The Religion of Writing: Part Seven -- The Priesthood

The idea of the priesthood in a religion is an interesting one. Generally speaking, the idea of priests (no matter what they're called: pastors, rabbis, politicians) starts out as a group of people meant to help their congregation or flock. They're assistants.

But it never ends up that way, because those guys always end up with the authority. No longer are they there to help people out, they're there to tell them what to do, how to think, what's right and what's wrong.

It's not all their fault.

People like to have other people in authority over them. They like to have people tell them what to do so that, if (when) it goes wrong, they have someone else to blame. Besides, thinking is hard, so why not have someone else do it for you? Also, for instance, reading the Bible is a lot of hard work, so, if you can have someone else do that and just tell you what it says, why not? It certainly makes life a lot easier and more convenient.

So, ideally, you'd have people reading the Bible and going to a priest (or whomever) and saying, "I don't quite understand this; can you help me with it?" And the priest would say, "Well, because I have studied this stuff and based on these other texts, my interpretation of this is... Now, here are some other resources you can use to figure this out, because you shouldn't just take my word for it."

Instead, you have, "What does the Bible say?" And you get:

• The Bible says <group a> are all going to Hell in a handbasket.
• The Bible says <group b> are all going to Hell so fast that they don't even get a handbasket.
• The Bible says <group c> aren't even going to make it to Hell because God is going to strike them down here on Earth.
• The Bible says that if you wink your left eye while crooking your pinky you will also go to Hell.
• Or if you crack your egg on the small end. (How's that for a literary allusion?)

Basically, you have people preaching their own, personal feelings as scripture, because, I'm here to tell you, the Bible does not say "abortion is a sin," and anyone that tells you that the Bible says that is a liar. Whether abortion is a sin is based upon an interpretation of other things the Bible says, so the correct way of dealing with that is to say, "Based upon these passages, I have come to believe that abortion is wrong," or, conversely, "Based upon these [other] passages, I do not believe abortion is wrong." Because the Bible does not speak about abortion.
For example.
And, yeah, I picked a touchy subject, but it was the first thing that popped into my head, and, no, I am not going to go into my personal opinion (because it doesn't matter and isn't what we're talking about), and, yes, there are passages of scripture which support both sides of that argument. (Maybe, I should have chosen the death penalty as my example, but I think people could get just as riled over that.)

[I do know that it's not like this everywhere, but those other places are the exceptions, not the rule.]

At any rate, the point of the priesthood (and, yes, I do include politics and, even, science) in any religion should be to help people to understand things and come to their own conclusions, not just deliver the "Word of God" and expect people accept it blindly. Except that, like I said, people want to accept things blindly. It doesn't take so much work.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to editing and editors, the priesthood of the publishing industry. You know, because "no one can edit their own work. They're too close to it." Which is just like "common people shouldn't read the Bible. It's too confusing to them. Only the priests should read it and tell the people what it says." And before you accuse me of Catholic bashing again (which is not to say that I'm not bashing that idea), most religions promote that kind of thought. Sure, the Baptists want you to have your Bibles with you on Sunday so that you can open them up and read along with the pastor, but the pastor is actually going to tell you what that thing you just read means, and you don't have to worry your pretty little heads over it. And, sure, Bible studies are promoted... full of handy little guide books that will explain everything for you. Forget any other interpretation which may be possible.

So, yeah, I hate that whole "no one can edit their own work" thing. And I hate that publishers give editors greater power over the work than the author, the one that knows the work and what it's there to communicate. Or not communicate. Or whatever. There was a time when an editor was just someone that came alongside the author to help. "Hey, this may not be the correct word here." "This sentence is confusing; what did you mean?" "What happened to Billy? He just disappears after chapter four?" Editors were meant to help authors think about what they had written and make sure they were saying what they thought they were saying. And the grammar? The author was expected to know all of that, because why? He was the author and knowing how to write, the grammar and punctuation, was his job.

But, you know, if we can let the editors be the authority on grammar and whatnot, why should we bother to know that stuff? So we fail to be as knowledgeable as we could and, then, complain at what the "editors" (and publishers) did to our works. [Not that that is the case with all authors, but there are plenty of big name authors out there that take issue with the editing in their works, and there are plenty of "author's preferred editions" out there trying to overcome what the editor did.]

