La Boheme (an opera review post)

Roughly translated (okay, not so roughly), "la boheme" means "the bohemians." It's loosely based on characters from a series of short stories by the 19th century French novelist Henri Murger, and, when I say "loosely," I do actually mean it.

Giacomo Puccini, having been himself a starving artist at one point in his life, felt a great affinity for the characters of his opera and, evidently, caused a lot of frustration with his librettist because he kept changing the words. He seemed to be a believer in the "ask forgiveness, not permission" philosophy. You can't argue with the results, at any rate. La Boheme is one of the top operas in the world more than a century after it's introduction and has been the most performed opera at the San Francisco Opera House.

As such, any production of it seems to have a really high bar it needs to meet with the critics. This being my first viewing of it, I have no such bar, and I thought this production was great.

First, the set was great.They did a great job of putting together something that looked like a studio apartment being shared by four poverty-stricken artists: a poet, a painter, a musician, and a philosopher. But, even better! The apartment piece of the set separated and turned around to form the city streets. It looked nice and gave the right feel.

Then, the cast was great. All of them. The opera has a lot of comedy in it despite the fact that it's a tragic love story and, as such, requires some serious acting. This is definitely not an opera that would work if the performers just stood in place when they were singing. They were all great. I can't even pick out a favorite.

Here's where it really works for me:
When Picasso first went to Paris, he was exactly one of these starving artists. His first winter was so hard that he was forced to burn all of the paintings he had thus far produced so that he wouldn't freeze to death. It's a horrible thought. The opera opens with Rodolfo and Marcello burning the manuscript to one of Rodolfo's plays just so that they can have a little heat. This production did a good job of making that real, of making the poverty and the desperation that goes with it real.

Not just in that they had no fuel for the fire and no food but, also, they had no access to healthcare. You could make a case for this being a play about poverty and how people with no access to healthcare deal with illness: They try to pretend it isn't there. Rodolfo knows immediately upon meeting Mimi that she's not well, but what are they going to do? There's no money for a doctor. And Mimi? Evidently, she's been dealing with her illness for so long that she's able to pretend even to herself that she's perfectly fine -- "It's just a little cough." -- so she's surprised, later, to find out she's sick.

But, you know, no one has ever died from lack of access to healthcare.

The only complaint, and it was a small one, was from my wife. She said Mimi and Rodolfo spent too much time looking at the audience during their love duets rather than at each other. I didn't notice, but, because they provide viewing screens for those of us up in the nosebleed section, I may have been watching the screen instead of the stage and I wouldn't necessarily have noticed that particular issue.

What I can say for certain is that La Boheme is definitely an opera I want to see again. In fact, I would go back to see it again today if I could, and we just saw it last night (as I write this, not as you read it). Puccini is my wife's favorite opera composer, and I can definitely see why. I don't know that I have a favorite at this point, but Puccini definitely wrote some of the most memorable opera music ever written.

On Poetry (part 1)

What is poetry?

You'd think that question would have an easy answer. Really, you would. I bet you even think you know what that answer is. Probably, you'd be wrong. Believe it or not, what, exactly, poetry is is a hotly (in some circles) debated subject (most people really don't care). And the definitions extend from the end of "anything created is poetry" to "creative acts employing language" to the other, more restrictive, end of "language using rhythm and rhyme." This disagreement is not new. It's so old, in fact, that Aristotle tackled this whole debate in his book Poetics around 2500 years ago. Yeah, we haven't made much progress.

What we do know is that poetry began in song. Well, we almost know that. We're fairly confident of it, at any rate. I find that somewhat fitting considering that poetry has ended in song (but more on that in a moment). It's likely that poetry went beyond song and into oral story telling as the rhythm of it assisted in remembering the tales.

Some of the oldest poetry we have, and the oldest epic poetry, is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Our oldest (partial) copies are nearly 4000 years old.

None of which gets us any closer to the answer to "what is poetry?"

And that's not a question I'm even going to attempt to give a definitive answer to, because what poetry is has been and meant different things to different cultures all throughout history. So much so that I doubt there is even a definitive answer anymore (or ever (see Aristotle)), which is why people are still arguing over it. For our purposes, though, I think there are two significant points, maybe three:

1. Rhythm. The root of poetry has always been rhythm. It came from songs, remember? And it's the rhythm, the cadence, that made it useful for early man and lead to its evolution.

