The first place winner for Breathtaking was @Amberkbryant Every Day in May. If you’d like to check out her story, you can read it for free right here: Every Day in May.
This competition featured a number of strong writers with some fantastic stories. I know that I passed many a pleasant hour reading these adventures and tales of characters in settings of all stripes. The judges certainly had their work cut out for them, but I think it’s clear what sets this story apart from a stiff competition. For the review, I will try to avoid giving away any spoilers. On the analysis, which will be posted on my website, all bets are off.
Every Day in May is written as a series of letters from a young woman to a prince who is imprisoned in a tower. The country is in turmoil, and a revolution is in the works. Everyone has a role to play, but what is Merryn, our protagonist, doing? She is writing letters to the prince to give him vital information. You see, Prince Theo must make a choice. All his life, he has been sheltered, hidden beneath his tyrant father’s shadow. And, under normal circumstances, this poor young prince would probably be deemed a casualty of war. But Merryn risks her own life, slipping to his chambers each night to leave a letter.
The rules of this exchange are simple. She will answer one question, and, though Merryn sometimes cheats a little by helping to direct young Theo in the direction he needs to go, a relationship develops. The story is told entirely in the letters that Merryn writes back to Theo with only a couple exceptions.
Yet even so, a rich narrative develops with stories of Merryn’s past, Theo’s father, the reasons for the revolution, and a gradual revelation of the key players. It even has an element of fun to it as you the reader must guess what questions Theo is asking. Sometimes those questions are the ones that you yourself would ask. Other times, Theo’s personality and obstinacy is revealed as he asks questions that make you wonder what he’s thinking.
A clear personality emerges from Merryn. She is kind, mothering, and brave, despite her own fears. It’s unclear what all she is risking initially, but the twist at the end reveals just how much she has done and is doing to give the prince a chance. You can’t help but like her. Her articulation is quite clear, and sometimes she seems over mature for her age. Yet at the same time, given what she has endured and her education, it isn’t that surprising. I ultimately felt that it added to her character and gave us insight into what else she had endured.
Theo’s personality as well as his character is more shrouded. Merryn’s tone and the responses she gives offer the most clues about who he is. Yet that actually makes it feel more believable to me. I’ll get into this more in the analysis. But Theo himself works well as a more shrouded character. A clear perspective on him emerges from the narrative, but the fun is in playing with the person it’s coming from. Merryn is something of an optimist as well as an idealist. She wants to believe in him. She wants him to have this chance. So we are seeing this character through her eyes, though we are actually more in Theo’s perspective.
Not to give anything away, but not all goes according to plan. In fact, it gets quite tense. Amber makes the most of the medium, using it to build up suspense and play on the uncertainty. The epilogue ties everything up nicely, though you should note that there’s a timeline before the actual epilogue. So don’t skip over it just because you think it’s a bunch of dates.
The story is a fast read. You can probably finish it up in a couple of hours. And when you’re done, you’ll have a satisfied feeling that you read a good story with compelling characters and a sweet but sincere voice. Check it out, and enjoy. And if you’d like to know a little more about Amber, turn to the section and check out this interview!
What is obsession, and is it good or bad? So often, obsession is seen as a bad thing, typically associated with individuals who don’t know when to let go or how to balance life with everything else. Oftentimes, it’s associated too with stalkers, criminals, master criminals, and drug addicts.
A dear friend of mine was just told that she was obsessive, and that is, in fact, what made me start to ponder the concept. (Her horrific obsession? Posting more than what someone thought was a reasonable number of links and posts on Facebook in a day. Yeah…considering she only put out about a dozen or so throughout the course of the day and none of them were ads or spam, I have to wonder whether the complainer actually spent much time on Facebook. I have some friends who literally spam my feed with more than 50 posts in a day.)
Obsession seems to be connected to passion. A number of incredible artists and people who have made such differences in the world could be qualified as obsessed. For this, I’d like to limit it to artists, actors, authors, and other creative individuals.
