A Helpful Web Site

Vomaxx · Dec 31, 2005

Holly Lisle, a fantasy author, has on her website a collection of guidelines and suggestions for writers which you might enjoy. Although I think much of her information will be old-hat for the majority of you here, some of it may be new or useful.

http://hollylisle.com

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There was recently a discussion of "literary fiction" here at AW. Ms. Lisle is apparently not a great fan of that kind of literature. Here is what she says (in connection with her advice to send editors only the kind of stuff they publish):

"When I was teaching for Writer's Digest, my students were matched to my interests... But one, who described himself as a future SF writer, decided... that he wanted to write a literary novel of life in academia, and sent along his first chapter, and told me he figured this would be a good learning experience for both of us.

Wrong. I have read such books. I uniformly loathe them. I would sooner go back to my day job than be forced to wade through endless hundred-word passive-voice sentences and passive scenes of flat characters indulging in self-pity and navel-contemplation. My idea of editing such a book would consist of setting each page of the manuscript on fire individually and mailing the ashes back to the author....

But you're saying, what difference could it make if you send your book to an editor who hates that sort of thing. After all, how could it come back to haunt you? Do I even remember this guy's name after all these years?

You bet I do."

Carmy · Jan 1, 2006

Do I dare admit that I also have a loathing of literary novels? (Okay, waiting for a whole shriek of screams.) Oh, the angst, the self-pitying wallow in personal trivia and minutiae where even a flea bite gains the magnitude of an amputation. And if you have the patience to get through pages of such boring fluff, do you end up with a satisfactory ending? Sure, once in about 500 novels. The rest of the time, I'm left to make up an ending myself. Sorry, I have better things to do than worry about a fictional character who needs to get out a bit more, or at least see a good psychiatrist.

Okay, you can scream now.

jules · Jan 1, 2006

Sturgeon's Law applies, of course. 90% of everything is crap, and this includes literary fiction.

There is some literary fiction that's worth reading.

Back to the original topic, though -- I agree. Holly's site is an excellent source of advice. She also has a free e-book, Mugging the muse, which although I haven't yet found the time to read it, I've heard a lot of good things about. There should be somewhere to download it on the site.

willietheshakes · Jan 1, 2006

Carmy said:
Do I dare admit that I also have a loathing of literary novels? (Okay, waiting for a whole shriek of screams.) Oh, the angst, the self-pitying wallow in personal trivia and minutiae where even a flea bite gains the magnitude of an amputation. And if you have the patience to get through pages of such boring fluff, do you end up with a satisfactory ending? Sure, once in about 500 novels. The rest of the time, I'm left to make up an ending myself. Sorry, I have better things to do than worry about a fictional character who needs to get out a bit more, or at least see a good psychiatrist.

Okay, you can scream now.

Well, it's fairly easy to generalize and stereotype. Of course, with a posting like this you've pretty much given up your right to complain when people cast aspersions on other genres as a whole. You know, the folks who complain that all fantasy is cheesy Tolkien rip-off? That mysteries are predictable, knock-em-out books for the thinking-impaired? That romance novels have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, save that they give the haus-fraus something to do when they're eating their bon-bons...

danielmc · Jan 1, 2006

Carmy said:
Do I dare admit that I also have a loathing of literary novels? (Okay, waiting for a whole shriek of screams.) Oh, the angst, the self-pitying wallow in personal trivia and minutiae where even a flea bite gains the magnitude of an amputation. And if you have the patience to get through pages of such boring fluff, do you end up with a satisfactory ending? Sure, once in about 500 novels. The rest of the time, I'm left to make up an ending myself. Sorry, I have better things to do than worry about a fictional character who needs to get out a bit more, or at least see a good psychiatrist.

Okay, you can scream now.

Scream? I won't do that, but i wil feel an awful lot of sarcastic and totally unfelt pity for anybody who dismisses the great literary works of the last thousand years or so . That blinkered thinking rules out Dante, Swift, Camus, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Turgenev, Fielding, James, Ondjatte, Tolstoy, Gogol, Flaubert, Sartre, etc etc etc.

Each genre has its faults, and its great works.

To dismiss 'literary' is to dismiss life itself. (Was that to literary and angst ridden?) Happy New year.

Steve 211 · Jan 1, 2006

Holly Lisle's site is great one, for sure. Plenty of good articles there.

About the whole literary stuff, well, I was about to jump in and say right on - I'd rather not read any more affairs-while-sipping-cocktails-at-the-Connecticut-home, since I had more than my share, but I did enjoy a few William Trevor and John Cheever stories, and even a bit of Henry James. And I love Wuthering Heights (though I wouldn't call Bronte a member of any literary circle).