2. Prose split off from poetry. Literary prose has only existed for a few hundred years, almost no time at all in comparison to the length of time poetry has existed. There are specific reasons for the evolution of prose from poetry, but one of the biggest was its lack of structure. The lack of structure made it easier to translate. [There's a lot more to this, but that's all that's important for this discussion.]

3. Which brings us to structure, which is really the issue in all of this.

I'm just gonna say it and get it out of the way: on the whole, I dislike "modern poetry." I dislike it as not being poetry at all, because so much of "modern poetry" has no structure. It's prose written in verse form. Taking a piece of prose and writing it as if it's poetry does not make it poetry. I don't care how good the prose is. Most of our actual poetry that's being written today is found in pop music. Poetry has ended in song. See? That's where it finds its structure. Beyond that, poetry is mostly dead. As has been said, "Only poets read poetry."

And that's almost exactly true, too. The statistic for Americans that read poetry (and Americans are far more likely to read poetry than anyone else in the world) has fallen below 5% as of a couple of years ago. Even online! Seriously, when stumbling across a poem online, basically, having it shoved in your face, less than 5% of people will bother to read it even with it right there in front of them.
Unless it's lyrics to a song they like, then they might... but, then, we don't consider that reading poetry.

And why is it that people no longer read poetry? I'm going to say that it's because people no longer know how to write poetry. And I'm gonna blame that on free verse. Here's where we talk about Picasso again. Free verse did to poetry what Picasso did to painting. It made anyone think they could do it. Free verse arose from the desire for something new, just like cubism and surrealism for Picasso. Other people looked at those paintings and thought "I can do that," only they couldn't. Not really. Picasso could do it because he was trained. And free verse suffers from the same fate; all people think they can be poets just be writing in verse form.

And it's just not true.

John Livingston Lowes said in 1916, "Free verse may be written as very beautiful prose; prose may be written as very beautiful free verse. Which is which?"
That's kind of where I come down on it, and where you can see that I don't reach all the way to the end of that spectrum I mentioned where anything is poetry or, even, anything using language is poetry.

Robert Frost said that free verse is like "playing tennis without a net."

And T. S. Eliot said, "No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."

So here's the thing:
Prose split off from poetry so that we can have writing without structure. Isn't, then, free verse the same thing? Poetry without structure? Yeah, it is, and we call that prose.

That's as close to a definition of what poetry is that I'm going to get: It's structured writing. It has a rhythm of some sort. It has some form it has to follow. Some of it rhymes. Free verse, like prose, has none of these things. The beauty of poetry, though, is found in its structure. Like a great architectural achievement.

Rules of Grammarization

[Let me point out that this post actually has nothing to do with "grammarization." I actually made up a word to go in that spot that was supposed to be a play off of another word, but, when I looked it up (just to be sure), it meant something... well, it meant something that has nothing to do with any of this. "Grammarization" was the best substitute I could think of, and, at least, it has to do with grammar.]

Some of you newer people may not know about the rep I've developed with grammar, especially commas. I'm like the comma police or something, or so people seem to think. But, you know, one thing is true: I do think rules are important, especially when it comes to grammar. How we speak and what we type say so much about us. And it may not be what we're trying to say. But people make decisions about the kind of person they think we are based upon our ability to communicate. It may not be fair, but that's how it is. [In fact, I just saw a survey, recently, showing that grammar is the #2 thing that people use to evaluate a potential partner (after teeth). At least, on paper it is.]  So I think it's especially important for writers to know the rules. [If you don't, learn them, or, at least, get someone that does (know them) to help you make your manuscript look like you do.]

But all of this gets kind of sticky. Why should we, any of us, follow the rules? Aren't they there to be broken? To be ignored? Aren't they all subjective anyway?
Not really, no.

I'm gonna bring Picasso back up (not for the last time). The reason he was able to "break the rules" of painting is that he had mastered them. He was possibly the greatest classical painter of his day, but painting the way everyone else painted didn't interest him, so he explored new territory. He broke the rules. It was only possible because he knew them so well.

What it comes down to is how on purpose your disregard for the rules is. So, on the one hand, when we write, it may be okay to break some rules here and there, but, when we're breaking those rules on accident because we don't know the rule or don't know how to apply the rule, it makes us look amateurish at best. Haphazard. Inconsistent. On the other hand, when it's purposeful, it suddenly becomes artistic and meaningful.