So let’s start with someone that just about everyone would agree was phenomenal. Leonardo da Vinci. He painted fewer than 30 known paintings, but with all of his drawings and sketches that have survived, he completed thousands. I’m guessing that that number does not actually include all the sketches and doodles that he did on the side, in the dust, or on his table and walls. One of his most famous paintings and one of the most well known paintings of all time, the Mona Lisa, underwent numerous renditions. From analyses of the paintings, experts now believe that he repainted the Mona Lisa over a dozen times, trying to get it just right. From articles on the Daily Mall to biographies that detail this incredible man’s life, most would agree that da Vinci was incredible, and he certainly was obsessed with his art.
A more modern example of a woman who took obsession to an extreme to hone her craft is Anne Hathaway. In preparation for the role of Fantine in Les Miserables, she lost 25 pounds, and anyone who has seen that woman knows that she did not have 25 pounds to lose. In addition to that, she had her long hair cut during the filming, to help to convey the emotion and trauma of what Fantine went through. It’s hard to watch that particular scene without experiencing the drama and the emotion. A lot of people were actually concerned that she had taken preparation for the role too far, but Anne Hathaway took the role so seriously that she did not even allow concerns over her own health and well being get in the way of performing it to the best of her ability. Had she done it in moderation and balanced it all equally, I doubt that the scene would have been quite as moving.
Another example of one of my favorites is J.R.R. Tolkien with his series, The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings took him more than twelve years to complete, perhaps longer, depending on where you start the clock. He toiled long and hard over the series, crafting his races, characters, languages, and scenes. You can’t pick up that series without realizing that it was a labor of love and a passion for storytelling that brought it all together.
These are only a few. I could talk about so many others who have sacrificed, honed, and challenged themselves, sacrificing health and so much more to push themselves to the limit of their craft and art. Obsession can lead to bad results if the object of the obsession is bad or flawed. Serial killers, stalkers, and the like are bad examples of obsession, but they are not the only one. Here’s one thing that I have noticed though. People who are obsessed tend to get results in the areas that they pursue. Harold Brown once said, “It’s the addicts that stay with it. They’re not necessarily the most talented, they’re just the ones that can’t get it out of their systems.”
Now maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better. After all, I know that I obsess over writing. I write between 10,000 and 15,000 words every day, working on various stories, novels, articles, and legal pieces. Only a fraction of it has ever been published, primarily because I don’t think it’s good enough and because it needs “just one more edit.” Or maybe it’s because I worry for my friend. She is passionate and vivacious, even when she feels isolated and unsure about her place in the world. Yet her obsession is with justice, raising awareness, and storytelling. I think that her ability to be obsessive is actually one of her strengths. Not in her Facebook posts so much as in the honing of her craft and the perpetual pursuit of characters that are true to real people and who are drawn from the corners of society that most of the world would rather ignore.
People often say that balance and moderation are the key to life. However, here’s something interesting about balance. Balance does not necessarily mean equal as so many people seem to think. When I make soup, balancing the broth requires adding spices, but I don’t put in equal amounts of salt and pepper. I put in a little more of the one over the other. So perhaps one can be obsessed while living life in appropriate balance when you consider the craft, the goal, and the desired impact. So here’s to obsession, friends.
Into the Storm was not a movie that I had high hopes for. After all, it’s a disaster movie, and disaster movies generally don’t have the best track record when it comes to story lines or characters. Special effects are typically the main reason that folks go. Look, you can see the White House get blown up! Or there goes a whole fleet of 747s! Or look at that! The tornado is on fire! Recently, disaster films have also had a tendency to be overly preachy and even dull.
However, I actually left the theater surprisingly pleased. Overall, I found it to be an enjoyable popcorn flick that I would gladly watch again and probably would add to my movie collection. But let’s get into the film.
Premises You Must Accept if You’re Going to Enjoy This Movie
Okay, every disaster film has at least one or two of these. But you need to be able to accept these premises if you’re going to enjoy it.