Here's the thing that complicates all of this: Many, probably most, authors out there do need an editor. Or three. And I don't just mean someone to catch typos, either; I mean someone that can help them make their stories readable. And I kind of have to wonder at that point, if that kind of editing is needed, if that person should be seeking publication at all. For instance, there's an article or something written by Lovecraft about all of the things a "novice author" needs to master before seeking publication; many of those things were grammar related (this is not that article, but it does summarize it and link to the original text) and almost all of them are things authors (or publishers) expect editors to do these days. And Lovecraft has not been the only author to to talk about how novice writers need to learn their stuff before trying to get published. Don't let the editor be the authority.

And I'm hearing, again, many of you saying, "But you're too close to your own writing." To that, I will respond with a quote from my wife (because she's smart that way (and we talk about this kind of stuff all the time)):

To that I would say: Then what did we spend all that time in high school and college to learn to write for? We had to self-edit our papers, theses, and so on. We had to learn structure, pay attention to spelling, provide references and all of that. Did we forget it all just because, maybe, we're writing fiction? Do we believe that editors (people who edit) just sprang from the womb able to do it, or is it something they maybe learned? It's like a priesthood.

And, yes, that's what gave me the idea for the title of this one, because it is like a priesthood, and only the priests are allowed to edit. And that's just... foolish.

Of course, the key here in all of this is knowing your strengths and knowing where you need to get help. No matter what it has sounded like I've been saying in this post, I'm not advocating for people not to get editing help. Far from it. I wish more people would get better editors. What I am saying is that the idea that no one can edit their own work is fallacious. What I am saying is that authors shouldn't just give over authority of their own manuscripts to other people. What I am saying is that authors do their parts of the job and learn all the technical skills about writing as they can, because, to paraphrase Lovecraft, "Anyone can learn that stuff in school." The implication there is that if you don't know it, go back to school and learn it. Be able to approach an editor with, "I'm not sure about this part right here (whether it's a grammar question or a structure question); what do you think?" rather than, "Here's my manuscript; you do the rest." Know your stuff well enough to be able to tell editors, "No, what you're saying doesn't fit with my manuscript."

There was one point when Lovecraft was still starting out when he sent this:

"If the tale cannot be printed as it is written, down to the very last semicolon and comma, it must gracefully accept rejection. Excision by editors is probably the one reason why no living American author has any real prose style."

I'm pretty sure no one these days would get published under any traditional model with that attitude, and it was already rare a century ago, but Lovecraft did get published and is still considered the master of his... field? Genre? Man, I don't even quite know what to call what he did, and I don't like the title "weird fiction" which is what I often see it being called. The point is that he became his own authority. Clearly, self-editing is possible. Tolkien often had to go back and re-edit his manuscripts because the editors, not being as skilled or as knowledgeable as him, would cause problems in his works. The first edition of The Hobbit doesn't have "dwarves" in it; it has "dwarfs," which is a completely different connotation, because the editor thought Tolkien had made a mistake and didn't bother to check with him about it. That was not the only time that happened in the early days of Tolkien's books being published.

Editors have no special gifts. They have not received divine inspiration. They are not magical. They do not know anything that any author cannot learn. Any author should learn. But, of course, if you don't bother to learn that stuff, I suppose an editor can seem like an all-knowing priest.

How Does Your Garden Grow? (an Indie Life post)

I haven't spent a lot of time talking about our little mini-garden; at least, not here on the blog, I haven't. It's not really much of a garden, since it's just a planter box, but we did get a ton of tomatoes out of it last year. This year, we expanded the tomatoes into the backyard, too. But I'm not here to talk about tomatoes. Not today, anyway.

One of the things we planted last year was nasturtiums. I think it was because we had some fantasy that we

would use them in salads or something, but, mostly, we never did. I'd throw some flower petals in occasionally but not enough to really count. We skipped planting the nasturtiums this year, but that was because we didn't have to plant them. The above picture is our little nasturtium plot for this year, and, if you can see it up there in the top right corner, they didn't grow in the planter box. No, we had our own little patch of nasturtiums spring up all on their own this year, outside of the box. That's kind of cool, because they are pretty.

As you will notice, the nasturtiums are yellow and orange, which is what we planted last year, yellow and orange nasturtiums. As a big patch of flowers, they are very pretty, but... BUT none of the individual flowers stand out. It's just a bunch of yellow and orange flowers all mixed together. One flower is as good as the next. So let's say I was making a salad and I was going to throw in some flower petals for color, there wouldn't be a lot of thought involved in which nasturtiums to pick. I'd look for the ones that were more freshly bloomed and pick a few.

And that's kind of how choosing books are for a lot of people: What's newly published? What's "freshest"? But, really, it's all the same stuff, so it doesn't really matter. To a large extent, for example, fantasy written today is pretty much the same as fantasy written 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Look back up there at that picture of the flowers. Just orange and yellow nasturtiums. And that's all it was for a while. But, then, inexplicably, we had this:

That, just to be clear, is a red nasturtium. We didn't plant any red nasturtiums. It grew up all on its own. And that's kind of like when something new comes along in the book world. It really stands out against everything else that is just orange and yellow.

Harry Potter is a good example of this. Not that Harry Potter is really all that new, because it still uses many of the familiar fantasy themes: orphaned boy, who finds out he has previously unknown powers, who is the subject of a prophecy. Etc. It's a fairly standard fantasy setup, except for the setting. That's the thing that makes it different. The thing that makes it standout. The thing that makes it red. It's no longer just some apprentice wizard boy with his wizard master; it's a whole school of witches and wizards and it's set today. People stopped to look. "Ooh, look... that one's red."

Which, incidentally, is the same thing that happened with Fifty Shades of Grey. I mean, nothing has changed in romance in, like, ever, but Fifty Shades came along, and it wasn't just the same old yellow or orange flower and, whereas before, no particular book got lots of attention because of that; suddenly, Fifty Shades was the only red flower, and everyone wanted it.

Now, of course, we have lots of red flowers,

which has changed the look of the nasturtium patch somewhat (but only somewhat, as they tend to hide under the leaves more than the orange and yellow flowers), and, now, of course, we have lots of books like Harry Potter, which is not a bad thing. Adding variety is a good thing, and, although a lot of "copycats" can seem antithetical to variety, it does, actually, add variety to the overall landscape of the book world, just as it's done with our flower patch.

Then, we have these that have popped up in the planter box along with the tomatoes:

I'll call these mixing genres, which also produces some pretty flowers (and interesting books). In fact, I actually these are prettier than the red ones, though harder to see from a distance. I mean, I'm not a zombie fan, but even I have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sitting on my teetering stack of books to read.

Often, publishers don't want to take a risk on anything but that's not yellow or orange. They look out at he flower patch and see that everything is yellow and orange and just decide that that's all people will like. But people like variety, and it doesn't always have to be good (see 50 Shades) for people to be attracted to it. The difference is all that matters. Which is not to say that you should give up on quality for being different; I'm just saying don't stick to the same old orange and yellow flowers. Or, even, red, when a lot of that comes along. Don't be... safe.

That's what I've tried to do in my own writing. I like fantasy, but I don't want my stuff to just be the same old fantasy. And, evidently, I like it to be scary, because a lot of people call what I write horror, especially Shadow Spinner, but, you know, I'm okay with that, because I don't want anyone to read this and think, "Well, this was okay, but I already read this book." [Which is what I think of anytime anyone starts talking about how great Martin is, because I already read that story except it was called The Sword of Truth and, before that, it was called The Wheel of Time, and, before that, it was called...] So, you know, write what you like, but put your own twist on it. Make it yours.

Be the red flower.

This post has been brought to you in part by Indie Life.

Silverthorn

Previously, I have talked about the issue of how tastes change over time. How you grow and mature and, hopefully, so does your taste in books. Seriously, if you are an adult that has been through any type of higher education or life changes, you should not still be reading the same old stuff you read in high school. At least not just that same old stuff. I've mentioned how Piers Anthony used to be one of my favorite authors (in this post) and how I can't read anything by him anymore. It can be a sad feeling when you grow out of a beloved author.

Back in high school, I picked up these two books by this author Raymond Feist, Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master. [Note: These were originally published as one book, Magician, but the publisher decided it was too long and later split it into two books.] I liked them. I remember really liking them, in fact. I picked up several other Feist books, including Faerie Tale (which I loved), but never got around to reading any of them (except Faerie Tale). However, when Magician was re-released as an author's preferred edition, I picked those up and re-read it. I still liked it. That, though, was a long time ago (but not in a galaxy far, far away).

