Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for the ‘The Last Word’ Category

You Are a Doo-Doo Head or, Do As I Say Not As I Doo-Doo

Dear Uptight Grammarian:

You know — honest to Christmas, I wasn’t originally going to respond to your email. It’s been sitting in my inbox for 2 weeks and I was going to delete it today. I get a little sick of reading the same complaints by knuckeheads like you who have nothing intelligent or substantive to say beyond the usual whining. It gets tiresome trying to come-up with witty retorts and there’s really very little sport in it for me these days. But, I was chatting with another literary editor yesterday and we were talking about the use of vulgarity in writing, so I thought I could cover that topic by way of a response to you.

Before I address your point about my use of “vulgarities” let me say this about my blog:

1) Yes, I do bend the rules of grammar/mechanics to some degree. This blog is written in a certain style and I bend those rules to fit that style. The manner in which I write this blog merely reinforces everything I’ve said about good writing. If you don’t understand that, I’d suggest you read through my blog more carefully.

2) My “snide, unprofessional attitude”? Is there some special edicate manual for literary editors I’m supposed to know about? I’ve read and responded to thousands and thousands of submissions over the years, and I’d defy but the tiniest percentage of those thousands to even suggest that I was ever unkind or unfair to them. And if I did trash that tiny percentage of writers, they had it coming as far as I’m concerned.

3) Last time I checked, this blog was called Diary of a Mad Editor — not Diary of the Warm, Fuzzy, Well-Manicured Editor so, get over it.

Now, about “vulgarities”:

Yes I do curse to some degree in this blog and elsewhere. But I only use obscenties when they seem appropriate. I’ve never said to any writer not to use obscenities in their writing — only that they use that language when necessary and not frivolously. Foul language, seemingly inappropriate subject matter, extreme violence, explicit sex, gallows humor, taboo subject matter of any kind — all of these things have a place in written communication. Anything that is a part of our human experience has a proper place in our literature. This was what I was discussing with my editor friend. When you write about a subject, you have to be true to that subject. You can’t sanitize it if the subject, by it’s very nature, is unsanitary. Fuck that. Fuck censorship. How are you going to write about something convincingly if you restrain yourself that way. As a writer, you have to embrace the idea of an appropriate level of language. That doesn’t mean that you write something purely for it’s apparent shock value. What it does mean is that if you are writing about a dock worker, for instance, that he walk, talk, dress and exhibit many of the traits of someone of his social class and experience. Same goes with soldiers or cops or anyone else. If you write about a pedophile, you have to capture all the things about him that make him creepy and wrong no matter how taboo.

Now, I realize I’ve deliberately strayed from your email’s topic, but only somewhat because, despite your protestations to the contrary, I think I’ve demonstrated in a roundabout way that I do very much practice what I’ve been preaching.

Can I get an “Amen”?

He Must’ve Been Unconscious

The other night I participated in a poetry discussion group. The sort of thing that is part book club and part informal workshop.

A small group of us met in a local coffee house after hours and sat around reading and talking about poetry. The evening was going swimmingly until, about half-way into the meeting, this guy showed-up — late and kind of grumpy. You know — like he had someplace else to be but his car broke down and he just stopped by to use the phone or get out of the rain or take a dump. Anyway, he sits there like a lump and doesn’t say a word until it’s time for him to read his poem. You can tell that he’s one of those poets who thinks every line that drips from his pen is spun from gold and that sun shines from his asshole. He goes into this long tired introduction about how he was inspired to use stream of consciousness in his poem. I’m sitting there thinking, read the fucking poem, already — my balls are falling asleep fer christsakes! So he finally reads the poem. It goes on for about 2 or 3 pages. When he is finished, I comment that I appreciated the rhythm of the poem but that what he has written is not stream-of-consciousness. You’d think I cracked him across the jaw with a Louisville Slugger, because he did this whiplash motion with his head. He starts to argue with me: “No, no. It is stream-of-consciousness. You don’t know what you’re saying . . .” What! Are you addressing moi? I looked around the room and considered the company I was in, the setting, and the old guy’s absolute refusal to listen to reason and came to the conclusion that there is great wisdom in picking your battles. So, I quickly changed the subject and let him sit there in his ignorance, kind of like how a bad parent might let a toddler sit in a dirty diaper because it’s too much trouble to change.

But, here I am 3 days later still pissed about the matter.