1) Some people will act incredibly stupid and ignore commonsense.
Can you believe we’ve been through multiple tornadoes in a single day?
2) Everyone looks really quite fantastic after having been through a massive series of natural disasters. Seriously. Some of the survivors get a little bloodied up. Hair gets wet. Mud streaks the clothing. But everyone looked really quite good all the way through. Having been through storms involving a tornado, I can tell you I looked about a thousand times worse, and the tornado itself didn’t even touch down anywhere near me.
3) People and their vehicles will get far closer to tornados than is humanly possible without getting sucked in unless it’s required by the plot.
4) Multiple tornadoes, including an F5, all descend upon the same poor area.
5) Deaths are entirely at the film’s whim. People who shouldn’t be alive sometimes make it through what must otherwise be a miraculous event whereas others were obviously wearing red shirts.
Fusion of Regular Footage and Found Footage
Ahhh, the pleasures of communing with nature.
Most of the time, I don’t enjoy found footage films. The shaky cameras and wooden dialogue tend to annoy me even though they’re supposed to mimic reality. In this case, it didn’t bother me as much. The film itself is a fusion of the traditional narrative style married to the found footage as Donnie and Trey, two brothers, are putting together interviews for the high school graduation and the time capsule. The other found footage comes from a group of storm chasers who are hoping to not only track down a tornado but anchor down and enter into the tornado itself. Security cameras also help to fill in the blanks, but the story itself includes regular film shots so that we can actually see what’s going on.
The found footage in this case gives it a rawer feel without making it feel entirely home cooked or nauseating. It also gives the whole piece more of the feel of walking into people’s lives rather than the film being based around them.
The Characters
For me, one of the most important things in any story is the characters. In a number of reviews, folks have described them as wooden or forgettable. For whatever reason, I actually liked the characters. Will they stand the test of time and be some of the most beloved upon whom I fondly dwell? No. But I enjoyed them more than I enjoyed the characters in Twister, 2012, and other disaster films. In some cases, yes, the dialogue was quite wooden, and it just didn’t sound natural for the characters to even be having those conversations. One conversation that takes place in a church feels particularly stilted and obligatory (though there’s some interesting symbolism in the survivors fleeing into a church when a spiraling fire tornado attacks; that particular tornado struck me as a horrifying representation of a possibility for hell).
As if a tornado isn’t scary enough…
The weaknesses in the characters and in the story itself can generally be traced back to the screenwriting. At times, it felt as if the story and dialogue just needed to go through the editing process a few more times to really polish it up.
In general though, the characters felt believable enough to me. Donnie is somewhat shy and awkward, uncertain how to pursue his love interest, Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn suffers the most from no character development. She is clearly just there to serve the purpose of getting Donnie to a particular place and provide an emotional scene. Yet Alycia Carey who played her did not do a bad job with the character. All of the actors actually did quite well with what they were given to work with, and in some cases, that wasn’t much. There’s one scene in particular between Donnie and Kaitlyn when they think they’re nearing their end that is particularly good. The emotion conveyed through the eyes is quite believable. Donnie’s message to his father and brother particularly so.
Trey has gained a fair amount of criticism as well. But I actually liked his character quite a bit. He reminds me of a number of young boys I’ve met. A little on the snarky smart aleck side with his own agenda and yet still that little bit of sweetness. Granted, I might have been grinning because I kept thinking of other students I know who are like him. Plus the kid always had a knife on him, despite his father forbidding it. And it works well for an ongoing joke as well as a resolution to some of the problems.
Captain Ahab, I presume
The storm chasers aren’t enormously developed. In fact, they are probably the most clichéd of the characters with the exception of Allison. Peter is essentially a Captain Ahab out to get his white whale, the tornado. And the others are there to serve as cameramen and tornado fodder.
Quick! Into the school bus! School buses are well known for their ability to outrun tornadoes…of course, when that’s all you’ve got, what’re you gonna do?