Recently, I passed the two Magician books on to my younger son, and he really liked them. He wanted the next book in the series, Silverthorn.
Now, let me just insert two things here:
1. Magician is a complete story. There is no ambiguity in the ending about it needing any kind of sequel.
2. A few years ago, my daughter bought for me Krondor: The Betrayal, a book (first in a series) that Feist wrote based off of a video game based off of Magician and the rest of the Riftwar Saga. It was terrible. However, remembering how much I had enjoyed the other books I'd read by Feist, I chalked it up to being based off of a video game.
Silverthorn is a book I owned but had never read. Like I said, Magician ends on a note of finality, so, even though there were more books in the Riftwar Saga, I had never felt compelled to continue reading, so I just hadn't. But my son's desire to continue the story spurred me to dig out my copy of Silverthorn (especially since the alternative was to buy him something we already owned), and, then, I decided I would (finally) go ahead and read it.

That was a mistake.

Silverthorn is a horrible book. Okay, horrible may be too strong of a word, but it was quite a challenge to get through it. It struck me as nothing more than a forced sequel to something that didn't need one. Basically, we want to see these characters again, so figure out a story for them. Whether that came from the publisher or the author not knowing what to write next, I have no idea. Whatever the cause, it was completely formulaic but without any of the charm of, say, The Belgariad, to make it worth reading. A quest for an item while being chased by an all powerful enemy that the heroes manage to continually defeat without anyone ever getting killed.

That bit about being chased was the worst part of it. The bad guys always knew where the good guys were, always overtaking them and hounding them endlessly. Plus, there were zombies. Oh, yeah, the book has zombies, but it was written way before the whole zombie thing became big. The only way they can be killed is by fire, so, even when they hack them to bits, the pieces keep coming. The book has magic, but it's that kind of magic that conveniently only works when the author wants it to. The whole thing was rather infuriating.

Feist also suffered from "then-syndrome" while writing this one. "He did this, then he did this, then he did that, then he did this again, and then he did this and that." Then then then. Oh my gosh. He also suffered from "again-syndrome," because, after the characters did something, they almost always did it again. "Again he picked his nose." "Again he turned around." "Again he drove me crazy!" But the worst...

The worst was "suddenly-syndrome." A while back, when PT Dilloway reviewed The House on the Corner, he dinged me for using the word "suddenly" too much. I did a word count after he said that and came up with about two dozen uses in 120,000 words. I didn't feel too badly about that. Well, PT should certainly not read Silverthorn. At one point, during a two page battle scene, Feist uses the word "suddenly" more than a dozen times. In two pages! I think I never want to use that word again after reading Feist's book.

I kept expecting, "then, suddenly, he again...," or something of the sort. It didn't happen, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

The worst part of having read this book, though, is that it's kind of ruined the other books for me. I'm left with this lingering question as to whether the other books are better than this one or if they were this bad, too, but I was just young enough not to be bothered by any of it. And I want to know! I want to go back and read Magician again just so I can see if they were better, but I know that I won't, so it's just going to bug me for who knows how long. Maybe, I'll re-read Faerie Tale and see how that one is; I've kind of wanted to re-read it for a while anyway.

Oh, and the editing is horrible, especially considering these were edited by a major publisher. The book was full of comma errors, for one thing, but errors that don't make any sense. For instance, there would be a sentence like "I went to the store, to buy some milk." Why is that comma there? There's never a reason for a comma in a sentence like that, yet the book was full of that type of error, like the editor just tossed them on  the page and let them stay where they landed. And, then, there were the misspellings. Like the adventurers kept going up the trial. Not the trail, the trial. They did this more than once. They did it more than twice. Personally, I kind of want to see a story, now, about someone going up and down the trial or racing down the trial on his horse. That was not the only misspelling just the only one that happened again and suddenly again.

So I don't really know what to say about Feist, now. There was a time I would have suggested, at least, Faerie Tale to people that like that kind of thing, but Silverthorn leaves me more than reluctant to suggest anything by Feist to anyone.

Remember that one teacher?

You know the one, right? That teacher that everyone dreaded getting. The one with the hard rep. The one you couldn't make excuses with or sluff assignments. The one that gave you nightmares...

There were only two types of students in that teacher's classes, the ones that made A's and everyone else. The ones that made A's were few, and no one made B's. You either worked your... bottom off or you did poorly. That's just how it worked. You know, except for that one kid that just made good grades without breathing, and everyone hated that kid. You're pretty sure even the teacher hated that kid but couldn't do anything about it.

