On Writing

I am re-reading Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey, mostly out of boredom but also because I'm in the middle of writing some fantastical political fiction and felt I could use a refresher on what was in that particular well-received story. I was quickly reminded of how much I hate Carey's writing.

Don't get me wrong, the story is interesting. The plot is reasonably well crafted, she avoids a lot of fantasy tropes, and there are developed (though not very complex) characters who behave in realistic ways. And her books didn't begin to fall apart until #3 or so, as she ran out of foreign mythologies to rip off.

It's her actual writing style that I hate. It's artificial and pretentious, like someone whose idea of literary sophistication came from watching Jane Austen stories on Lifetime. "Betwixt" these (p. 3), "mahyap" that, "daresay" the other (p. 1), with "atrembling profundities and elocution, betimes." Fucking gag me. It's only tolerable because pretentious Franco-philia is pretty much a defining characteristic of the entire story so I figure she did it on purpose. Alright then, I may not like it, but at least it's a deliberate part of the writer's craft and it seems to have worked for her.

But this got me thinking.

The proliferation of authorship in America is, generally, a "good thing." At least insofar as more options and ideas are better than fewer.

But there are side effects. Chief among these is the incredible amount of garbage that gets dumped into the public sphere. Once upon a time, being a published author was a rare and valuable thing. The few who made it were survivors of rigorous and ruthless (and often unfair) screening processes that turned away many worthy writers. But they also turned away many shitty writers.

Now, with e-books and print on demand and word processors with automated spell-checkers, any fuckwit can bang their hands on a keyboard to produce a manuscript and, with minimal further effort, thrust it into an unsuspecting world.

Case in point: Fifty Shades of Grey. This "book" is one of the worst pieces of half-digested tripe to ever fall out of an author's ass into what may now be laughingly called the annals of literature. There is no plot. The characters define shallow, and I don't even mean "shallow" as a personality trait; I mean they have no personality traits. There is not a spark of creativity in the entire thing, which is hardly a surprise since it's a freaking fanfic with changed character names. And no, I'm not exaggerating, that's literally what the "author" ("Snowqueen Icedragon;" again, not kidding) did. The writing is on about a fifth grade level ("Triple crap!") except for the occasional ambush by an out of place SAT word, apparently entered at random using a thesaurus to give an unconvincing, slopped-on veneer of erudition. Large portions of the "book" are line-by-line email exchanges between the two primary cardboard cutouts.
 
And it was apparently never edited. By anyone. For instance, on p. 27 (I think; I'm not opening that thing again for fear of losing my soul. It was twenty-something.) the word "besieged" was used twice in a row. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I learned by the third grade that repetition of multi-syllabic words was to be avoided if possible. Clearly, this person does not know what a thesaurus is actually for. And more dedicated souls than I who read it closely and took notes point out grammar and even alleged spelling mistakes (which might actually be a result of Americans reading a "book" by a British woman; there are legitimate spelling differences).

In short, it is the worst scribbling I've ever tried to read. It's utter garbage. The one-star reviews at Amazon are exponentially more entertaining and generally better-written.

And it's a best-seller.

What the fuck? William Shakespeare could have shit a more fascinating, better-written story with memorable characters in verse, but he never received half the success and wealth from his writing that the monster known as "E.L. James" (if I were her, I wouldn't associate my real name with it either) has received from this fecal crime. This is incontrovertible evidence that the hoi polloi wouldn't know decent storytelling if it kicked them in the gonads and called them names; that's what they like to read about, apparently.

Literary justice aside, this is cause for hope, yes? If a half-baked literary nightmare like this can bring an untalented hack like this such wealth, then surely someone with a shred of talent could do as well. Right?

Well, no. Probably not. Because while the opportunity is there, it is past likely that whatever gem, whatever shining star of fiction you might write, no one will see it because it will be buried beneath the mounds of trash spewed forth by the likes of E.L.-fucking-James and her emulators. And believe me, there will be emulators.

You know how there's a thousand channels on TV and almost nothing worth watching? That's the future of written fiction.

Update: I was up late and looking for a chuckle, so I clicked on that link up there and found this. It's a review of that horrible, horrible book by someone who apparently thinks much like me.

But this is probably the most damning.