| Writing |
I have dedicated myself to writing for
more than a decade. In that time I have
grown from an idealist to a pragmatist as I
realized that there is only one way to make
your mark on the world: not to succumb
to the industry's pressure to change your
identity, your voice, and medium of
expression. There is an audience out there
for everyone.
All those who know me also know that I
do not beat around the bush when it
comes to advocating for originality in
contemporary writing.
It is a tremendously important decision to
make as you reach that inevitable
cross-road of your life as an artist: to be,
or to pretend to be, an artist.
My favourite quote, and one that I think
about every day, is by Jacques Cousteau:
"When one man, for whatever reason, has
the opportunity to lead an extraordinary
life, he has no right to keep it to himself."
The power to accomplish anything is in
your hands. You owe it to yourself to keep
your integrity as your good name. To be
submissive or prostrate yourself to others
in the hopes of gaining approval is an act
of betrayal - to self, to spirit, and to your
work.
Below is an article I wrote two years ago
about the pressures writers face today to
conform to the dominant literati status quo
or risk not achieving acclaim.
more than a decade. In that time I have
grown from an idealist to a pragmatist as I
realized that there is only one way to make
your mark on the world: not to succumb
to the industry's pressure to change your
identity, your voice, and medium of
expression. There is an audience out there
for everyone.
All those who know me also know that I
do not beat around the bush when it
comes to advocating for originality in
contemporary writing.
It is a tremendously important decision to
make as you reach that inevitable
cross-road of your life as an artist: to be,
or to pretend to be, an artist.
My favourite quote, and one that I think
about every day, is by Jacques Cousteau:
"When one man, for whatever reason, has
the opportunity to lead an extraordinary
life, he has no right to keep it to himself."
The power to accomplish anything is in
your hands. You owe it to yourself to keep
your integrity as your good name. To be
submissive or prostrate yourself to others
in the hopes of gaining approval is an act
of betrayal - to self, to spirit, and to your
work.
Below is an article I wrote two years ago
about the pressures writers face today to
conform to the dominant literati status quo
or risk not achieving acclaim.
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Elisa Hategan
© 2008 Elisa Hategan www.elisahategan.com
ON THE SUBJECT OF INTEGRITY AND LITERARY PRIZES
As a young writer I first believed that the way you tell a story is what
counts in order to be GOOD; that pretty prose, descriptive imagery and
snappy dialogue were key to entering the Inner Sanctum of good
authorship.
But along with my maturity as an author, I realized that above anything, it
is the story that really matters. The story, that nebulous thing which swirls
inside the reader’s mind and carries her through its magical plains. Pretty
words have very little to do with success if they involve endless depictions
of middle-aged housewives on farms in the Canadian prairies.
But a story with passion, oh what a story like that does to a reader! He
forgets and forgives its faults if only his imagination is set on fire.
So why not allow the reader to fill in the blanks? A sparse but strong
story will always thrive, having a life of its very own, but a weak plot
adorned with beautiful words will never be remembered half a century
later, no matter how many accolades are lavished upon its beached whale
carcass.
Always remember that those who approve the art grants, the literary
prizes, the minions who book large conventions in Sheraton Hotels where
they place great crowns of laurel leaves upon the foreheads of writers
who have long lost the avant-garde spirit that propels literature forward
across time, typically belong to the same old boys and girls club who
refuse to move over or even allow anyone entry unless they write exactly
like they do – devoid of passion, fresh blood, and ultimately, the creativity
to start something entirely new.
Remember that all the writing that has shaken the boots of the world and
revolutionized literature as we know it was NOT rewarded with Giller,
Booker or Nobel prizes. Artists lived with the curse of having to spill their
minds onto paper for no other reward than the catharsis and luminous
euphoria of having created. When van Gogh painted his sunflowers, when
Rodin sculpted his Thinker, when Rimbaud wrote the verses for which he
was jeered and condemned, when Leonardo sketched out his model of an
airplane six centuries before the drawing would take flight, there was no
self-appointed committee of creative experts largely made up of failed
writers and jaded art critics to squash the idea into the ground.
And even if there had been such a review panel, these artists were certain
to have possessed enough integrity not to compromise their vision. Not
one of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were sold before his death.
