There is one walking barefoot in the market place. Her hair is in knots and her face holds much thought, she carries her wares on her back and a plate for which to beg. Who is she? Let us call her to join our party, let us see her dance and praise joyously about the place she has come from, while we aim to set her apart from us, making merry at her feet and clanging beats she cannot decipher. There becomes that one, and we shall call her by her name, singing it to our own bashful chant, knowing that we don’t want her to be with us. We don’t.
Beware the Ides of March.
The Critics month as I
would like to call it.
I realized some key things about the world in general this month which I will go on to vent since this is my pity party ground of some sort, so here we go.
Writers, we don’t really like each other and we know it. We love beautiful things, appreciate beauty, and find beauty even in the quaint things in our environment, but we all know deep down inside we don’t like or appreciate each other.
Doctors co-operate; hinting one another helpfully on new medication and advances in science. Teachers co-operate too, but writers, Aargh! We feel like there is some kind of competition somewhere, or we are struggling for the coveted prize of publication, and we try our best to shirk off anyone we feel does not meet up to the challenge.
It gets worse when you decide to write on the Web. Writers are quick to click on the link where you list your email address (or comments page if you have any) to drop a hateful line or unwarranted criticism on your work, be it your poetry, fan-fiction (which I find to be one of their objects of focus) and non-fiction articles. They always have that smirk on their faces after reading your work, instead of awe, or admiration or encouragement, they say instead to themselves, “She’s good but I’m better, I’ve read better, and I can write better.” Why, oh why?
I know many people would disagree with me on this and I don’t care. I am one person who is of the firm belief that if you don’t have something good to say, please spare the world the venom of your tongue (or in the case of email, the thoughtless click of your keypad, punching in the keys to an offensive mail). It would certainly help the world go round, and make web surfing a happier more pleasant place like it was originally intended to be. Of recent it’s become horrid, people telling you things they dared not say to you face to face but because they are not faced with your scowling face they feel it gives them leeway to utter horrible atrocities to you. What is wrong with the world, have we lost our Internet decorum?
Yes, I know I don’t write fantastic poetry, I like to write what I feel, and if what I feel is condensed in imagery and exaggerated language, and then so be it, often times it is not. I prefer to get the word out there as to my state of mind in simple prose form, pace by pace sentencing. I HATE to read complicated poetry and I hate mine to be one of those. I understand the fact that not many people belong to the learned world of utmost understanding of the fancy dressing the English language comes in, so I tend to want to spare them of having to consult their dictionary every time they read my work. I gain a wider audience, people of all ages and manners of life, but I lose the respect of my peers, in being shabby, childish, and “housewife written drama” as one of my critics termed my work.
This month, everyone felt a need to condemn my writing and compare it to Shakespeare’s; like they were his descendants or I was supposed to be one too. It hurts you know, most times they don’t think it hurts, but it does, It hurts more cos’ the Web being such a vague place, you can’t identify your attacker from their email address. All you can do is report them for harassment, and we know they never do anything about it. (Yahoo didn’t give two cents for my problem, if I had committed suicide maybe they would have cared)
Nevertheless, thankfully that is in the past, not like my writing has improved much since then, it is just in the past. I will put them where I put the rest of my critics in my thank you speech at the Oscars. “Thank you to all my critics for without them I would have remained complacent”…armed with a disarming smile, and the charm to talk the Academy into extra time, a la Julia Roberts.
Then, comes the issue of websites…all kinds, personal websites, Entertainment sites, playful websites, journal sites, creative writing sites, fan-fiction websites, fan sites, name it. No matter how many web site guest books you sign, you would think they would have the courtesy to visit your site, and reciprocate the gesture by signing yours, and reading at least one of your stories. I did that for 2 weeks, and I was still faced with an empty guest book, every damn day. Makes you think they might have misplaced your address or some other excuse more tangible to describe why website owners can be so callous---no that’s too strong a word---negligent maybe, or just damn right inconsiderate to give a sh*t about a nice person who has allotted a portion of their precious time to visit their sites. It’s utterly unbelievable reading it from me, sounds like an “it happened to me” tale but it just emphasizes my earlier point, writers are in competition, constantly in competition, with our selves, with our minds, with our creative deluded minds. The month left me to come to this sordid conclusion. We hardly pay each other compliments, we hardly give one another pats on the back for a job well done, and we feel it would undermine our writing. What is that? If you read someone’s work and you like it, be honest to yourself, and fess up. Most of the few (very few) compliments I have gotten as regards my work came from non-writers and very few writers, too few (Big ups to my people’s of Another Stories List @ Egroups). They were the only ones bold, and humble enough to admit that a story or two of mines' touched or pleased them. As for the other countless fellow writers, I am still waiting on them. I have my hand on the stopwatch counting the minutes, knowing that the compliments would never come. Instead, the criticisms would arrive before the compliments did.
I did write some good stories though, and I experimented with my writing technique a little, taking my time to stress on some facts which to me were of no value to the story, just added color and garnish to the advancing plot, nevertheless, I stressed and heightened their effect to the overall story plot.
And I also learnt a lot from reading other people’s stories, I got inspired, and was able to wipe off my artists block from the month before, easing into my new computer to type some of my bests works to date. So you do learn from other people, you do. You do without knowing that you do.
To further emphasize my
point, I must conduct a little survey: like Cosmo type of thing:
How many of us are writers,
write down our thoughts, our day-by-day happenings?
How many of us have websites,
of any kind?
How many of us site owners
have actually visited a site of someone who signed our guest book?
How many of us that are
writers actually sit down to read other people’s stories?
How many of us leave comments
we know that writer might not necessarily need?
How many of us leave encouraging
words? However, point out in a polite tone their inadequacies on certain
elements of their work?
How many of us would admit
to leaving hate mail?
If you have answers to
any of these questions please keep it to yourself, it is just meant to
be a little food for thought.
Movies I saw:
I suggest you read a
fuller review of these movies from my Entertainment page, this is a just
a sketch.
Awards I saw: