[and I totally understand it but it bugs the hell out of me at the same time that self-indulgent automatically equals bad.]
I think the issue I have isn't so much that self-indulgent fiction is unserious or unpalatable, necessarily; it's that it angles for an emotional payoff without doing any of the work to establish, justify, or make credible those emotions. Which isn't something that's necessary, when you're writing to indulge yourself: you're already on board with what you're doing.
It's like – if you'll permit me a very silly analogy – if you run a business that makes furniture. One day, your friend needs to borrow a buffet table, and you go "No problem! I'll lend you my personal one." Except that your personal buffet table is a long plane of wood that's held up by an end table at one side and a stack of cinder blocks at the other, and you just throw a tablecloth over it and it's not like anyone notices. So then you show up at your friend's house with this length of wood and a tablecloth, and they'd be quite justified in going "...what the hell?" at you.
I mean, at least, this is how I interact with the term. When I write something self-indulgent, it's just what it says on the tin: it's meant to indulge my particular sensibilities. Even the phrase, to indulge my particular sensibilities, suggests a pre-existing substance which it interacts with. It's the sort of thing you can't get away with in works of fiction proper, where you have to include all the bits that make the fiction functional. If I put out something that's wildly self-indulgent and a reader comes by who shares my sensibilities, it'll work for them – they have a couple of fifty-gallon drums to balance the tabletop on, or something. But if they don't, they don't have a story, just the superficial emotional trappings of one. If nothing else, I feel like I'd have to warn people that the end tables and the cinderblocks are something they'll need to provide, themselves.
If that makes sense?
[But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed.]
Heh. Well, if you ever want to get back into it...
One of the things I've learned in original fiction, both writing and editing it, is that every single story I've run into is meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have sold has been meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have bought has been meaningfully flawed. Sometimes I've been able to see past the flaws to really love my stories despite them; sometimes by the time I send them out, all I can see is the flaws, and I'm just working on this blind faith in my own process.
(The story I sold at the beginning of this year – the one that's up at Clarkesworld – is one of the latter stories. Dear god, the thing is a mess. Nothing actually happens in it. It's a whole bunch of talking and then the character doing all the talking makes the choice you'd narratively expect her to make, in the end. There's a fairly major background plot thread that I'd meant to flesh out and developed but couldn't, so it just gets totally dropped halfway through. And do not get me started on the title; it has to be one of the worst titles I've ever come up with. ...and yet, the editor liked it enough to buy it. Some people around the internetseem to like it (even as other people clearly don't). I do not understand the affection shown to the story, but in a way, it's not really my place to; my job is to write the best story I can at the moment and try to write a better one next time, not to judge the story. Except to the extent that it helps me write a better story next time.)
And, I mean, there are flaws that ruin people's ability to enjoy a story. I reject a lot of stuff that's fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it not work. (And there's a wide, wide spectrum in that, from "not work as an intelligible piece of prose" through "not work as a cohesive story" to "not work for me, particularly, as a reader".) And when something is flawed in one of those ways, it's probably best to revise it or trunk it or... something.
But as for putting stuff out even though it's flawed... well, there's really no other way to put stuff out. :P
I don't know if that's actually encouraging, but it's something I find a strange, slant kind of comfort in. (And, yeah, as is probably obvious from the post above, it's something I still have a lot of issues with. Because if I see a flaw, I want to be able to fix it. A flaw should, to my mind, be something fixable, and the gap between my ability to see flaws and my ability to correct them frequently rankles. I feel like this is the curse of many creative people.)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2014-03-10 10:38 pm (UTC)I think the issue I have isn't so much that self-indulgent fiction is unserious or unpalatable, necessarily; it's that it angles for an emotional payoff without doing any of the work to establish, justify, or make credible those emotions. Which isn't something that's necessary, when you're writing to indulge yourself: you're already on board with what you're doing.
It's like – if you'll permit me a very silly analogy – if you run a business that makes furniture. One day, your friend needs to borrow a buffet table, and you go "No problem! I'll lend you my personal one." Except that your personal buffet table is a long plane of wood that's held up by an end table at one side and a stack of cinder blocks at the other, and you just throw a tablecloth over it and it's not like anyone notices. So then you show up at your friend's house with this length of wood and a tablecloth, and they'd be quite justified in going "...what the hell?" at you.
I mean, at least, this is how I interact with the term. When I write something self-indulgent, it's just what it says on the tin: it's meant to indulge my particular sensibilities. Even the phrase, to indulge my particular sensibilities, suggests a pre-existing substance which it interacts with. It's the sort of thing you can't get away with in works of fiction proper, where you have to include all the bits that make the fiction functional. If I put out something that's wildly self-indulgent and a reader comes by who shares my sensibilities, it'll work for them – they have a couple of fifty-gallon drums to balance the tabletop on, or something. But if they don't, they don't have a story, just the superficial emotional trappings of one. If nothing else, I feel like I'd have to warn people that the end tables and the cinderblocks are something they'll need to provide, themselves.
If that makes sense?
[But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed.]
Heh. Well, if you ever want to get back into it...
One of the things I've learned in original fiction, both writing and editing it, is that every single story I've run into is meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have sold has been meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have bought has been meaningfully flawed. Sometimes I've been able to see past the flaws to really love my stories despite them; sometimes by the time I send them out, all I can see is the flaws, and I'm just working on this blind faith in my own process.
(The story I sold at the beginning of this year – the one that's up at Clarkesworld – is one of the latter stories. Dear god, the thing is a mess. Nothing actually happens in it. It's a whole bunch of talking and then the character doing all the talking makes the choice you'd narratively expect her to make, in the end. There's a fairly major background plot thread that I'd meant to flesh out and developed but couldn't, so it just gets totally dropped halfway through. And do not get me started on the title; it has to be one of the worst titles I've ever come up with. ...and yet, the editor liked it enough to buy it. Some people around the internet seem to like it (even as other people clearly don't). I do not understand the affection shown to the story, but in a way, it's not really my place to; my job is to write the best story I can at the moment and try to write a better one next time, not to judge the story. Except to the extent that it helps me write a better story next time.)
And, I mean, there are flaws that ruin people's ability to enjoy a story. I reject a lot of stuff that's fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it not work. (And there's a wide, wide spectrum in that, from "not work as an intelligible piece of prose" through "not work as a cohesive story" to "not work for me, particularly, as a reader".) And when something is flawed in one of those ways, it's probably best to revise it or trunk it or... something.
But as for putting stuff out even though it's flawed... well, there's really no other way to put stuff out. :P
I don't know if that's actually encouraging, but it's something I find a strange, slant kind of comfort in. (And, yeah, as is probably obvious from the post above, it's something I still have a lot of issues with. Because if I see a flaw, I want to be able to fix it. A flaw should, to my mind, be something fixable, and the gap between my ability to see flaws and my ability to correct them frequently rankles. I feel like this is the curse of many creative people.)