Katie-Ellen Is Writing Dangerously This Year...

[AgentPete]

The Year of Writing Dangerously

 

[Carol Rose]

Wow. FABULOUS, @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine!!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Thanks Carol Yes, that's so me. Totally dangerous at all times. Heh.

Peter's made it look beautiful on the page.

 

[Rich.]

Stirring stuff, Katie-Ellen, I'm glad I read that.

There was one thing. I've fixed the last line for you...

Think big. Be bold. This is a grail quest. Use it up and pour it out.

Take risks with your writing! life!​

Seriously though, a great read!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Heheh...OK, but stay just a teeny bit safe as well, Rich. I like seeing you around.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Nicely said, Katie-Ellen!

 

[MaryA]

Highlight of my week, @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine!

 

[Howard]

Nice piece, @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine! Good job!

 

[John Hunt]

Thanks @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine, really useful.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Very kind, all. Nothing that any one of us couldn't have said just as well if not better. Just my translation of the zeitgeist here.

 

[Rich.]

I think you nailed it. This bit, which I completely agree with, got me thinking...

There is natural writing talent – yes there is such a thing- and then there is the discipline of skill or craft, and it is this discipline which liberates the expression of talent.

I once read (off hand I can't remember where) that novel writing, like film-making, performing music and staging plays, is an act of two parts: composition and performance. It's clear that a symphony requires a composer to compose and an orchestra to perform. Similarly, a play requires a writer to compose and a company to perform. Even film-making fits the pattern – scriptwriters compose and crews perform. But novel writers? Well, first we compose our stories, in whatever manner fits our working habits, and then we perform them in the act of writing them down as polished novels.

I like this separation. It gives me a sense (not exclusively or rigidly, mind you) of where the art is, and where the craft.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Yes. That I spent 6 weeks with my class mates learning to draw bricks and the insides of toilet rolls in A level art class. There's another thing though, I think I didn't quite nail. The art comes through us, really, not from us. That's the compulsion. You know there's something you want to write but you don't yet know exactly what it is. The form that the writing takes will flow from the feeling of the thought.

That's what I do NOT like about writing and poetry classes. Write a haiku. Write a villanelle. Blah blah. Facile. Those forms should arise organically as they surely did originally, from the ordering of the natural flow of the writer's feeling, and then, the thought arising from that feeling. And if we read, which as writers surely we love to do, we've subliminally absorbed much of that.

Feeling comes first. Then thought, then craft and discipline. The creative writing industry presents it back to front.

 

[Quillwitch]

Well done @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine I really enjoyed reading it! Spoke loads to me!

 

[Rich.]

Feeling comes first. Then thought, then craft and discipline. The creative writing industry presents it back to front.

It does seem that way, doesn't it?

 

[Sea-shore]

Great read, @Katie-Ellen! You go, girl!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

You too! Let's all write dangerously, and scare ourselves, in- between scaring @AgentPete at pop-ups, heh.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

A good piece, Katie-Ellen. It's worth remembering, that writers are considered dangerous by oppressive regimes, and are one of the first groups of people who are put under surveillance and imprisoned. Hence, writers' groups like PEN International, to defend freedom of expression.

Writing truthfully can be dangerous, since it could change a reader's life. One of the most dangerous forms of writing is poetry, as it's intensely personal, revealing the poet's feelings without a filter. Sincerity, while writing should be essential, staying true to your characters' beliefs, and not worrying about how readers will react. As Erica Jong said:

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Peter's asked for pieces for the front page. Any of yours would be great, Paul.

There's been something on the box this week about 'sensitivity readers.'

Hmmm. Big concern. Now, if these readers are offering feedback on authenticity and accuracy, is that something to worry about? Maybe not. Accuracy is important. I have asked for help checking police stuff, even though the story is not a police procedural. But I do not care at all for that term 'sensitivity.'

Are publishers a bunch of scaredy-cats nowadays?

Ominous.