Throughout his bouts with financial ruin and depression he hang onto his
vision of how the world appeared.
And yet it is entirely possible to keep your integrity as a creative being and
not descend down the path of the stereotypical starving artist. Many
writers, painters, composers maintained defiance to the hollow status-quo
of their contemporaries and still met with success within their lifetimes.
Pablo Picasso, Garcia Lorca, Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo were among
those brave souls who walked that line of personal strength, gaining their
success from the surmounting reviews of their audiences rather than
kneel under the pressure to produce conventional, conformist, rehashed
excrement that poses as art.
Forget about ever winning a prize. In fact, if you ever will produce
something of brilliance, it is likely that you will never win a book award of
any sort. Because all that these awards serve to achieve is to annually
reward loyal participants of the good old boy and girls’ club. These are
the perks of belonging to the status quo.
Forget becoming a trend-setter if your intention is to find an agent, get
picked up by your average publishing house, get short-listed for a prize.
Book awards are nothing more or less than well-deserved rewards for
maintaining the above-said status quo. For not sticking your neck into
dangerous territory, for not having a reputation of any kind, for not
speaking your mind at all.
You do any of the latter, be it in keeping a political blog or publishing a
critique of art society, and you are certain to be branded a heretic, a
person too subversive to ever risk associating with their immaculate name.
Never mind that throughout history, writers were political, defiant,
argumentative, even unpleasant. You can't do any of those things today.
Your work is not judged on its own merit - but by how good you "clean
up" and match "what's hot" in the beauty pageant of modern publishing.
Before awarding prizes, the henchmen of awards committees go on a dirt-
digging quest into a writer’s past that rival the draconian fact-finding
operations of the KGB.
The publishing house as we know it is slowing going extinct, and they are
fighting tooth and nail to stop the trend of writers taking back their
creativity by rejecting the old soul-murdering methods of conventional
publishing in favour of independent presses and publishing-on-demand
outfits. And because these elephants are all too aware of their diminishing
status, the old circles and networks of stuffy literati tighten harder, and it
is even more expected to follow the norm “if you want to be published.”
Being awarded a prize is completely at odds with being an original writer.
For as long as art reviews have existed, the fear of being publicly
humiliated has deflated the aspirations of countless artists. Creating
original work is intrinsically contradictory with the act of seeking approval
by subjecting your material to be dissected by the disparaging eyes of
those who actually define the status quo.
How can you be understood by someone who speaks a language different
from your own?
If what you desire is to capture brilliance, then just write – compose your
stories with exuberance, without glancing once over your shoulder,
without questioning why you might have your work rejected twenty times
over, like Charles Dickens or the Bronte sisters, before you decide to
simply self-publish or stumble upon a seditious publishing house who will
take you on.
But if a literary prize is what you’re after, then by all means, my sad little
friend, you just keep stringing pretty words together and pay no heed to
the story unfolding, both in front of you and in the changing world of
literature. You just follow the stale trend of modern-day idiots who still, in
an effort to appear 'intellectual', dig deep within their vacant hearts to pull
out inane stories about the inner turmoils of middle-aged housewives on
the Prairies.
As a young writer I first believed that the way you tell a story is what
counts in order to be GOOD; that pretty prose, descriptive imagery and
snappy dialogue were key to entering the Inner Sanctum of good
authorship.
But along with my maturity as an author, I realized that above anything, it
is the story that really matters. The story, that nebulous thing which swirls
inside the reader’s mind and carries her through its magical plains. Pretty
words have very little to do with success if they involve endless depictions
of middle-aged housewives on farms in the Canadian prairies.
But a story with passion, oh what a story like that does to a reader! He
forgets and forgives its faults if only his imagination is set on fire.
So why not allow the reader to fill in the blanks? A sparse but strong
story will always thrive, having a life of its very own, but a weak plot
adorned with beautiful words will never be remembered half a century
later, no matter how many accolades are lavished upon its beached whale
carcass.
