Am I the only one who thinks...

Ummm, do you mean your definition of lit fic is that it IS about a person, and events keeps happening to keep the story moving along? I just got confused reading your post... I'm trying to write the best book I can, but I can't kid myself it's gonna win the Booker prize or something. When I'm done editing though, I want it to be well written - I can't help but want that. And if the characters are any reflection of the writer, no one is going to think I have an ego problem ROTFLMAO. They might think I'm nuts, but that's okay, I am. :D

Yeah, that's what I meant.

But I didn't mean that I think authors shouldn't want their work to be great. I just mean that if I read something and I can just TELL that the writer stopped every two seconds and shivered in ecstasy at the "beauty" of their own prose, then yeah. I'm not going to like it.

Hehehe! Yes, you're clearly crazy... which is a good thing. So, you just want to write ugly? You want to pretend that the language you're writing in is just a neutral medium? Well, it ain't. If you have no interest in crafting your sentences, you're not a writer. Hehehe! If I read your work, you want me to think, "well this writer didn't give a shit about their prose"?

What the hell you on about?!!

love x nic x

nicbouskill-

Love and kisses,

Jenny

Edit: (Hint, in case that's too subtle: The point is that you can like your writing, but as soon as you start thinking that maybe it's one of the most brilliant things on the planet, it probably sucks.)

Do you have specific books in mind? Because your examples can pretty much apply to any genre, not just literary fiction.

I think maybe there's something pretentious about writing in general, which is that what one writes is going to worth another's time. I imagine with that in mind, one simply writes something that will be, at the very least, worth someone's time.

Funny enough, the only time I've read books where the writer sounds like a raging egomaniac is in the area of self-help. Yeah, I've read a lot of them. Most of the time, the writer has a very good idea. But then spends several chapters repeatedly explaining the great idea about bettering oneself, as though the reader is too daft to get it the first time. I do a lot of skimming on those books. For instance, the book "Writing as a Way of Healing" by Louise de Salvo I thought was rather repetitive, but once I'd got past the first few chapters where she was finished being impressed with her breakthrough idea, it was a really good book.

In most lit fic books, I get the impression the author is in search of their ego, more than suffering an overabundance of zeal about their own cleverness. Of course I could be reading the wrong books, and it depends what books you are attracted to in the first place. As radiodn said, maybe it would help if you gave some examples of books that really irked you. :D

Cheers,
Jane

Frankly, if we don't write it well, it's not worth writing, and I know that's been said here, but one of your responses is that you find books pretentious that are in the SELF-HELP category??? Yeah, and those are NOT NOT NOT literary fiction. They're just good and bad therapists, philosophers, recovering alcoholics, ministers and the rest, writing good and bad self-help books. Not even THEY would call their work literary, nor would they call it fiction.

My library shelves are full of literary fiction, having been raised by a man whose undergraduate degree was English Literature, living with an English professor for the past 20 years. I think of all the books I've read in my last quarter century, and only a handful SOUND like the author agonized for hours about every word. He or she MIGHT have agonized for hours about it, but if a writer of literary fiction is any good, their prose (is there anything wrong with that word? Why was it in quotes in your post?) doesn't appear to be the product of angst-ridden word selection. And the literary fiction is character driven, rather than event driven, generally speaking, but the characters don't really spout about the meaning of life, do they?

I remember a few that read in such a lofty, strained manner, and I couldn't get through them, but in one instance, the writer was generally a poet, where agonizing over just the right word IS part of the requirement, given that poetry is a much more spare form, generally.

So perhaps you could head to your local college, sign up for a good literature course with a professor who isn't himself or herself pretentious as hell, and learn the pleasures of literary fiction. The pleasure of NOT Danielle Steele, NOT John Grisham, NOT always aliens and monsters, though all of those are viable vehicles for the written word.

Try some Russell Banks, Margaret Atwood, Jim Shepard, Faulkner, Hemingway, Milan Kundera. Then put your completed reading material down or back in the shelf with a sigh of contentment and appreciation. How about Bernard Cooper's Maps to Anywhere. Now I've read that he DOES agonize over every word, but what appears on the page, every page, is magical prose. Magical.

All of that discussion aside, no matter what you are writing, go for it . . . we've got less than a week, and any genre is worth pursuing for NaNo! Worry about pretentious prose writers on December 1.

Woodswoman

Just to keep the topic clear, I am not the person who created the thread, and I was not saying self-help books were literary or fiction. I was just trying to come up with an example of writers who seemed impressed with their own cleverness. ;)

I understood what you meant.