One of the things I see most often is long, run on, sentence fragments. Yeah, that sounds oxymoronic, but it is what it is. I see it both in the manuscripts of the middle schoolers I teach, which is to be expected, and from adults, which shouldn't be happening. But it's easy to get lost in a long thought and forget to include a sentence. Let's try to put together an example:
"When I got up for school, brushing my teeth and eating breakfast, though I dropped toothpaste on my shirt and didn't notice and missed the bus when I went to change."
See, that looks like a run on sentence except that there isn't a sentence anywhere in there, so what you have is a string of fragments. I expect to deal with this kind of stuff with my creative writing class, but it's more than a little distressing to see it all over the blogs of (supposed) writers.

And don't even start me on commas.

Look, I know a lot of the rules are arbitrary and some of them are even kind of stupid. For instance, I was just reading last week about how the rule about splitting infinitives came into being, and it was, really, more like an misinterpretation than anything else. Some guy (no, I don't remember his name) was translating some Latin, and he realized that in Latin they don't split infinitives, so, he thought, we shouldn't either. The thing is, though, in Latin, the verb is always one word due to the way they conjugate, so you can't actually split an infinitive. Prior to that, splitting an infinitive, "to boldly go," was perfectly normal in English and in all of the Germanic languages. But, suddenly, this one guy decides it's wrong, and we've had this rule, now, for a few hundred years that no one can follow. Is it, "boldly, to go" or "to go boldly"? The problem is that "boldly" only modifies "go" not "to go," so only "to boldly go" sounds right.

And, yeah, I hear you all screaming about why, then, should we follow grammar rules?

I'm not saying that you should. Necessarily. If you know the rules and know how to use the rules, do whatever you want to with them. If you're just busy writing "like you talk" or saying "well, that's just the character's voice" just so that you don't need to bother to know the rules, well, then, the likelihood is that your writing is busy being juvenile, inconsistent, and, well, unreadable. Except by other people who can't tell the difference. At least, not on a conscious level. Meaning, they can't look at your writing and tell you what's wrong with it, but they may be able to set it against someone else's writing and say the other one is better.

To put it another way, hordes of people might like Twilight, because they can't evaluate the grammar (or the story), but people that know the rules tear it apart. The fact that Stephen King ripped Twilight a new one while praising Harry Potter ought to tell you something.

Anyway... All of that to say you need to learn your rules and, probably, you ought to be following them. Actually, it's kind of like driving. If I'm gonna get in a car with someone that's gonna speed, I want it to be a Nascar driver or a cop or someone that's had training and knows how to do it safely. I don't want it to be my college roommate who's doing it just to see how fast he can get the car to go (going over 100 mph isn't as fun as it sounds). All I have to say is that a lot of you (meaning no one in particular) need to slow down, maybe take some driving classes, and follow the rules of the road.

Now the disclaimer:
This post is sort of a prelude to a book review I have coming up. I don't want to spend the book review talking about rules and such, so this will be here to refer back to instead.

The Picasso Syndrome and the First Person

I'm jumping back again to an older post I hadn't gotten around to finishing, but, since I was just talking about Picasso here, I figured I'd go back to the post that inspired the Picasso comment and finish it up.

But let's get into some history, first:

Picasso showed skill and interest in art at an early age, so much so that his father started him on formal training at age seven, much to the detriment of his regular school work. Picasso was admitted into the advanced class at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona at just 13. Not only was he much younger than the average student of that level, but he completed the entrance exam in just one week, a process that usually took an entire month. At 16, Picasso was admitted into Madrid's Royal Academy of San Fernando, Italy's most prestigious art school.

All of that to say that Picasso was no slouch in the art department. He was classically trained and, possibly, the greatest classical artist of his day. The problem was that it bored him. He wanted to do something new and different, and that lead to experimentation and the development of many new art styles, especially Cubism. Cubism was born from a desire to go where no other artist had gone before not because Picasso couldn't draw. So to speak.

Of course, there were two responses to Cubism:
1. People hated it. Especially traditionalists. It was viewed as trash that no "respectable" artist would even deign to recognize. They didn't understand it.
2. People loved it. It was new and exciting, something that had never been done before. They didn't understand it, either, but they tried to. People are still arguing over what Picasso's paintings mean.