Always remember that those who approve the art grants, the literary
prizes, the minions who book large conventions in Sheraton Hotels where
they place great crowns of laurel leaves upon the foreheads of writers
who have long lost the avant-garde spirit that propels literature forward
across time, typically belong to the same old boys and girls club who
refuse to move over or even allow anyone entry unless they write exactly
like they do – devoid of passion, fresh blood, and ultimately, the creativity
to start something entirely new.
Remember that all the writing that has shaken the boots of the world and
revolutionized literature as we know it was NOT rewarded with Giller,
Booker or Nobel prizes. Artists lived with the curse of having to spill their
minds onto paper for no other reward than the catharsis and luminous
euphoria of having created. When van Gogh painted his sunflowers, when
Rodin sculpted his Thinker, when Rimbaud wrote the verses for which he
was jeered and condemned, when Leonardo sketched out his model of an
airplane six centuries before the drawing would take flight, there was no
self-appointed committee of creative experts largely made up of failed
writers and jaded art critics to squash the idea into the ground.
And even if there had been such a review panel, these artists were certain
to have possessed enough integrity not to compromise their vision. Not
one of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were sold before his death.
Throughout his bouts with financial ruin and depression he hang onto his
vision of how the world appeared.
And yet it is entirely possible to keep your integrity as a creative being and
not descend down the path of the stereotypical starving artist. Many
writers, painters, composers maintained defiance to the hollow status-quo
of their contemporaries and still met with success within their lifetimes.
Pablo Picasso, Garcia Lorca, Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo were among
those brave souls who walked that line of personal strength, gaining their
success from the surmounting reviews of their audiences rather than
kneel under the pressure to produce conventional, conformist, rehashed
excrement that poses as art.
Forget about ever winning a prize. In fact, if you ever will produce
something of brilliance, it is likely that you will never win a book award of
any sort. Because all that these awards serve to achieve is to annually
reward loyal participants of the good old boy and girls’ club. These are
the perks of belonging to the status quo.
Forget becoming a trend-setter if your intention is to find an agent, get
picked up by your average publishing house, get short-listed for a prize.
Book awards are nothing more or less than well-deserved rewards for
maintaining the above-said status quo. For not sticking your neck into
dangerous territory, for not having a reputation of any kind, for not
speaking your mind at all.
You do any of the latter, be it in keeping a political blog or publishing a
critique of art society, and you are certain to be branded a heretic, a
person too subversive to ever risk associating with their immaculate name.
Never mind that throughout history, writers were political, defiant,
argumentative, even unpleasant. You can't do any of those things today.
Your work is not judged on its own merit - but by how good you "clean
up" and match "what's hot" in the beauty pageant of modern publishing.
Before awarding prizes, the henchmen of awards committees go on a dirt-
digging quest into a writer’s past that rival the draconian fact-finding
operations of the KGB.
The publishing house as we know it is slowing going extinct, and they are
fighting tooth and nail to stop the trend of writers taking back their
creativity by rejecting the old soul-murdering methods of conventional
publishing in favour of independent presses and publishing-on-demand
outfits. And because these elephants are all too aware of their diminishing
status, the old circles and networks of stuffy literati tighten harder, and it
is even more expected to follow the norm “if you want to be published.”
Being awarded a prize is completely at odds with being an original writer.
For as long as art reviews have existed, the fear of being publicly
humiliated has deflated the aspirations of countless artists. Creating
original work is intrinsically contradictory with the act of seeking approval
by subjecting your material to be dissected by the disparaging eyes of
those who actually define the status quo.
How can you be understood by someone who speaks a language different
from your own?
If what you desire is to capture brilliance, then just write – compose your
stories with exuberance, without glancing once over your shoulder,
without questioning why you might have your work rejected twenty times
over, like Charles Dickens or the Bronte sisters, before you decide to
simply self-publish or stumble upon a seditious publishing house who will
take you on.
But if a literary prize is what you’re after, then by all means, my sad little
friend, you just keep stringing pretty words together and pay no heed to
the story unfolding, both in front of you and in the changing world of
literature. You just follow the stale trend of modern-day idiots who still, in
an effort to appear 'intellectual', dig deep within their vacant hearts to pull
out inane stories about the inner turmoils of middle-aged housewives on
the Prairies.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Robert Frost (1915)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost (1915)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