Allison, played by Sarah Wayne Callies, does a nice job playing the research analyst who has had to give up time with her five year old daughter to work. She isn’t annoying, she doesn’t have a chip on her shoulder, and she has her work cut out for her. She carries herself with a quiet weariness that makes it feel as if she is a person who just happened to get caught in this documentary.
This would be the perfect moment to tell your dad practically anything, and he probably couldn’t be too angry with you. Hopefully. Maybe. Well, maybe not. You know what. Let’s not ruin the moment.
Another character who feels like he just happened to get caught in the middle of his regular life for the documentary is Gary, Donnie and Trey’s father. He’s played by Richard Armitage whom you’ve probably seen in The Hobbit. In the beginning, Gary really doesn’t have much time to participate because he is busy preparing for the graduation. The emotional moments and development come later, and the character is odd in that he seems to possess skills that aren’t really explained. In fairness, the film doesn’t do much to establish any characters’ abilities with the exception of Donnie and Trey’s filming talents and the storm chasers’ abilities to track storms. Some of the stoicness involved with Gary just strikes me as the character’s personality rather than bad acting or even bad writing necessarily. Though I will address some of the odder points in a special section with my own particular resolution.
And last but not least….let’s talk about the rednecks. Oh yes. They’ve received some fantastic outrage and criticism for being so 2D. But…um…I can’t be offended because…yeah…I know guys like this. The rednecks definitely made me smile a bit. Particularly their end. Sure, it’s cheesy. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sometimes the reason that there are stereotypes is because those stereotypes are true.
Tell me you haven’t met guys like this….
Not necessarily something you should aspire to, but if you’ve lived in this area, I’m sure you have met one or two people who fit into that redneck category.
For me, the characters in this movie were far and above more likeable and connectable than in Godzilla or Transformers 4: Age of Extinction or the other disaster films. In one scene involving a near trapped drowning, I knew there was no way that they were going to let those characters die. But it still got me on the edge of my seat as did the points when the tornado chased them. (Sometimes I did wonder whether the tornado was hunting them. I could swear these disasters get a scent of our main characters and then decide they want to finish them off, whatever the cost.)
Cliches
This film relies heavily on clichés. In fact, I was able to successfully predict just about everything, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. Some of the clichés such as the black friend who vanishes as soon as the white friend he is supporting dies bothered me more than others. Cliches such as the last minute rescue and the overly strict dad with free spirited boys actually work for the story.
But more than that, the writers didn’t force some of the other clichés on there. Spoiler alert here, but I fully expected them to shoehorn in a romance between Gary and Allison. It was perfectly set up for that. Single father with two sons meets single mother with adorable little girl. How could it not turn out that way? In most other films, it would have. But not here. While there’s certainly chemistry between Allison and Gary for the limited time when that’s a possibility, nothing happens except for that connection. They then move on. It’s certainly a possibility that something might happen between them later, but it’s not rubbed in your face.
At the end of the day, this film wants to be a happy disaster film. It ends on a fairly high note with interviews being redone for the time capsule. Probably unrealistic given what they all endured, but still serving to remind the viewer to live each day like it might be your last because one day it will be. So cheesy at points, yes. Hokey at others, absolutely. Enjoyable overall, most definitely.
My Brilliant Theory About Why the Vice Principal Could Be The Way He Is
He also bears a striking resemblance to the assassin in Captain America….I’m sensing another theory!
All right. Gary, the vice principal and one of the main characters in the movie, is a rather intriguing character. It’s not that he’s unbelievable. Such a character could certainly exist, but particular circumstances would need to exist to give rise to that character. In addition to being in excellent condition for a single father of two boys while also serving as a vice principal, he never freaks out and he always knows what to do. (In fact, in one scene, I could swear he was about to punch the tornado rather than let it drag off an innocent victim.)
