Remember the 80s, Bob?

[lydamorehouse]

The only movie I've ever liked Nick Nolte in was "The Good Thief." He plays a drug-addled, washed out jewel thief who gets talked into a casino heist by a police officer/former rival. There's a scene where the cop is trying to explain the details of the heist, and he asks Nolte's character, "Do you remember the 80s, Bob?" To which Nolte replies, "No."

Well, do you remember when the Internet was new? Do you remember why emoticons got invented, Bob? I do. It was because sometimes a singular line of text in a reply is hard to parce. The words are there, but the intent behind them is really uncertain. Was that sarcasm? Is she dissing me? Or is that genuine concern coming off as sarcasm? So emoticons got added so you could get more of a clue. Ah! A winky face, she's teasing me!

Somedays, I'm pretty sure I'm the person they invented emoticons FOR. I also apparently need a beta reader for real life (tm). Someone who could look over my shoulder at Tweets and status updates and blog posts and tell me if the words on the screen match my intentions.

Because I tend to get in trouble when I talk about my failings as a writer. Apparently, once you reach a certain level of professionalism, you're never, ever supposed to admit defeat. You're never supposed to agree that a rejection might have felt deserved or that you're not entirely happy with the finished product you sent off to your short story editor (who subsequentally published it.) Apparently, when you do that, you're dissing someone other than yourself. You're not a writer struggling to do her best, but instead some kind of horrible person who's hoodwinking editors into accepting less than perfect work and then crowing about it on the Internet.

For instance, I found out several years ago that I'm on someone's sh*t list because, on the day that an anthology came out, I told people to run out and buy a million copies and also talked about my struggles with short stories in general and in particular about the one that I sent off to the editor of said anthology. Apparently, my self-deprection/admission of imperfection was seen as a call out to all readers everywhere to NOT BUY THIS ANTHOLOGY BECAUSE CLEARLY IT'S FULL OF CRAP.

To this day, I don't understand how the one this makes people read the other. Shawn has explained it to me over and over again, but somehow I keep making the same mistake. I need an emoticon that says, "This is about me and is no reflection on you."

So yeah, I'm facing what I consider the strangest fall-out for having posted about being rejected yesterday (actually not the LJ post I ended up friend-locking below on Shawn's advice, but an even more innocuous status on Facebook.) Obviously, I can't go into details because SOMEONE SOMEWHERE WILL TAKE OFFENSE, but color me baffled. I thought that writers routinely got rejected and that it was all just a part of our lives and that we were free to talk about them, get a little comfort for the sting, and move on. But, apparently saying that what you really want to do is go back over your submission and make it better is some kind of slap to the face of all parties involved...

I really don't get it.

But, if you read yesterday's post (or saw my Facebook status), I'd love your opinion. Is there a coded message in there that says I was secretly trying to send my second-best effort, and that I gleefully hoodwinked my agent, the editor in question, and the entire universe with deviousness? Does admitting that you wish you had a chance to rework a submission now that it's been rejected and you have a sense of what might have gone wrong mean that you sent something off HOPING TO FAIL?

Shawn says she can see it. Maybe you can too. She's explained it a thousand times, but maybe you'll have the magic turn of phrase that will make me say, "Ah, I get it now."

And is there ever a way to talk about what we struggle with as writers that's not going to come off like this? Because I actually always apreciated hearing that writers "above" me on the professional ladder were having troubles not unlike my own. Steven King still gets rejections? Awesome. Stuff like that can, IMHO, be the sort of thing that keeps a writer at any level plugging away--knowing we're all in this together, doing our best, sometimes coming up short, but reworking things and going again. I want to be able to say that. But, every time I do, I get in the WEIRDEST kind of trouble.

Comments

[empty-mirrors.livejournal.com]

Don't ask me. I live in the land of being perpetually misunderstood as well. I know I come over as patronising because I've been told a thousand times that I do, but I'm buggered if I can see how to reword things so that I don't. Fwiw, I would never have read that into that post. To me it sounded like a 'this sucks, this is how it could have sucked less, ho hum such is life, picks self up again,' post, but what do I know.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't see it. Nothing remotely like it. But I have an exceedingly literal mind, so I tend to, y'know, read the words that are actually there.

I've had people read my writing in ways that seemed as odd to me as this apparently does to you (and does to me). I have had people interpret something as meaning the opposite of what the words actually say. I have had people accuse me of espousing an idea I am explicitly rejecting.

I think such interpretations say more about the person reading than about the person writing. Or maybe it's more that these interpretations say more about what the reader thinks of the writer than about the writer her/himself. People get an idea in their head of what you are like, or what a writer is like, or what a [whatever category] is like, and they read everything you write as supporting that idea.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Re my last paragraph there: on a socially contentious issue, I have had the experience of people attributing to me viewpoints on both sides of the issue that I do not have, simply because I have said/written something that someone who has that viewpoint has also said/written. Apparently the concept that someone might see a valid point in a viewpoint without accepting it totally is incomprehensible to some people. Could this have happened in your instance?

[seawasp]

I've had people get mad at me for not being ambitious enough, or for having no pride in my craftsmanship, etc., based on their interpretation of various things I've said. In my case, I tend to pretty much ignore these people.