Sensitivity Readers

 

[Carol Rose]

There's been something on the box this week about 'sensitivity readers.'

Hmmm. Big concern. Now, if these readers are offering feedback on authenticity and accuracy, is that something to worry about? Maybe not. Accuracy is important. I have asked for help checking police stuff, even though the story is not a police procedural. But I do not care at all for that term 'sensitivity.'

Are publishers a bunch of scaredy-cats nowadays?

Ominous.

Sensitivity Readers

I've heard about this off and on for a while now. Huge concerns with this. I'm sure the current political/social climate has something to do with it. Everyone is afraid of offending everyone. Not saying we shouldn't be aware how our words can wound, but I think people are now going overboard. If you go looking for offense, you will always find it.

There's being careful not to unintentionally offend a certain culture, religion, or heritage, and then there's whitewashing (even that term could be judge offensive!) your writing to the point that writing about butterflies and rainbows is out because even that might be offensive to someone out there. What's left to write about? It can get so far out of hand that creativity is completely gone, and we're left with stories about ... well ... I really don't know.

And who polices the sensitivity readers? We're talking about emotions here, not a standard set of rules that everyone can agree on. It's entirely subjective. What offends me might not offend someone else.

Very scary stuff, indeed.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I've written a novel as if I were
a) a man (guys, I've been lying to you all. I'm a man; aka scion and spawn of patriarchal oppression)
b) have an Anglo-Irish father and Anglo-Trinidadian mother (yes to the first and no to the second) Two ancestral psychic streams meet in him, the celtic bard and seer, and a freed slave juju man.
c) and as if my mother suffered from depression (don't forget there is a Trinidadian connection here) and was also NOT VERY NICE (but my real life father, a most wonderful person, had bi-polar disorder)
d) cue howls of outrage. I'm probably in the shit, then?

 

[Howard]

The notion that you cannot write from a point of view or position you have not personally lived is just plain psychotic. Any terms like "cultural appropriation" or accusations of using minorities/groups/whatever for personal gain without sympathising with them is just utter bullshit. Also, the idea that our writing should be sanitised so as not to cause offence should be grounds for lynching. This is wholly symptomatic of the psychosis infesting millenials and the youtube generation. A pox on them all!

I mostly find this amusing as I have never written from my point of view in any of my works, and, quite frankly, I have no intention of starting. I write to escape the stupidity that is my life, not to revel in it!

 

[Paul Whybrow]

It's strange that anyone could get offended by a fictional story, when there are so many outrageous events happening in real life, particularly those instigated by the so called Leader of the Free World—a president who's operating at the level of a petulant, bickering brat!

In my own writing, I've been many characters, who some politically correct and sensitive people might say I have no right to be, including a lesbian detective, a black veteran of the American Civil War, a female biologist and a Serbian boy soldier. I've written about some horrific things in my Cornish Detective novels, which include forensic descriptions that will make some readers quake, while others will delight in them.

I'm four chapters into my WIP, The Dead Need Nobody, and my protagonist detective has just recovered one corpse, seemingly a drowning victim, only to stumble across another body being lifted from the sea bed by a salvage vessel. He's unaware that the murderer is watching him from the cliff above, and as I wrote the killer's thoughts I gave him some shockingly misogynistic opinions. As I saw this chauvinist pig appearing on the screen, I realised, with wry relish, that he's more likely to be objected to for his views, that any of the serial killers, drug dealers and people traffickers I've previously written about!

 

[Quillwitch]

Peter's asked for pieces for the front page. Any of yours would be great, Paul.

There's been something on the box this week about 'sensitivity readers.'

Hmmm. Big concern. Now, if these readers are offering feedback on authenticity and accuracy, is that something to worry about? Maybe not. Accuracy is important. I have asked for help checking police stuff, even though the story is not a police procedural. But I do not care at all for that term 'sensitivity.'

Are publishers a bunch of scaredy-cats nowadays?

Ominous.