Of course, the most important response to Picasso, other than the group trying to ignore he existed, was to imitate him. After all, it looked easy enough. Just paint some weird stuff that people couldn't understand, and you had it, right? No, not really. Most of what ended up happening was people painting weird crap that was just crap. Some of the crap was good enough, though, especially when it was all new and exciting, that it got elevated to art status, too.

Sometimes, the imitation was from people that could actually do "real" art ("real" art being art that's not just weird stuff that no one understands because it really has no meaning). These were people that saw Picasso as a visionary and wanted to follow after him. There is, after all, skill involved, even if the result is something that's weird. However, some of the imitation was by people that used Picasso as their reason to not bother to know how to do "real" art at all. They saw Picasso as the short cut. Basically, these are the people that were looking at Picasso and thinking, "That's crap. I can do that. And look at how much money that guy's making!" And they went about making crap and trying to get rich from it. Some of them did, of course. Most of them did not.

Which brings me to writing and the cult of 1st Person that's going on these days.

Over the centuries, fiction writing has mostly happened in 3rd person. I suppose it developed that way because it seems more logical. You're telling a story about someone that's not you, so you tell it that way, "that way" being 3rd person. [Interestingly enough, the book that's most widely considered the first (Western) novel, Pamela, is written in 1st person.] From that perspective (the centuries of 3rd person writing perspective), I can understand the attraction to writing in 1st person, especially 1st person present; it feels new and exciting!

However, 1st Person is the new Cubism in that people are using it as a short cut to actually knowing how to write. The idea that you can write it from the perspective of your character is very attractive, because, if you make mistakes, you can chalk it up to being "the way the character talks." And, since it's 1st person, the whole thing is "the way the character talks." It's a nice bit of sleight-of-hand, and other people who don't know the rules (the readers) often fall for it.

I didn't really really become aware of this issue until I started teaching the creative writing class that lead to this (yes, go back and read that post if you haven't already). Their very first assignment was to introduce me to a character. I used the first of my Tib stories, "The Tunnel" (hopefully, this will be available again soon (I'm waiting for art)), as my example of character introduction. "The Tunnel" is written in 3rd person; everything I got back was 1st person (which wasn't a problem in and of itself). But that's not what did it. One of the stories I got back introduced about five different characters, and they were all written in 1st person, and the author hadn't included any cues in the story to let the reader know that we'd switched to some other character. Much discussion followed.

And this is when I became aware that everything they (they being the kids in my class (minus my son, because he's reading a different class of books)) were reading was YA stuff written in 1st person. But it was really through blog interactions that I realized that the reason everything they were reading was in 1st person was because it's just all in 1st person these days. And 1st person present on top of everything else. And that's when I started understanding why I kept coming across comments like, "That's just how my character talks" on various blogs.

It really hit me, though, when I looked at a couple of writing samples from a couple of people. Both were written 1st person present, and both were full of grammar and punctuation errors, and, when I pointed them out, I got the "that's the way my character talks" response, but, when I looked at their blogs, I found out, no, that's just the way they wrote, and neither of them were interested in fixing the mistakes or learning how to not make those mistakes. Neither of those are blogs I follow anymore, because, really, I don't have time for people that are bad writers and blow it off as being the character, especially when their characters were not writing their blogs.

Personal responsibility, people!

And this is where it gets difficult. I don't actually have anything against 1st person writing. I mean, I wrote The House on the Corner (mostly) in 1st person. Of course, at the time, if I'd realized how endemic 1st person had become, I wouldn't have done it that way, but I was experimenting with what I remembered about The Pigman (you can read all about that here) and didn't realize that 1st person writing was taking hold of the marketplace. Which is why I have such an issue with 1st person writing.

No, not because it's everywhere; however, because it's everywhere, I see, more and more, how many people are using it as an excuse to allow sloppy writing and brushing it off as just being the character. And I'm not just  talking about independently published works, because the problem is rampant in traditionally published works, too.

For example:

Percy Jackson: I only read the first one of these, but there's very little chance I'll go back and read anymore of them. Riordan used the fact that it was 1st person to have his character tell us what we should believe about him as a person but used the action to tell us a different story about the character. The two things were at odds with each other, yet we were supposed to believe what the character said about himself for no better reason than he said to.