In all fairness, not much is revealed about Gary’s background or his past or why he is the way that he is. All that we know for certain is that his wife died and he is raising his two sons alone. However, I have a theory. See, most of the time, when folks are this calm, they have been through exceptionally stressful circumstances before and perhaps even received training.
Now Richard Armitage played another character known as Lucas North in MI-5 or Spooks.
Lucas North who also looks like he might punch a tornado if it aggravated him sufficiently.
At the conclusion of Season 9, Lucas goes rogue and appears to commit suicide. Yet clearly, he did not.
Why yes, I do watch a fair amount of BBC. Why do you ask?
He either fell through an anomaly (ala Primeval) or the Doctor (Doctor Who) picked him up and gave him a lift to small town Oklahoma
This is my favorite theory by far! Yay for the Doctor!
where he married a nurse and adopted her two sons. His skills as a top notch MI-5 agent assisted in his getting as far as vice principal and later on helped him handle the myriad of emergencies that Into the Storm dragged up. It also explains the British accent that keeps fighting to get out of the American accent all the way through. And the fact is that Richard Armitage, while a very talented actor, just does better speaking normally. Some accents are easier to mimic than others, and an Oklahoma accent certainly isn’t one of them.
General Conclusions
I really enjoyed this film. It certainly has its weaknesses, but it also offered a fun ride.
I would definitely be running
It ended just when it needed to end, clocking in at just under an hour and a half. It’s nothing enormous and grand. It’s just a fun story that’s intended to entertain. And maybe convince you that tornadoes are dangerous. Just in case, you know, you had any doubts.
Two days ago, I completed the rough draft for Mermaid Bride. What was intended to just be a short story of no more than 8,000 words turned into a novella. It’s over 30,000 now, and I suspect that by the time I am done editing and revising it, it will be closer to 40,000 or 50,000.
It’s funny the way that that happens. It seems that once I get into a story, the story starts to unfold. The characters want to come out and play. The Banshee Queen was supposed to only be a minor character. The conflict between Ishana and Vishtan was supposed to be quite brief. In fact, I really wanted that focal point to be on Ishana and Uaso. They do remain at the core, of course. But Ishana’s choice and the struggle that she faces becomes so much more important in this.
The story itself is not so simple as it once was. In fact, it wound up going full circle in some respects. Ishana started off as a rather bland character for me to become a kind of character that I had never worked with before.
It was fun working in the Ethiopian and Syrian cultural flavors. It does bother me that a number of my readers thought I was just being creative in the descriptions when in fact I’ve drawn inspiration from another culture. So I will try to make that clearer throughout the revision.
Regardless, Mermaid Bride turned out to be far more of a joy to write than I anticipated. Even though it kept getting longer and longer, it expanded in ways that added to the story rather than dragging it down. The next project I will likely start after this is A Single Glance as part of the Celtic Princess Tour. We shall see if it takes off, but I’m thrilled to dig into it again.
Sometimes it’s just hard being a writer. You pour yourself into the stories you’re writing, mold the worlds, craft the characters, and give it your all. Then you set that little story out into the world, hoping that maybe…just maybe it’s good enough to do something. And inevitably, someone will dislike it. Someone may hate it. Or…perhaps the one that hurts the most, they’ll read it, and they just won’t care one way or the other.
And often it seems that those readers and their comments show up on the same day when everything else is going bad. When your car breaks down. When a pay check gets lost in the mail. When you accidentally slam your pinky finger in the door because you weren’t paying attention.
And at that low point, you may find yourself wondering, why do I try? And it’s a fair question. Artistic individuals pour their souls into their work. It is a labor of love.
So what do you do? You pick yourself up. You remember why you write what you write. At this point, the desire for fame and fortune alone aren’t going to be enough to carry you through. Not at the lowest point. Not when you’re fighting depression or anxiety or fear. So write it down. Put it somewhere you will see it.
And now comes the hard part. Look at that comment or feedback and determine whether it’s a fair assessment. Is it a true weakness of the story? Is there something that you have failed to do? While it could be that the reader just wasn’t in your target audience, you should at least consider it. And if you realize it’s a weakness, then you fix it.
