You’re reading part 5 of a series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
I find myself in the pleasing but unfortunate position of having agreed wholeheartedly with everything Baker said in his rousing part 4 of this conversation. Please go read; it really is something.
I will also be honest and admit that I’m winding down. I’ve conveyed many of my thoughts on this topic, and I desire time to ponder what’s been said, to draw new conclusions and revisit ideas I may have missed. For now, I will briefly respond with some final thoughts on the subjects we’ve covered.
There are two facts which I see in tension: What Baker said about the breaking down and limiting of writer expression is absolutely true. Writers today are not adventurous in the way they used to be; they have a larger checklist of rules to abide by and more market research to follow. These are limitations they’ve accepted, perhaps unknowingly, which have caused them to sacrifice some of the art in their art.
However, it is also true that every writer I know is deeply passionate about the stories they tell. How can it be that we’re controlled, curtailed, and handcuffed, and yet are still following the whispering of our hearts?
I suppose the concrete explanation is that modern writers are students of our era, and have totally internalized the conventions. We can hardly imagine our world without them, and certainly don’t see a reason to rebel. To a born native, accepting the standards of the day seems like the responsible thing to do. To one displaced, as I believe Baker would identify himself, it’s unnatural and troubling.
And the fact that the book market can no longer cater to someone like him is a red flag. How, in a boom economy where more people are creating than ever before, are there not more streams beyond the mainstream? Why have our powerful search algorithms failed to map the many paths in the terrain? This speaks to a universal feeling among Millennials: We are spoiled for choice, and yet we can never find what we want.
Perhaps this feeling of dissatisfaction is as human as anything else. But part of the problem is that we are in a self-reinforcing cycle where the homogenization of culture has removed our ability to think outside the box. How can we desire a variety that we don’t even know exists?
But things aren’t as bleak as may seem. When something genuinely different, ambitious, and earth-shaking comes along, it still has the ability to break through. I have a personal list of stories that have changed me, some from centuries ago, some from the last few years. The potential for this to happen is still very present in our culture.
Baker says, “A book truly worth reading should leave you a little shattered. You should need a break to catch your breath and cleanse your palate,” and with this I agree. My experience of finishing a work such as The Lord of the Rings is a mixture of elation and despair, in part because I know that nothing else will be able to match it. When you’ve tasted genius, how do you follow that up? But I submit that this is what easy reading was made for. What are we going to cleanse our palate with if not the lighter fare of lesser works? Therein lies their purpose.
And in this I see another reality to face: not all books are meant to be masterpieces. When I read, sometimes I want a life-changing experience; but just as often I want simple entertainment or escapism. The best books, for me, combine all of the above. Our real danger is the over-proliferation of entertainment and our rising inability to accept anything else. The only way I can see to address this is to write books that meet readers where they are at, but also challenge them once they’ve been hooked. We have to sneak it in.
G.M. Baker asked for recommendations, and it’s hard to provide those when I don’t know what sort of books he likes, nor what other readers of this essay are looking for. But if you want a story that has affected me deeply, which has provoked thought and emotion and imagination, then may I suggest The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. It’s a modern novel (2014) from an author who is odd and paradoxical yet deeply human and impressively accomplished. He is also someone I see as a true artist. His goal, starting out, was to write as many different books as he could, from suspense to historical fiction to sci-fi—which is what The Book of Strange New Things could be called, although it has also been noted that his stories are “defiantly unclassifiable,” and thus outside of genre. He also has a respect for creativity that I admire; having published Strange New Things, he announced that he’d written everything he was put on earth to write, and laid down his pen. If only the rest of us could be as faithful.
I want to end on a final note that I believe pertains to this conversation.
My own personal journey recently entered a phase we all fear: the dark night of the soul. Perhaps it’s melodramatic to term it as such, but any period in which you not only contemplate but actually attempt to give up the thing that provides your life with meaning, I think we can admit you’ve faced the darkness. That thing which I tried to abandon was writing.
For the last seven years I’ve studied the craft of writing religiously, memorizing three-act story structure and scrutinizing genre definitions, taking in videos and podcasts, visiting conferences, analyzing chapters from favorite novels, tracking my words per day on an Excel spreadsheet. I consumed the chaos and digested noise. And in the end, it amounted to nothing.
Why? Because the books it taught me to write were ones I would never be proud of writing. Paint by numbers is fun in a mind-numbing sort of way. But if I’m going to spend years of my life on a story, if I’m going to pour myself out, then I need to know that the end result has a chance of mattering. This journey is too hard to run for any other reason.
My conviction is that I need to go back to writing what needs to be said, of expressing the deepest feelings of my heart. Modern? Classic? Those words aren’t even in my line of sight. Instead, I will follow where the story leads, trusting that my years of learning will mean something after all, and that the voice which speaks through me will ultimately be one of passion and purpose, whether it be old or new.
Perhaps, for Baker and I, this is our curse. We care too much. But I suspect that those reading these words will nod along, knowing in their soul that they care too much, too.
Is there more to say? Someday. I don’t consider this dialogue conclusive or entirely concluded. We certainly haven’t solved the world’s problems or even our own. But I know that I have been given opportunities for analysis and reflection which were hugely valuable. I’ve also heard from readers that they found our discussion worthwhile. That, really, is all I can ask for.
If you enjoyed this series, please consider sharing it with friends and family. Every little bit helps, and word of mouth is still the best marketing tool in existence. Also make sure to subscribe to Baker’s Substack so you know when he posts what will likely be the final response.
Thank you for journeying with us!
You’re reading part 5 of a series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Dark Night of the Soul is a good way of putting it. I've been going through that myself. It began when I became finally disenchanted with the state of the publishing industry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to self-publish. But I came to realize that the publishing industry I was trying to break into had died twenty years before. Equally, over those twenty years, self-publishing had moved from being simply a form of vanity press to being a form of rebellion. So I did what I hope was the rebellions thing, rather than the vain thing, and published the four finished books I had on hand. I felt at the time that I had too much finished work clogging up my mental workshop and that once it was cleared out, it would make room for new work. That didn't really happen. I brought out the four books, making a complete hash of the marketing, but new work did not come. Then my sister died in January, a reminder, apart from anything else, that all our projects are subject to abrupt cancellation at a time not our choosing. It is only in the last month that I have done any serious or substantial fiction writing again. It is a different book, set in a different time period, and what I shall do about publication, once it is finished, is something I an honestly conflicted about. In the meantime, thought, I have made my complaint about the current state of publishing, and now it is probably time to move on from it.
Thanks for this post, and thank you for launching what turned out to be an interesting conversation. I'm sorry to hear you've hit a lull with your writing but that happens to every writer I think. (I'm in a bit of a lull at the moment myself and I'm pretty sure we'll both get over it.) It's just my opinion but "memorizing...scrutinizing...taking in videos and podcasts...conferences...analyzing chapters, etc." might be slightly useful in small doses, but too much research can be stifling. At least I find it so. Joan Didion said, "I write to find out what I think." She was a journalist, but I think that idea resonates with fiction just as much. Writing fiction involves sensations and ideas that are part of the inner life we carry with us. My fiction's fueled by daydreams that, if I never wrote them down, would waft away like smoke. For me the thing is to write as much as I have time to. When I can't seem to write, the sorts of research you mentioned might be a nice distraction but not much more. Reading's important though. Reading, "classic OR modern," is like P.E. class for the scrawny language centers of my weak and feeble brain.