You can offend people with "Hi, how are you doing?" if the person in question is in a bad mood. I figure that you'll always have some people like that encountering your stuff if you're a public figure (which we are, as published authors, even if we unfortunately don't have enough of the public BUYING yet).

I didn't read your post that way; I read it as being the same as my posts and grumbles of "I *hate* doing outlines. I write stories as I go. Outlining feels either like putting myself in a straitjacket, or lying."

And yes, I remember the 80s. The 70s, even. (My handle "Sea Wasp" dates from 1977, as does the ASCII jellyfish I use in text forums)

[eagle]

Argh, I hate people who ask me how I'm doing! ;)

Yeah, I'm not seeing anything in that post to take offense at either. What I heard you saying was just that you felt like you ran into a mismatch between the necessary partial information of the real world and what you think the real state would be. In my profession (software development rather than publishing), that sort of observation just gets you knowing nods. Everyone involved knows those mismatches happen all the time and are inherent in how the business works (and has to work), and exchange tips on how to minimize the issues.

[seawasp]

Insofar as Nolte, I actually liked him in Ang Lee's "Hulk"; he was given the chance to play a man slowly going insane and becoming an OTT Villain, and did it well.

I didn't like Ang Lee's movie as much as I did the newer Incredible Hulk movie, but I did like it.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

*re-reads previous post*

*gets confused*

This is one of those times I need a "WHUT" graphic.

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

Some people want artists/writers to have 100% purity/integrity. That we cultivate critical distance from our own work opens up a possibility that we could craft a con, hack some shit out and they wouldn't even know it.

People are afraid of being taken in by artists. There's a lot of vulnerability for some in being a reader/admirer.

[fullygoldy.livejournal.com]

With all the unwritten rules that seem to be floating around the internet and how you say things, your words, your tone, your meta even, I say screw 'em all until they WRITE THAT SHIT DOWN. This is your space, to express your thoughts and as many of your hopes and fears as you feel comfortable sharing. You only have to apologize if you get called out for actually being pantsless. Everything else is up to you.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

What you are doing (in general, that is) is the writerly equivalent of saying "OMG, my butt looks sooooo fat in these jeans." Such a remark is supposed to elicit sympathetic reassurance: "oh, no, you look fabulous! You're killer tonight!" It's really a formulaic social convention at this point -- self-deprecation, rush to reassurance.

Some people like to play this game and will give and receive such attention gladly. They enjoy the social convention and find comfort in it. Some find it annoying as all get-out -- for a number of reasons -- and refuse to play. Some people's annoyance varies according to where they perceive someone stands on the "hotness ladder," i.e. when a supermodel complains about their butt, more people roll their eyes than when, say, I do. Because where does she get off complaining about her body? She's gorgeous.

There are, however, plenty of ways to talk about the struggles of the writing life that do not engage with this particular sort of social convention. So it's not that the subject per se is taboo. It's the form. (And taboo is the wrong word.)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I find this comment fascinating! And will have to ponder it for a while.

[jettcat.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a writer but I am a tour guide and I can definitely relate. I'll have a group of guest numbering 50 or so and I have a certain order I run thru as I give the tour. 99% of these folks will get what I'm saying and my self mocking sense of humor, but every once in a while, I will get note with negative feedback. The couple who feel I'm rude and dismissive when really I'm pressed for time. In the same tour, I get a thank you note from folks who were on the SAME TOUR at the same time and they rave about how much fun they had and their daughter loved my tour.

It's always in perception of the person reading it, but and its a big one. Its your opinion and you are entitled to it but it does not invalidate my opinions and feelings and no one gets to tell you how to feel. Don't always worry about second guessing yourself to please others, thats just another can of messy worms.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm just datapointing that I also find posts about the struggles of successful artists very helpful. Often, when I just get stuck or can't make anything work properly for a long time, I fall back on interviews I've read with other musicians about their similar frustrations and it makes me feel a lot more hopeful about the process.

I did see your FB post, but can't remember the details.

[idairsauthor.livejournal.com]

However, I will say that one reason I wound up quitting the BU list was my realization that I could not talk about my own writing insecurities without triggering everyone else's writing insecurities. I got more negative feedback from my posts on that list than I'd gotten in any e-community since STREK-L. For various reasons, no matter how successful you become, being a writer means being in a constant state of insecurity, because you are only ever as good as your last piece, and even your last piece is no guarantee that anyone will want the next one. (Even J. K. Rowling is apparently getting out of the business of writing 'for adults' after the reception of The Casual Vacancy, which I have to say was not a success.) I think that whenever you talk about your own rejection in front of another writer, that writer immediately re-experiences all their own rejections; and people respond to that pain differently. Some want to give you the empathy they would have liked people to extend to them; and some want to pass on the pain they have experienced under the guise of "toughening you up." At any rate, this kidn of thing happens often enough I wouldn't assume it was something you said. A lot of people, instead of listening to someone, only hear what is already in their head.

Re: I did see your FB post, but can't remember the details.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, that was clearly the case here (though it wasn't another writer, just someone else in the profession.)

And... did I know we were in STREK-L together? Were you around when I killed it?

No, I don't think we did.

[idairsauthor.livejournal.com]

I think we determined that years back. I was on STREK-L in the early 90s as Plaid Adder, and I think I bailed around 1993, which I think was before...you killed it? I don't remember that part of the story.