Miss Peregrine (which I reviewed here) also does the same thing with the character telling us what to believe even when his actions don't support those things. It's just sloppy, lazy writing.

I'd give more examples, but I have not been overly inclined to read any more of the current generation of 1st person YA books coming out. My experience, thus far, has not been a positive one. Add to that the fact that people want to use their 1st person storytelling as an excuse for bad grammar (and I'm sure I'm gaining a reputation for my stance on grammar and punctuation), and I'm not in favor of 1st person writing. It's just not where people should start their writing careers.

I understand the attraction. I do. It's so easy to just write away and believe that you're writing from the standpoint of your character rather than yourself; it's a problem in 3rd person, too (in fact, I'm reading a book in 3rd person, right now, in which none of the characters are distinguishable from each other), but the temptation is so much stronger in 1st, because everything you write is that one character, and it's easy to fall into the trap that that voice you're writing in is your character's instead of your own. At least, with 3rd person, you have the ability to distinguish between the narration and the dialogue.


At any rate, I'm ready for the fad of lazy 1st person writing to slip past us. I'm also waiting for editing to make a comeback. Seriously. I was just reading an article on CNN last week about how copy editing is one of the quickest shrinking fields, right now. Properly edited work is considered "too expensive," so publishers are cutting costs by letting their editors go.

But that's not an excuse for those of us in the "indie" publishing world to do the same. In fact, it's every reason to rise above the mainstream. Show you care enough about your writing to know how to do it. And, if you don't know how to do it, get help from someone that does. Don't let your 1st person writing be your excuse for bad grammar and lousy punctuation.

Not As Subjective As We'd All Like To Think

[Disclaimer: This is not, as it may appear, a post in reaction to the review and comments from last week. I started writing this post and making notes for it back at the beginning of March. However, due to the review last week, I feel this is a good place for this post.]

As artists, we like to tell each other "it's all subjective." Some people like one thing, some people like another thing. There is a part of this that's true. But, mostly, it's not true. There are objective qualities to what's good and what's not good, and these qualities are more powerful than the subjective ones, because the subjective ones have to do with preference, not quality. We can tell this is true because such things as "classics" exist. They exist not because there were no other writers or painters or musicians during their time but because they were better than those other people. Not subjectively better. Just better.

And, mostly, those things are still better.

Wait! How can I even say such a thing? Well... because of science. Sort of.

Let's talk about physical human beauty. Science has, of course, studied this. Why do some women become super models? What is it about them? Why are we attracted to them, and why do they stand out? Why are some men held up as swoon-worthy gods and not others? What do they have that the rest of us don't?

I'm not going to go into all of the studies on this, but there are specific, objective qualities that have been identified that people are attracted to. Like symmetrical-ness of the face, the distance between the eyes, the clearness of the skin. Sure, there are subjective qualities beyond those things like hair and eye color, height (being that height preference is determined by the height of the person judging), and fitness of body along with other cultural preferences, but the basics are biological in nature, and the rest are variations of those basic qualities of attractiveness.

How does this stuff extend into the art world? It seems that so much of art changes so quickly all of the time. What's popular? What's not? One way to tell what's good is how long it lasts. There are pieces of music that people will always go back to, because they were better than other pieces of music from that time period. That's why they last. In the 60s, folk musicians were a dime a dozen, and you don't know who most of them are. Why? Because they weren't really any good. But Dylan? He had a horrible voice, but he wrote great music. He's become a classic. Paul Simon. Peter, Paul, and Mary. Names that people remember because they wrote great music and great songs. They inspired other people.

You look back at Rock, and you get names like Elvis, Rolling Stones, and U2. The Beatles.

And, sure, you may look at the names listed and say, "But I don't like The Beatles." Because, well, I don't. Much. But I can not deny the objective impact that they made, and their influence is not something that's just going to fade away because they've fallen out of popularity. They don't fall out of popularity. People will always be listening to The Beatles (just like people will always be reading Shakespeare).

Think back to the 80s and the plethora of bands; how many are memorable? Is it subjective? No, not really. We don't remember the bad ones, even if they were popular for a while or had a hit song or two. We do remember the good ones like The Police and U2. They've become memorable because they were objectively better than the masses that we don't remember.

