The Plight of the Artist April 13, 2009
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , trackbackDisclosure: This may make me sound like a pretentious jerk. Frankly, I’m irritated enough to not care.
I am studying writing. My peers, who are good writers, assure me that I am not the worst person in the world at this. My work has been published. I am fairly certain I am going to be able to make this a career.
That being said: I am sick of this trend. This trend being the comment or message from someone who had no real interest in writing before saying “oh, I’ve been writing recently too! Look!” followed by said writing being awful. This is often coupled with a “oh, I’m not very good at this! It’s probably awful!” And yet, you posted it on the internet, of all places.
Let me ask you this: what about the arts makes everyone think “I can do it, too!”? I would never “dabble” in surgery. I couldn’t practice law “on the side” or sneak away at night for my second job as a nuclear physicist.
I have a theory: it is the things we are taught to do young. We write. We draw with crayons. We fingerpaint. People make a living doing this, right? I can, too!
No, you can’t. If I am reading your work and your characters are muttering, sighing, and bellowing sharply, deeply, and coyly, you are doing it wrong. Just because you can use a thesaurus doesn’t mean you’re actually good at stringing words together. If your story ends in sunshine and rainbows, I will vomit a little in my mouth. I actually brainstormed it and cannot think of one good story or book that ends with everything being “okay.” Perhaps Anthem, but that’s a character escaping from an oppressive world into an uncertain one. Or maybe To Kill A Mockingbird, but even then, it’s not exactly happy, what with Atticus’ client being killed and the elder Ewell trying to kill Scout. Even if things end up “all right,” traumatic things and weird twists have led to this “all right” state of being.
This isn’t just writing, though I thought I’d start with that for a prep. These days, everyone’s a photographer. It’s kind of unfortunate and scary on some level, the ease with which people can pick up a digital camera and photoshop and suddenly are “artists” in their own mind. My friend, do you know what an enlarger is? Do you know how to develop photographs from film directly? No? And you’re a photographer?
Of course, this is not to say that there can’t be artists hidden in every day people. Clarence Darrow, for a time, shared an office with an unsuccessful lawyer by the name of Edgar Lee Masters. That lawyer, on the side, wrote The Spoon River Anthology. And this is also not to say that some widely-accepted “artists” aren’t bad, but I would reckon that more often than not, they are openly criticized for it. See my unabashed over-used example of Stephanie Meyer.
To bring it back around, I suppose I just get upset when people declare they are “making art” and then it turns out bad and they don’t seem to realize it. I’m devoting my life to this. I am sitting here, having spent hours [no, seriously, hours] just thinking of the correct way to phrase things in this blog post. If I were to clock how long it takes me to write a short story, including the editing process, to get it to where I’m not ashamed of it for looking “amateurish” it would probably be no less than 20 hours. And that’s for something that’s maybe 5, 6,000 words. You word-vomit this thing onto the internet and expect me to pat you on the back for it? I don’t think so. I’m concerned that you don’t think it’s bad and, perhaps even worse, you think I will give you some sort of positive reaction for it when I just spent a whole semester working towards writing a piece that is only half-good by my own standards.
If you need me, I’ll be working on my freelance project. It’s a cure for the common cold, which involves a mixture of honey and arsenic. I’m thinking of applying for a patent because, y’know, I can do it too!
Comments»
This probably does come off as a bit pretentious to some people.
That being said, I completely agree with you. You’ve known me for some time and know that I’m a halfway decent writer. I don’t know if I’m good enough to ever make a career out of it, but I have some skills. I know the frustration you’re talking about, as well as the difficulty of turning out something that lives up to your standards. I realize I may be putting myself into the category of people you are complaining about by saying that, but so be it.
Oh, by the way, I’m pretty sure that I’m switching to an English Education major. I think that makes me slightly more qualified to join you in your protest.
Also, I HATE Stephanie Meyer. Words cannot begin to describe it.
Also also, this comment took me a good 20 minutes to shape into what I wanted it to be. Oh, the irony.
Also also also, I know that these past two sentences are not grammatically correct and I also don’t care. All the alsos(?) just make me laugh. I do not know the correct plural of ‘also’. I am also too lazy to look it up. Also.