Then I realized that as tempting as it is to trash another genre, it's basically like music. Some people have the ear and the patience for classical and opera. :e2violin:

I don't. Nope, give me a three-minute Clash song or Richard Shindell on an acoustic. :Guitar:

It doesn't mean classical or opera suck - just that it's made for another audience.

Vomaxx · Jan 1, 2006

danielmc said:
That blinkered thinking rules out Dante, Swift, Camus, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Turgenev, Fielding, James, Ondjatte, Tolstoy, Gogol, Flaubert, Sartre, etc etc etc.

I doubt that Ms. Lisle was thinking of such authors; rather, I would guess she meant more contempoary writers, such as those attacked by B.R. Myers in "A Reader's Manifesto" (e.g., deLillo, Auster, Proulx, Guterson, Cormac McCarthy).

willietheshakes · Jan 1, 2006

Vomaxx said:
I doubt that Ms. Lisle was thinking of such authors; rather, I would guess she meant more contempoary writers, such as those attacked by B.R. Myers in "A Reader's Manifesto" (e.g., deLillo, Auster, Proulx, Guterson, Cormac McCarthy).

Which doesn't make it any better. Or less objectionable. Or less of a sweeping generalization.

Not to mention incorrect - NONE of the writers you mention above are guilty of "endless hundred-word passive-voice sentences and passive scenes of flat characters indulging in self-pity and navel-contemplation". But hey, why let the truth stand in the way of a little stereotyping?

Jamesaritchie · Jan 2, 2006

Lisle

Holly Lisle is a pretty good writer, and has a very good website. But where literary fiction is concerned she's an idiot. She has the same feelings about college. Probably because she's never been to college. Her views are obviously those of someone who's always been on the outside looking in.

She has every right to hate literary fiction, but she has no right to proclaim it all bad, or to say it would be improved by being burned. She's confusing her own taste in reading with quality. And editors do not react the way she says. That's even sillier than her take on literary fiction.

Her statements say a lot more about her than they do about literary fiction.

aruna · Jan 2, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
Holly Lisle is a pretty good writer, and has a very good website. But where literary fiction is concerned she's an idiot. She has the same feelings about college. Probably because she's never been to college. Her views are obviously those of someone who's always been on the outside looking in.

She has every right to hate literary fiction, but she has no right to proclaim it all bad, or to say it would be improved by being burned. She's confusing her own taste in reading with quality. And editors do not react the way she says. That's even sillier than her take on literary fiction.

Her statements say a lot more about her than they do about literary fiction.

Exactly. Literary fiction is too broad and undefined a term to be dismissed with such contempt. Some contemporary literary writers I love are:
Amy Tan, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Louis de Bernieres, Yan Martell. None of these had navel-gazing protagonists. In R. Mistry's A Fine Balance I was at the edge of my seat in the last pages, yelling No! No! No! at the story.

danielmc · Jan 2, 2006

aruna said:
Exactly. Literary fiction is too broad and undefined a term to be dismissed with such contempt. Some contemporary literary writers I love are:
Amy Tan, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Louis de Bernieres, Yan Martell. None of these had navel-gazing protagonists. In R. Mistry's A Fine Balance I was at the edge of my seat in the last pages, yelling No! No! No! at the story.

The last five or six pages of Farewell to Arms had me doing that last month, on a train, on the way home from another shitty day in the office, packed full of people i don't know and now probably think i'm nuts! I had headphones on and didn't realise i was talking out loud, with tears in my eyes cursing Papa for putting me through such heartache in the name of literary perfection. And i'm a six and a half foot man covered in tattoos with a skinhead, not that i'd want to stereotype myself. It took an awful long time to wipe the smile and the tears from my face when i finished Shadow of the Wind, or to break the silence i sat in when i finished The English Patient and finally realised that words on a page could be more than entertainment, they could be beautiful.

That's what 'literary' can do, that's what horror or romance or mystery or crime or sci-fi or fantasy hasn't, so far, done for me. (Unless you count Papillon as genre)

aruna · Jan 2, 2006

OH! When I read For Whom the Bell Tolls a few years ago I wept for days on end - and prayed that somne day I could cause such a reaction in my own readers. And since then, whenever I see a field of cropped wheat after the harvest, I think of Maria's hair.

A Helpful Web Site

Vomaxx

Carmy

jules

Bored fanatic

willietheshakes

Gentleman. Scholar. Bastard.

danielmc

Steve 211

Here and There

Vomaxx

willietheshakes

Gentleman. Scholar. Bastard.

Jamesaritchie

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

danielmc

aruna

On a wing and a prayer