Sensitivity Readers

I just read this articile, Lots to think about. As someone who believes in absolute freedom of speech and is against any form of censorship, I am very much angered by and afraid of what has been going on lately in terms of these "sensitivity" issues. In many cases, it´s absurd. Especially when people try to censor or block work that was written ten or twenty or 100 years ago. Are we now erasing history? Accuracy is absolutely important, agreed, but sensitivity...well, I feel they sometimes take it too far. Especially in the U.S. , especially now. As a writer I´m extremely worried about this. It has given me another reason to have writer´s block. As someone who is trying to write for children, I fear that many who are writing for Children and YA today are very young, who have rallied in favor of "sensitivity" censorship, and as I am not a part of this generation, I´m almost certain that at some point I will end up upsetting someone with my writing.

 

[Quillwitch]

I've heard about this off and on for a while now. Huge concerns with this. I'm sure the current political/social climate has something to do with it. Everyone is afraid of offending everyone. Not saying we shouldn't be aware how our words can wound, but I think people are now going overboard. If you go looking for offense, you will always find it.

There's being careful not to unintentionally offend a certain culture, religion, or heritage, and then there's whitewashing (even that term could be judge offensive!) your writing to the point that writing about butterflies and rainbows is out because even that might be offensive to someone out there. What's left to write about? It can get so far out of hand that creativity is completely gone, and we're left with stories about ... well ... I really don't know.

And who polices the sensitivity readers? We're talking about emotions here, not a standard set of rules that everyone can agree on. It's entirely subjective. What offends me might not offend someone else.

Very scary stuff, indeed.

Agreed. I have nightmares about this. It might be well intended, as well all are, but it´s gotten to the point where it´s very 1984ish.

 

[Quillwitch]

It's strange that anyone could get offended by a fictional story, when there are so many outrageous events happening in real life, particularly those instigated by the so called Leader of the Free World—a president who's operating at the level of a petulant, bickering brat!

In my own writing, I've been many characters, who some politically correct and sensitive people might say I have no right to be, including a lesbian detective, a black veteran of the American Civil War, a female biologist and a Serbian boy soldier. I've written about some horrific things in my Cornish Detective novels, which include forensic descriptions that will make some readers quake, while others will delight in them.

I'm four chapters into my WIP, The Dead Need Nobody, and my protagonist detective has just recovered one corpse, seemingly a drowning victim, only to stumble across another body being lifted from the sea bed by a salvage vessel. He's unaware that the murderer is watching him from the cliff above, and as I wrote the killer's thoughts I gave him some shockingly misogynistic opinions. As I saw this chauvinist pig appearing on the screen, I realised, with wry relish, that he's more likely to be objected to for his views, that any of the serial killers, drug dealers and people traffickers I've previously written about!

OOOh!I like the title of that story!

 

[Amber]

I saw this when I logged on this morning. Also, I like the new look.

I'm going to read this article now. The title really appealed to me. I'll react to it in real time. Isn't this exciting?

This really spoke to me:

t

hey don’t take from a story what was never put in because the writer was afraid of the power of their own words, and bottled it.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think I try to obscure what I mean when I'm afraid of people seeing what I mean. Which is silly. Although, every now and again, effective. But especially with longer stories, it's not a good idea to hide what the story is about.

it is this discipline which liberates the expression of talent.

Very well said I think.

They need stories, adults and children alike. Humanity is hard-wired that way, for its psychical health and the reasons are many; for entertainment, for escape, to feel something, learn something new, and also for companionship and a sense of belonging, to feel less alone with a problem, making new sense of things.

Very true. There's a book by Cronin (I think -- can't remember her first name) called Wired for Story.

‘Someone’s boring me,’ Dylan Thomas once said, ‘I think it’s me.’

Funny. Sometimes I do get bored when I'm writing. Especially during Nano, which I've decided is not a good thing for writers at all.

Great advice and an interesting article. Thanks!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Thanks @Amber...and for that Cronin reference. Must look that up!