It’s hard. But when that low point hits, you have to keep going. Maybe you’ll need to take a little break, or perhaps even a longer one. But you need to make sure that you get back and you get going. The low point won’t last forever. One day, it will leave.
Effective writing requires pouring out your soul onto the page. Over the years, I’ve often struggled with depression. And I don’t just mean feeling down or low. That happens regularly. It’s a battle to stay above those lines sometimes. Depression itself is more than just a sad mood or a down mood. It is soul sucking and draining at an entirely different level, one that sometimes feels as if it will never go away.
Sometimes I wonder if the reason that this becomes such an enormous issue is because as writers we must constantly pour out our hearts and souls into the pages, and we never know whether we are doing it well. Then when feedback does come, it’s often brief or negative. And few things hurt more than the realization that perhaps what you did was not the best or perhaps you did not do as well as you thought or perhaps you failed entirely.
Yet the thing that seems most important to me in all this is pushing on through those low points. I know I’ll be writing about that again soon. It’s frustrating to run into a reader who just doesn’t get your story or who just doesn’t enjoy it. That’s to be expected, but it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. This is more of a rambling post, so my apologies.
But when you’re feeling down and depressed, take a break if you must. But make sure that you forge on ahead. Don’t let the grief, weariness, depression, or discouragement stop you from forging on.
It took me quite awhile to realize one of the secrets for engaging prose, and it turned out that the secret was to engage all the senses. In storytelling, sight and sound often feature heavily in the descriptions. After all, they are the primary senses used in absorbing a new situation. Particularly if you’re telling someone about them.
But one of the big things in memory and sensory connection involves the other three senses: scent, taste, and touch. In terms of overall effect, I’ve found that scent is probably one of the most powerful to introduce. In many respects, it’s changed the way I even look at scenes. I find myself asking what would be the first thing I would smell. It makes an enormous difference, and those little details tend to make the scene so much more vivid.
It’s tricky to do this in fantasy sometimes. The fruits, flowers, vegetables, spices, and so forth may not be the same as the ones here on Earth. In fact, in a good fantasy world, there will probably be a number of new scents. It’s important to work these in with other scents that the readers will recognize. After all, who would know what yen blossoms smell like? I know what they smell like in my head, but the truth is my readers won’t. I have to make sure that I convey this to my readers. That means I have one of two options. I can either describe the scent in detail when it’s appropriate, or I can use a scent that my readers will be able to imagine such as pumpkin spice or rose.
Obviously, you don’t want to overindulge on the olfactory. After all, it can only do so much, and it’s hard to find synonyms for smell, scent, and so forth. And it’s important not to filter the narrative. But with the proper balance, scent can be a powerful asset.
For me, one of the hardest things to do is kill off a beloved character, but sometimes, there’s just no other choice. Sometimes the plot simply demands it.
This isn’t giving away too much of Tue-Rah Identity Revealed but there is a minor spoiler. Cohsaw dies. He actually dies in the second chapter, and…guess what…he stays dead.
For a lot of readers, this is probably more of a sad event. It’s not that big of a deal. The fact is that they don’t really know him at this point. They’ll get to know him more as the story goes along, but at the point of his death, he’s a casualty of the villains. But for me, killing off Cohsaw was heartbreaking. I sobbed.
See, as a writer, I know everything about Cohsaw. I know that his favorite color is blue. I know that he hates eating carrots and ibza roots, but he does because he believes it makes him stronger. I know he has a crush on Opali, a Machat girl who is three years older than him. And I know that the thing he wants most is to make his dad, one of the most proficient and well known prophets of the Machat, proud. He’s a young man of deep principles and convictions, and his commonsense doesn’t always shine through. When he believes that something needs to be done, he does it.
All of these little things add to his character for me. I know that he has a little scar on the inside of his elbow from when he tried to cut out some of his Machat markings and failed. And the reader is never going to know most of these details.