I think I'm that teacher. Not at school. The kids love me at school. Even though my creative writing class is extra work for the kids (because it's an elective), the students frequently tell me that it's their favorite class. No... I'm that teacher here. Sort of. At least, that's the rep I think I'm getting for all the grammar stuff and my reviews. People are starting to ask me to not read their stuff because they're scared of the review they might get.

Of course, I also have more requests to read than I can keep up with, so I'm sort of okay with the requests to not read.

But here's the thing:
It's not the bad grammar, improper punctuation, and lack of editing that bother me. Not in and of itself, at any rate. If you're doing your best, you've sought out the best help you can find or afford, and you're trying to improve, I can overlook some bad grammar and splotchy commas. It's the people that shrug it off as not important that bother me. That's when  the bad grammar and lack of editing get me all riled up.

The thing that makes me most upset is when the author has the attitude of "hey, I wrote a book, and you should worship me for that." That bothers me. I mean, it really bothers me. And I find that a lot more than you'd probably like to believe. That attitude of "why should I worry about grammar, punctuation, and editing? Those things aren't important, because I wrote a book!" And I want to respond with something like "well, actually..."

It's the attitude that writing is all subjective anyway and therefore doing it correctly isn't important that bothers me. When I see a manuscript out for public consumption that looks like something one of my middle schoolers handed in, and I'm correcting their stuff and helping them to get better, but the author of said manuscript blows off the poor writing as "just my opinion," well, that makes me mad. Because, honestly, that attitude is wrong.

Here's the truth. Are you ready for it? I think it's a hard truth and one a lot of people have an issue with and don't really understand. The TRUTH:

Stories are subjective; writing is not.

It's that simple. Whether I like your story and how you tell your story is completely subjective, but, whether the writing is good or not, well, that's something else entirely. The writing is something that can be graded, and I know, because I do it. Actually, to some extent, stories can be graded, too, or, at least, subjected to objective measures like "hey, you have your character in two places at once, right here" (yes, I am (still) talking to you Snow Crash).

[Oh, and I have a good example of this coming up in a near future review. A story where the writing is very good, perhaps excellent, but the story just never grabbed me.]

The idea of writing being subjective is, honestly, just an excuse to excuse poor writing, and everyone has bought into it to such an extent that that part of it can't be seen anymore. Before I go on, there's a lot here that could be said about agents and publishers and all kinds of stuff, but I'm not talking about any of that. What I do mean is that people, when told their manuscripts need work, fall back on the whole "it's all subjective" thing. That, or they revise every time someone says anything, but they just keep changing the story rather than dealing with the underlying grammar issues.

[Okay, I need to insert here: when you're told that your manuscript needs work and there are a bunch of story suggestions included, that is subjective, because that person is just telling you what your story needs for that one person to like it more. However, when you're told your story needs work and there's a list of grammar/punctuation issues that need to be fixed, that's objective. That's stuff you should pay attention to.]

Before I get off on about 20 different tangents, I'm just gonna stop. This is a complicated topic and it changes from person to person, but, basically, if my rep is becoming that of some kind of grammar fascist, I suppose I'm okay with that, because there's not enough attention on proper writing, right now. Not from indies, certainly not from small publishers (who often have editors with no better than a high school diploma if they have editors at all), and not even from larger, more traditional publishers who have been canning editors to cut back on costs and increase profits.

All I really wanted to say, to clear up, is that I'm not so hard about all of this as it comes off. At least, I'm not so hard on the people that care, are trying, and actually want to improve.

However, I have no sympathy at all for those people who just blow it off as a non-issue or a subjective issue. If you want to have an analogy, and look! I do, it's sort of like a fireman that decides he's only going to put out fires that happen in bathrooms and children's bedrooms. The other fires just aren't important. They may not even be there, you know. Maybe that person wanted that fire in the middle of his living room floor. For roasting marshmallows, you know. Or, maybe, that stove top fire is supposed to be there, like for roasting a pig. It doesn't matter how much work that fireman puts into putting out the bathroom fire, the house is still gonna burn up.

And NOW on to other things!

Friday will be the free release day for part five of Shadow Spinner: "Part Five: The Police Car." Part five is the reintroduction of the Man with No Eyes: reintroduction because there was this post way back when that had him in it (and that exact scene from the linked post didn't actually make it into the book), and, also, reintroduction, because I posted this stuff a long time ago when I was first writing all of it. Anyway, all of that to say, well, be prepared for Friday, but, also, I want to give you a peek at the cover for part five, because it's amazing!

Drop by and tell Rusty what an awesome job he did!