?"
No. Rather a sense of accomplishment, which is easier to eat than a sense of purposelessness.