But I don’t think that that makes the details wasted in any sense. After all, I know these things about him, and, even if I don’t explain them, they’re implied. Little details tend to work their way into a story without the writer even realizing it. They provide information for the overall flavor. They say that only 90 percent of the worldbuilding ever goes through. That may be the case.
The one thing that is true is that when you invest so much in the creation of these characters, their deaths become so much more intense and painful. I wanted to save Cohsaw. I wanted him to be able to have that happy future that I wanted for him. But he never will. He needed to die to move the plot forward. And just because it’s painful doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to happen. So here’s to Cohsaw and all the other beloved characters that writers have to off. It’s one of the hardest things, but may it always improve the story.
One of my favorite parts of writing fantasy and science fiction is the creation of the world. It’s nothing like what God did, obviously. But just trying to envision this world, the different people who will live within it, the fauna, the flora, and so much more.
Often it feels like a conflict between being logical and creative. The creative part of my mind wants to go abstract and flowing, throwing together all of these different concepts and images for the overall look and feel. But the logical part demands that they make sense.
For instance, in Tue-Rah, I have several invented races including the Vawtrians, Machat, and Neyeb in addition to humans (referred to in the series as Awdawms). The Vawtrians are a race of shapeshifters, but the trickiest part was evaluating what kind of world they would come from that would lead to the culture that I want them to have. They are brutal and fierce, but at the same time, they hold civilization and law in high regard because they are determined to avoid the appearance of animals in as many respects as possible. Shapeshifting forms the core of their culture.
So this is just a rambling post looking at what I love with it. It’s not just about feeling and beauty, but logic can have its place. I’m still getting used to this whole posting and just getting in the habit. I guess the takeaway would be have fun creating and don’t be afraid to ask the questions for why things are the way that they are in your fantasy world.
Bitterness is one of the things I hate to see in writers, both as a reader and as a fellow writer. It’s a thousand times worse when it’s combined with ego.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a number of writers bemoaning the standards in the writing world, the state of the publishing world in general, and the overall stupidity of readers. Everyone needs a place to vent. The risk of venting online is that those ventings can last forever. The other risk of perpetual venting is that resentment and bitterness may start to grow. Rather than purging the negative emotions, it can sometimes cause them to fester. By letting them out, these negative feelings are then reinforced and brought back in.
Here’s the deal. The writing world is not fair. I can’t think of any place that is fair. The publishing world has developed a series of standards that are intended first and foremost to bring in money. While that might seem to some like it’s spitting in the face of the art form, it’s actually not. Publishers want to make money, sure. But they have to have money to get the books out there. And while on the author end, I get why it’s so frustrating that a publisher isn’t willing to take a chance, no writer deserves to be published without earning it. And someone has to care for the business.
The problem comes when bitterness sucks the joy from the writing process. Writing is hard work. Finding an audience is a hard work. Most writers will never be recognized for their abilities, and not everyone with a platform deserves one for the quality of her writing. But bitterness does nothing more than weaken us as writers. When I let bitterness take hold of me, it does nothing but ruin my enjoyment of the craft.
From a reader’s perspective, it makes me uneasy about connecting with that author. The writers whom I am most loyal to, aside from the greats, are those writers who I have connected with personally. Whether their works will stand the test of time like Lord of the Rings or Treasure Island remains to be seen, but I am loyal to them because I have gotten to know them as individuals. Bitter people make me uneasy because they are often just looking for someone to spew their venom on. And so if I am reading a writer’s blog or commentary on a site, I sometimes take note if they seem excessively bitter, and I make it a point to avoid those individuals. That sort of sentiment typically bleeds through into the writing itself, and it can be remarkably offputting.
Again this isn’t meant to criticize those who need to vent. It hurts. It’s painful. Writing is so difficult. And sometimes we just need to let that out. But don’t let the bitterness remain. It can be devastating.