It's going to be difficult to discuss this thread any further without specific examples, otherwise people are going to be just guessing at what perpetual_blockage is annoyed with.

Definitely true, but I think people need a concept of what writing well is before they can write it, or not write it, as the case may be. I've found that many beginning novelists look to "how-to" books on writing in lieu of reading the kind of novels they'd like to write. You can't learn to write from these sorts of "how-to" books. You can only do that by reading all you can, and writing all you can, preferably in that order.

I respect the criticism more or less, but I don't have a book on my shelf that comes close to one long dialogue about the meaning of life. Ayn Rand is pretty heavy with her philosophy in her prose but stilll manages to telll a good story. Camus sermonizes pretty heavily in his prose but he still tells a story. Dostoyevsky is preachy sometimes but it's quiet beautiful and moving. In general, every author is giving their two bits as far as what they think about the world. "Every portrait is a portrait of the artist" as Oscar Wilde would say. If you were talking about the Socratic dialogues or something yeah..i think I'd see why you were frustrated..in that case I'd say you're in the wrong part of the library. If you're comparing your own work to those around you, most people are not experienced novelist (hence, the whole idea of NaNo).

I'm not very sure what you're getting at. Your description is misleading.

Gosh, is that ever the truth! And it was Stephen King's book "On Writing" that convinced me. In my youth I read hordes of those "how to" books, but if I was ever going to recommend a how-to book, I'd pick King's book and say forget about any of the others. He stresses the fact that you can't be a writer without being a reader. I grew up in a very non-intellectual household, where any kind of literary fiction would have been scoffed at. So a few months ago, while recovering from a surgery, I made it a mission to start reading books like mad - classics and other literary fiction books similar to those I wanted to write. What a revelation. When I read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", I felt I had entered Nirvana. It was very difficult yes, but I have never read anything that struck me so emotionally before. For example, how he got inside Benjy's head - it was astounding. I never imagined I would read a book like that - so shaded I was by my parent's prejudices. I feel like my recent reading is enlightening me.

I didn't have any guidance, so I printed out something like the Times top 100 books and started picking those books out at the second hand store. I sadly didn't get Henry Miller. I tried. There were moments of genius, but I just found it so tawdry and depressing in the end (Tropic of Cancer). I actually gave up about 50 pages from the end. As I said, I tried...

So, yes, I just wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly with what radiondn said. As for being annoyed by pretentiousness in writing, I guess I just "vote with my feet" as a reader, and close the book and walk away if I don't think it's being "real". But that's just an unsophisticated answer from someone who is still learning what real writing is by reading it. :)

The day I stop getting excited when I turn a phrase I like or think I've captured something just how I wanted it, or stop falling in love with my words, then it will be time to stop writing.

I think it's perfectly acceptable for writers to love their writing and think that what they have written is brilliant and awesome, and be motivated by the desire to be more brilliant and awesome. If that's not your thing, or you think the writer is pretentious, that's your business, but I really don't think it's your problem if I think my writing is great. And it's REALLY none of your business if you think that makes my writing sucky, unless I stick it under your nose and make you read it.

I can kind of feel the oldest rule in the book writing book lurking under this debate: the Show Don't Tell rule. Badly written books themed on the meaning of life will be boring and pretentious whereas well written books - like Kafka's The Trial - show and explore the ideas rather than just stating them.

Language is a seperate but no less important issue. A non-poet, me for example, can affect a poetic voice because I know all the cliches and put together something that sounds like a poem but is actually a steaming heap. Well used language should not call attention to itself but some writers - Nabokov, Woolf - have such skill that their prose is uniquely pleasurable, like reading crafted poetry.

Well, mostly I'm talking about amateur lit fic. Maybe that clears some stuff up?

Because generally when I hear someone referring to their own writing as prose, it's this florid crap that makes me want to chew up their pages and puke it onto their shoes. .____.

See, that's what I'm getting at. When someone reads what I write, I want them to see what I see and feel what I feel. I want them to understand my characters and be interested in the way the story progresses. I do NOT want there to be chunks of writing left over in the gaps.

You do realize that EVERY novel is written in prose?