The same kind of thing is true for painters. We know who some of them are, because their art was better. Why do we even care about Picasso? Is it because he painted weird stuff? No, it's because he was a great artist that decided to paint weird stuff. People look at it and think, "I can do that." But, no, really, they can't, because they didn't start out with the objective background in art that made Picasso great. They're trying to short cut their way to greatness by painting weird stuff that, then, no one really likes because that's all it ends up being. Weird. Not art.

Which brings us to writing. There are some very well-defined ways of judging whether something is good writing, primarily grammar. "Is it well written?" is not the same as "is it a good story?" And, honestly, it doesn't matter how good the story is if it's poorly written, and, even a not good story can be great if it is well written. So this objective criteria of writing becomes even more important than the one of whether an artist can paint something that's not weird.

I'm going to go to something that was said in a comment to the review I did last week comparing a book to a child. [First, I want to say, a book is not a child no matter how over-used that comparison is. It doesn't have feelings, and it doesn't care if anyone likes it no matter how much it may feel that way to the author. However, I'm going to go with the comparison anyway.] If a book is like a child, we have to look at it as if it is a child in school.

There are objective criteria applied to children in school, and, sometimes, the teacher has to say this child or that child is not ready to go on. Of course, this is a difficult thing to do, and many teachers don't like saying that so allow the children to pass through the grades even though they don't have basic skills (I'm from the south, specifically Louisiana (like 48th or something out of 50 in education(at least, that's what it was when I was growing up, and I don't think it's changed any), so I know what I'm talking about). If a student does need to be held back, does it hurt the child's feelings? Sometimes. Probably less than we think, though, unless we make a huge deal about it and remind the child on a regular basis. [My brother got held back in 1st grade, and he barely noticed. It was never an issue for anyone... other than my mother.] Mostly, it hurts the feeling of the parents. The parents feel like they've failed, and, maybe, they have, but, even if they haven't, they project those feelings at the child and worry about how the child will take it. And here's the conflict: do what's right for the child (hold him back so he can learn the skills he needs) or avoid making the child "feel bad" (pass him on anyway and hope he picks up what he's lacking on his own (almost never happens)).

This is how we need to look at books. Especially books on the outside of traditional publishing. See, within traditional publishing, we do have people that are capable of saying "this child (book) is ready to graduate." This doesn't mean the book is qualitatively good, but it does usually mean  that the book is quantitatively good. Or, at least, it meets some minimum standards (like my oldest son just passed (by a lot) the CA minimum knowledge requirement test for high school, so, technically, he's proficient enough to go on (even though he has two years to go)) of what a book needs to be. Someone that knows how has gone over the grammar and made sure it's pretty close to correct. These are people that know how to use spell check and can generally insert commas at the appropriate places. Outside of traditional publishing, though, we have people deciding for themselves whether they're ready or not, and this leads to a lot of people who are not ready deciding that they are.

Like a 3rd grader deciding he knows enough to quit school and get a real job.

No, really, it's the same kind of thing.

We have classics in literature, because those authors knew how to write. They were at the top of their game. The writing stars of their age. Babe Ruths and Muhammad Alis. Sure, maybe not everyone likes those stories, but they could write and write well. Is Dickens long? Sure, but he wrote so well that people don't care. But you don't like Dickens? "A Christmas Carol" is the most adapted story in history. Sherlock Holmes too dry for you? He's had more film adaptations than any other character ever. These things last because, objectively, they are better.

But we get so caught up in what is now. What's popular right now. 10 years from now, most of it won't be remembered. No one will care. Why? Because it's not good. I'm gonna pick on Twilight (come on, you know it makes an easy target). I can't get into the whole sparkly vampire thing. To me, it's just wrong. However, if I was into cheesy high school romances, and plenty of people are, then I probably wouldn't mind sparkly vampires. Does the fact that it's so popular at this moment mean it's something that will last? I remember when I was in high school and everything was about Flowers in the Attic. Everything. But without the social media involvement. They were the only books the girls talked about. But who remembers them now? No one. Because there was nothing there to make them standout other than that they were popular for a few years. Like Twilight.

