Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Twilight books will never be all that good because they were written for the author and not for the story.
You may or may not be aware that I aspire to make my living as a fiction author. But did you also know that I dabble in poetry? I'm not very good, but I do enjoy to write poetry. While on one hand, I can actually see myself perhaps one day, if luck is on my side, publishing a book or two, I seriously doubt my poetry will ever be good enough to be in any sort of demand.
I wonder why this is sometimes. I certainly spend similiar amounts of time writing and thinking about both. But the way that I write poetry is so different from the way that sucessful poetry is written.
I'm being confusing. Allow me to expain.
I've come to think of it in this way. There are two ways that you can write: for yourself, or for others. (I mean this purely in the sense of audiences, keep in mind.) You can write something with the thought in mind that other people will hopefully read it, or you can write it purely for the sake of writing it. For me, most writing is written for an audience, even when I don't show it to anyone. But my poetry? That's for me. Even if I DO show some of it to people, it's not written for an audience. It's not even written to be good. I write poetry because I want to get some emotion off of my chest.
Good writing should be done in part for the audience, in part for yourself, and wholly for the story (or poem). Because in the end, it needs to say something to people, and it needs to mean something to you. If writing is done purely for the author, then it has no point and no meaning. There's a very good chance it wont even be liked. But if it's written purely for the audience, then it doesn't have any meaning to the author, and that author cannot hope to create anything with meaning if it means nothing to them. There is a balance here.
Mostly it must be written for the sake of the writing itself. Only when you write what the story is asking for will you write anything good.
For this reason, my poetry will never be all that good. I'm not writing to impart something onto an audience, the way that real poetry should be written. I'm writing for purely selfish reasons. And I'm okay with that.
Marina Reid
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3 comments:
Agreed times ten million.
As a fellow aspiring fiction writer (surprise? I think anyone who reads copious amounts of books kind of has the dream of writing their own at some point in their lives) I know what you mean. I have some stuff thats for me, and some stuff thats better fit for public consumption. Believe me- there are many a writer who really should keep their personal writing for themselves instead of defacing our sacred libraries and bookstores..
Insightful comment? Not so much. Just felt I had to add my two cents.
I appreciate your two cents! Makes me feel like slightly less of a loser in my pointless online ramblings...
It's unfortunate some of the drivel that is published and sold...
You have definitely given me something to think about. I one day hope to have a book or 2 published (even if it's not very good) and I've been slowly working on a piece of work for the past year or so. But I had once showed it to a friend of mine after i had written a min paragraph that was meant to introduce a character, and I remember her saying that she would read it because I had written it, implying that it wasn't good enough for her to want to continue reading of her own free will. Which makes me feel as if there is something missing, and I think this may be it. SO thanks.
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