Oh, okay, that kind of explains everything. :D Though in fairness, you are hanging out in a forum of amateur lit fic writers. If we were all Faulkner or Hemingway, we probably wouldn't be here, doing NaNo and writing excitedly about our work in a forum. Maybe you need to stop reading the forum if it makes you want to hurl. ;)

I figure the world is big enough for us all, including those of us who love to write "florid prose" and spend hours crafting each sentence to be filled with the most vivid imagery and multi-syllable words LOL. As to whether it works in a marketable sense is another matter, but this is NaNo... not everyone is here to produce a publishable work. Some people are here to indulge their love of the flowery phrase, and I say, "Let 'em, it's not hurting anyone!" Well, except people who are compelled to read every entry about it perhaps. ;)

Just my very humble thoughts on the matter.

Snap, that's noble. Let's go with that!

"You do realize that EVERY novel is written in prose?"

Come on, don't make me quote myself -yet again-

LOL. Well, some of us are just crazy, y'know...

Oh, please don't quote yourself - yet again!

If you're not careful with your language, you end up writing cliche. "The evening ended with a whimper" kind of stuff...

hehehe!

x

I guess the answer to the question was...yes!

I don't think "crazy" is the word I'd use, but my mother raised me to be more polite than that :P

Oh, I am careful with my language. I just, y'know, make sure I don't end up talking about sky beards

Maybe that means I'm a little bit minimalist with my writing? I mean, I don't cut out words if they're needed to make it good, but I don't like a bunch of extra words in there, either...

Odd that you would mention Stephen King because I was just thinking about how he crafts a good story and hooks you in. I like his use of first person POV and, if you ignore some of what I think is some of the repetitive shock value stuff that has come out in some of his work, I kind of consider some of his work oddly to be almost literary fiction in a way. Some of his psychological work comes to mind. The only differences are that action takes over at a certain stage in most of his work, and the subject matter happens to be horror. He really has a lot going as far as characterization. I'm sure many out there will disagree with me (I mean, Stephen King-literary fiction???!! Really!), but I also thought his book "On Writing" was one of the best writing books I have ever read. He stresses how you have to be passionate about reading before you can be passionate about writing. And about how you have to tell a good story. Plus I think his work is about as unpretentious as you can get. Just simply good writing for the most part.

There is some really great overt "meaning of life" lit fiction and plays, such as "Six Characters In Search of an Author" by Luigi Pirandello and "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett in the play category and "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka in the prose fiction format. There are a number of books like this from the postmodern era that I LOVE and are totally worth reading, even when the message is pretty overt. I can provide a "real" list if anyone's interested.

After all, isn't every book really asking that question in some way, shape or form? If someone isn't asking "what does this mean?" or "why are we here?" then they aren't really examining their lives to the fullest, I don't think.

This has turned out to be a really good thread for understanding what the genre means. I signed on to NaNo and classified my novel as ChickLit, then changed to LitFic, then changed to Parody, and today changed back to LitFic. From reading this thread, I think I'm on the right track -- even if it never gets published. (And without some serious editing, it never will.) A few years ago, I was asked to teach a creative writing class as a volunteer teacher at a local neighbourhood learning centre. I've only written nonfic, so I started by depending wholly on Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Eventually I developed my own style, then quit teaching so I could start a writing group and write more. Just as several of you here have said, Goldberg stresses read a lot and write every day. Writing with the same people for several years, I have been able to see how reading what they want to write has dramatically changed their writing for the better. I can certainly see it in my own writing.

Literary fiction is meant to be about language, innit? In lit fic, sentences should be crafted and loaded, no matter what style they take on. Whether that style is realistic, abstract, verbose or spare, words play a crucial role in lit fic. Also, I'd rather read something the author spent time perfecting than cliche-ridden drivel that makes me cringe.

I kind of see where you're coming from, though. Some people do seem to be under the impression that large vocabulary = excellent writing. Not necessarily true. Sometimes even just choosing between "the" and "an" can make all the difference to a sentence's effect. The writer's role is to make that choice, and that takes consideration.

And yes, I tend to dislike "stories" that serve as little more than soapboxes for the authors.

Perpetual_Blockage -- your initial opening paragraph strikes me as a perfect summation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Tolstoy's War and Peace. Both books could be summarized as "written by authors so in love with their command of lanuage that they forgot readers have lives." You do raise a valid point here: there is prose that is snappy thus enjoyable (Damon Runyan and Umberto Eco come to mind), there is prose that feels heavy because it deals with dark subject matter (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged) and prose that is so lugrubrious that it is borderline unreadable (James Joyce springs to mind).

To me, literary fiction describes any work of fiction that will still be remembered, and occasionally read, a century from now. Wakkave Stegners Angle od Repose comes to mind here.