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

[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.