And, really, like G R R Martin. Two decades ago it was Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time was the biggest thing in fantasy since, well, Tolkien, and Jordan was talked about the exact same way as Martin is now. But who remembers Jordan? No one. Why? Because he wasn't Tolkien. His work didn't cross the bar Tolkien left behind. An objective, qualitative bar. And, sure, I know a lot of you don't like Tolkien. It doesn't change the fact that he left an objective standard behind that people need to live up to.

So... literature, writing, is not as subjective as we'd all like to think it is. There is an objective standard to what's good and what's not good. Within that objectivity, there is subjectivity. I'll use my own book as an example (because I know it better, and I'm not gonna hurt anyone else's feelings with this).

Well, wait... the problem is that most people have no ability to look at things objectively. They can tell you if they liked it, but they can't tell you why they liked it. Try to pin a random person down as to why they liked something, and you'll find it's like pulling teeth. Ask people why they like The Avengers, and I'll bet, in most cases, you'll get nothing more concrete than "it's exciting," "it has lots of action," or, maybe, "it's the story." Ask someone what they liked about the story, and you get "I don't know. It was just good." At any rate, people have a difficult enough time with being objective about other things, trying to get them to be objective about their own thing? It's just trouble.

But being as objective as I can about my own book, The House on the Corner, I can say it's good. I do have a leg up on a lot of people self-publishing, though. I have a degree in English, for one thing, plus I've studied a lot of classic, objectively good, literature. I've learned how to write, and I know how to tell a story. My book is good (and I'm not going beyond saying "good." That, I don't know).

That, however, doesn't mean that everyone will like it. Just like I don't like Twilight, because I'm not into freaky, stalkerish romances. But, then, not everyone likes Tolkien, but, man, could he write!

And, even within something you like, there may be issues. Sometimes these are subjective. For instance, PT Dilloway pointed out that I use the word "suddenly" too much. But what quantifies too much of that one word? It really doesn't matter, because, to him, it was too much, because that's his preference, and that's where the subjectivity comes in. Does that change that, overall, the work is good? No, but he may not like it for that reason. And it made me go back and look at my use of the word, which is a good thing. Out of 120,000 words, I used it about two dozen times. Quantitatively, I don't think this is too much; however, there were a couple of places where I used it too closely together, and I don't like that. At some point, some of those will get revised out. Recently, I've decided that I use the word "though" way too much. Some of those are going to go, too. But those are just little things that don't really affect the overall book, because my grammar, my objective measures, are pretty much in place.

And this is where we get into problems: the objective values have to be in place before we can get on to the subjective ones. How do you know if you'll like a story if it's just too poorly written to find the story? Is it fair for me to come in and say to someone, "Hey, your project needs work"? It's totally fair if I'm basing it off of objective measurements. No, it's not fair for me to come in and say, "Hey, your work sucks," just because I didn't happen to like it. I can say I don't like it, but that's really all I'm entitled to say if it's about my personal preference. However, it's totally fair to tell someone that they need editing assistance, especially if they need editing assistance.

In fact, I think it's more than fair; I think it's necessary. At least, in the non-traditional publishing world it is. In self-publishing, often, it's all up to the skill of the author, and, often, that means that you have the equivalent of 3rd graders deciding that their work is good enough to graduate. Even in small, independent publishing, you frequently don't get anything better than that. Low paid editors that really don't know what they're doing. There needs to be someone there saying, "Hey, this needs more work."

Michael Offutt, though, brought up a point that did give me pause. Basically, he said, that a bad review for someone's work is directly affecting someone's livelihood. I had to think about that, but, eventually, I came to the following conclusions:
1. Generally speaking, people that are self-publishing are not depending upon  the book revenue for their livelihood. If  they are, if they are successful enough that they make their living through writing, my one review isn't going to affect that.
2. Their "bad" books (speaking from an objective standpoint) make it more difficult for me to succeed; therefore, they are affecting my (future) livelihood by making it more difficult for my work to get out there.

Look, people already have the view that self-published works are sub par. And they have good reason. Most of them are. Most of them have been put out there by 3rd graders, figuratively speaking, who decided they were ready. No, that there isn't good stuff out there, but most of them are not.

I mean, I don't even bother with self-published works unless it's by someone I know or has some good recommendations from people I know. Why? Because I don't have time to sift through all the crap that's covering up the stuff that's worth reading. It kind of sucks, but that's the way it is. And, what this means to me is that if I see something that objectively doesn't make the grade, I'm gonna say so. Especially, most especially, if I'm asked to do it. Because, honestly, I'm not gonna go out looking for things to give bad reviews to; I don't have the time to waste on reading crap.

However, if someone asks me to give a review, I'm going to weigh it to the best of my objective ability, which, as it happens, is pretty good.

Of course, as I said earlier, most people don't ever bother to look at, well, anything objectively, so what we get is a lot of "that sucks!" or "what a piece of garbage!" or, even, "wow! that was the awesomest thing ever!" And none of those statements mean anything, because none of those statements differentiate between what is objective and what is subjective. Which is what I try to do when I give a review, and it's why I separate the technicals from my reaction to whatever it is I'm reading.

For the sake of saying it (because I thought about this a lot this weekend), here are my four basic possible reactions to the things I read:
1. That was bad, and I didn't like it.
2. That was bad, but I liked it anyway.
3. That was good, but I didn't like it.
4. That was good, and I did like it.
Those are, of course, starting places, but what's important to see is that they all start with an objective valuation of the material, and that objective judgement affects my subjective response. And that's true for everyone even if they can't see what's going on in their own heads. They are making some sort value judgement of the piece that, then, colors their subjective response to it and tells them whether they like it or not. Unfortunately, often, it's other 3rd graders doing this, so they don't have much in the way of objective skill to work with, so they can look at two things and see that one is better, but they can't tell you why, and  the why is what is so very important.

Why is this book that this person worked on for so long not good enough?

And do you want to know the truth? Most people don't want you to know why. They want you to leave it at "I didn't like it," because, that way, they can fall back on the whole "well, it's all subjective" crap heap and continue to pat themselves on the back and pretend that that piece of crap they just self-published is really a golden egg. And, you know, continue to have all their friends pat them on the back, too, because no one wants to risk telling anyone in the circle that that book is a piece of crap, because, then, someone might tell them the same thing.

And you know what? I kind of hate that. I hate finding those circles of friends that go on and on about how good each others' books are, because I have no way of telling, at that point, if any of it's good, so I have to stay away from all of it. And that, above all else, sucks.

However, when you approach a book objectively, when you give real, actual, solid reasons why something isn't ready, why it's not good enough, why the author needs to go back and work on it some more, that's when people get upset and freak out at you and yell at you. And, you know, accuse you of being >gasp< honest! And mean.

But I wasn't mean in my review of Matthew Irvine's book. You want to know how I know? I asked my wife. Seriously. Here's how it went:

There was a request for reviews and such for The Last of the Venitars. Everyone else that saw the request and went and looked at the preview said no because the book needing editing.

I looked at the preview and said the same thing. Mr. Irvine (and his best friend February Grace) felt that if I would just read the book that I would fall in love with the story, and I wouldn't care about the rest.

I told Mr. Irvine that it would be better if he pulled the book and got some help with the editing. That, based on the preview, if I reviewed it, I would not be able to give it a positive review.

His response was that he wanted me to read and review the book anyway and that I should be as honest as I could be.

So I read the book, and it took me a lot longer than I would have liked, because the objective parts were so bad that it was a huge barrier to any story that might have been there.

When I finished, I gave my wife my objective evaluation of the book and my subjective response to it (which I did not actually include in my review). She told me that I should probably not review the book if my review was going to be that bad, because people would get upset. There was discussion, and she suggested that I, at least, contact the author again and see if he had changed his mind. I was resistant to that, because I had spent the time reading the thing and felt that the review was owed at that point. But I thought about it and decided to do what she said and emailed the guy again before I wrote the review.

He repeated that I should write the review even though I told him that I would have nothing positive to say about the book.

So I wrote the review. And I felt bad about it. But before I posted the review, I let my wife read it, and she said, "it's harsh, but it's not unkind." And, remember, she heard the things I really said about  the book. So, yeah, I was harsh, but I wasn't mean.

I posted the review. And I felt bad about it.

But I don't think I do anymore. Like I said, someone needs to be able to give honest, objective reviews on material, especially when they are asked for. It's not easy, and it more than kind of sucks, but all of this affects me, too. It affects all of us that aren't with a big time publishing company, because, somewhere, someone has to start setting some standards and being willing to be honest and tell people, "hey, that's not quite ready, yet. Go back and work on it some more." It's really not all as subjective as we'd like to think it is.