Other Author Weighs In: Armintrout

[naeko.livejournal.com]

As a response to Hamilton's delightful blog about how all other authors are doing it wrong, Jennifer Armintrout had some things to say.

Barfing On My Keyboard

"Bleeding On My Keyboard" begins innocently enough with Laurell lamenting how difficult it's been for her to work on her latest manuscript. Fair enough, I've been there. I can get on board with feeling like your own writing is trying to straight up murder you. In fact, I would wager that pretty much every writer has felt that way now and again.

Laurell disagrees with me:
Some very successful writers don’t seem to feel that emotional connection to their work, or at least not to the degree I do. I used to envy them until I realized the price of that cool distance. They write like they feel with less depth, less of themselves on the page. It is a safer way to write, less frightening, less hurtful, less pain for the writer, but the writing shows that.

This is where it all starts to go a little wrong. As a writer, I resent the implication that unless "I’ve screamed at my computer, cursed other characters, fought and lost to them," I haven't managed to make a connection to my work. I love my job. I wouldn't love it if it constantly frightened and hurt me, and I don't think it needs to.

(More at the link, of course)


This has been brought up elsewhere, but not here, yet, so I'm relaying it for those of you who haven't seen it. I personally think Armintrout has made some good points, and I like to see when other professional authors calls LKH out on her shit. She likes to put up a wall of, "haters gonna hate" and just assume that all the people who don't fall at her feet and worship what she writes are just not intelligent enough or just don't get her, or whatever other excuse du jour she's using. I like seeing another professional, published author take issue with her words. To me it seems like she might be at least slightly more likely to take them seriously.

Then again, she's not listened before, so maybe I'm wasting perfectly good hope.

Comments

[pith]

It is indeed from The Crow. As is this one :)

I agree with the root of what I think JA was trying to say. Sadly, outspoken women today are still often insulted. But I also think you can be outspoken and honest without being hurtful. And I certainly don't think there's any one way to be a woman, or to be a feminist, or to be anything, really. I don't know if she meant it as a slight against women who are "sugar, spice, and everything nice" (I certainly hope not), but given the tone of the rest of that entry, I don't think she was necessarily being kind to that group of women either.

At the risk of going waaaay OT... I think there are a lot of ways to fight for feminism. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was 12. She wanted to make sure her kids were raised with love, with values she held dear. In some people's eyes, she was probably "trapped" in her home, unable to pursue her dreams, etc. To her, she raised four smart, kind, capable children and taught us to respect others. How, exactly, is that not feminist to some people? Does not compute to me. So yeah, fighting the good fight for feminism takes many forms, and while JA had some good points, I think she really failed in the execution of some of them.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome icon=)

I agree with you about fighting for feminism in different way. It's like, you don't always have to be a Kathleen Hanna or Beatrix Kiddo to get your message across and saying one has to follow the Angry Girl Archetype is really dismissive of women in general.
We are not the Borg, right?

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

You see I kind of took her comment about cattiness another way. That people, at least some people, characterize a critical outspoken woman as "just being catty" thus minimizing their criticism. And it's far more likely for a woman's critique be diminished in this way while a man's critique is taken seriously. I really don't think it was a slam against women who are "sugar and spice and everything nice" (but who really is :P).

[fadeinthewash.livejournal.com]

That was the same impression I had.

[pith]

Many people do unfairly criticize outspoken women, but an author should know better than to use generalizations like "we". She could have easily said "Many people" or "Too many people". That's what I dislike, because LKH formats her arguments in a similar fashion.