I’m sorry, but writers who talk out their ass about writerly stuff they should actually know about but don’t bothers me. And it wasn’t so much that the guy was ignorant — it was that he had no interest in correcting his ignorance. Old grumpypuss was confusing stream-of-consciousness with free-writing. But that’s not even the worst of it. What he had written wasn’t even free-writing. See, what he had actually done was take several different kinds of formal verse and splice it together into a long poem which, I suppose, could be considered an experiment in form. That’s not stream-of-consciousness and it is, most certainly, not free-writing. So, he was not only ignorant — he was doubly ignorant.

Considering the sorry state of our public education system, it’s really no wonder people confuse stream-of-consciousness with free-writing. Hell, I remember back in the 10th grade, my English teacher didn’t know the difference. Nonetheless, it’s something every writer should know whether or not one uses either technique. Because you never know, you know.

So, for the record:

Free-Writing is a guided writing exercise used to conquer writer’s block. The exercise usually has a time limit but otherwise follows no rules other than to keep writing non-stop regardless of mistakes or straying off-topic. You do a lot of this kind of thing in creative writing classes. The technique was pioneered by writing instructors like Natalie Goldberg. This technique should not be confused with stream-of-consciousness or automatic writing.

Stream-of-consciousness is a specific form of interior monologue. Rather than being a straight narrative of thought, it seeks to emulate the randomness of the thought process using fragments, broken syntax, unruly punctuation, wordplay, allusion, etc. The most famous example of this technique is James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but many other writers have used it to a degree including contemporary novelists such as Will Christopher Baer and Jonathan Safron Foer.

Automatic writing is a form of writing championed by the Surrealists in their day in which an individual entered a trance-like state and tapped into the collective unconscious. Generally, automatic writing is dismissed as a parlor trick today and is not utilized much. But, again, it shouldn’t be confused with free-writing or stream-of-consciousness.

And while we’re on the subject (and just to be thorough and crystal fucking clear on the matter), stream-of-consciousness should likewise not be confused with a dramatic monologue, which is a type of poem where a character either historical or fictional explains himself to an imaginary audience. Examples of this are found in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and Robert Brownings’ “My Last Duchess.”

So, I hope this has been helpful to some of you. And, grumpy old dude . . . please read this blog — preferrably after you’ve had a bran muffin and emptied your bowels.

Poetry is Best Which Poets Least

People often ask me what makes for a good poem. It’s not so easy to answer. To merely say that, “I know it when I see it,” is a cop-out. Because we all know it when we see it — and we all have reasons for believing in what we see, even if we cannot articulate it in the moment.

There is a level at which all writing is objective — you know: spelling, using the wrong word when another would be better, too many words, or not enough. That objective part of writing is the smallest, most insignificant part. Just proofreading and copyediting.

The subjective part is what’s hard to pin down. Difficult, but not impossible.

I read poems all the time — both unpublished (and probably never will be published) poems and those published in journals that I just don’t much like. I don’t like them and I’m always pondering why I don’t like them.

In each and every case, those poets just couldn’t get out of their own damn way! Some of these poets are unskilled, unschooled amateurs. Some are academics with learned degrees. And some are those self-proclaimed outlaw poets. Their poems are all fat and ego and all their words serve themselves and their own persona and a genuine poem that clicks with an audience never emerges.

With the amateur poets, there’s usually a desire to express some emotion or other. Someone’s “soul is bleeding” or “heart is broken”. All triteness aside, their poems only ask of the audience that they sympathize with the poet. There is no connection made with the audience. The academic essentially does the same thing — only it’s a graver crime against good poetry because that poet fucking well knows better. Instead of trite language, he’ll throw up complicated metaphors — using language as intellectual tripwires to create barriers to the poem rather than free the poem to be born. And the “outlaw” — well, the bad wannabe outlaw can’t get past the desire to be seen as a poetic badass. Everything in the poem is about the poet and what a badass he is and how the world can’t handle what a badass he is. Always, always whining about how misunderstood he is: WAHWAHWAH . . . fuckfuckityfuckfuckfuck . . .WAHWAHWAH!”

A good poem transcends the mastabutory nature of self-expression.

A good poem rings true — an immediately recognizable truth that almost any audience on any given day can look at and say, “yeah, I get that,” even if that truth was previously alien to that audience.

A good poem has its own agenda, it takes center stage. Think of a poet like a roadie on a rock tour — he sets up the equipment, then goes backstage and lets the band play uninterrupted.

Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect or consistently write good poems. All poets write bad poems occasionally. Sometimes the temptation is too great! Although, it’s important to understand that the best at poetry are those that poet the least.