mrissa | Ambition and Miscellany

It has occurred to me that I don't really care what an author was trying for. If I'm in their writing group, sure, because I'm trying to help them get closer to their vision. But once a story or book is published, I am no longer obligated to give a damn about what they hoped to accomplish. This cuts both ways: I don't feel that I have to cut a book slack for (as my mom says) sucking pond scum if its author can mutter about his/her grandiose visions. But I also can enjoy a book if its author intended it to be the Great American Novel and it is instead a fun piece of entertainment. I'm allowed to bring my own standards to the reading experience -- I am not bound to accept the author's.

I don't think intent and ability correlate all that well in this field, is part of my deal. There are people who can talk about the wonderful things they're going to do in the novel they're going to write someday when they get around to it, when the excuse list dwindles.

For some strange reason,

pegkerr kept showing up in my dreams this morning, telling me to hurry and get to it. What it was is not yet clear, nor why Peg when I don't really know her. But I wouldn't want to be unpleasant, so I hurried and got to it. And now I seem to be hurrying and getting to adding things to my to do list.

One of which is picking up a package at the post office. I love birthdays.

Finished writing "Docile Bodies." Freakin' finally. Also finished reading the Hugo-nominee short fiction.

The plumber is supposed to fix the outdoor hose faucets tomorrow morning, finally, after an unsuccessful visit last week. None too soon, as it's sticky here, and the yard could use watering. The Hungarian peppers are a lovely yellowy green. The herbs are going nuts. There are iron sculptures in town tomorrow and Wednesday for Aquatennial, and my aunt Mary's paintings are up for the rest of the month in the Thrivent building, so if we can get downtown, there'll be art to see. So I hope the plumber hurries.

Is 26 supposed to be a hormone roller coaster age for women on a par with 14 or 15? I'm just asking....

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From:

merriehaskell.livejournal.com

I'm allowed to bring my own standards to the reading experience -- I am not bound to accept the author's.

I think they try to train us out of that in English classes. I remember reacting poorly to a poem in AP English and being told it doesn't matter how it makes me feel, it's about what the author intended.

And, I suppose, for the purposes of the AP test, that's probably true, but I'm not so sure it didn't scar me on some level. My few English classes in college did seem to ask that question duo (trio?) a lot: "What did the author intend? Did the author succeed? Why or why not?" Like that's the end-all, be-all of assessment.

Stupid academia. No wonder I was too shell-shocked to read for pleasure for years afterward.

Is 26 supposed to be a hormone roller coaster age for women on a par with 14 or 15? I'm just asking....

Supposed to be? Who are you asking? Frankly, I think there's not been enough research done on the issue. Development clearly continues after adolescence is finished, but all you get for "early adulthood development" in psych texts is a pile of crap.

26 was a particularly wretched year for me, but I can cite external factors just as easily as anything else. But, you know. They say that a woman's fertility peaks at 27 (looks back at 27: "oops"), so I suspect that there have to be some sort of hormonal things going on that someone out there is just glossing over because it's not sexy to research what happens to people living "the prime of their lives." Or something.

Maybe the doctors in the crowd know something I don't know. (Well, I'm sure of that.)

From:

timprov.livejournal.com

pegkerr showing up in your dreams seems much more reasonable than

yuneicorn's cameo in mine two nights ago when my only connection with her is reading her sister's journal.

From:

palinade.livejournal.com

Once the novel is completed and published, the intent of author is only helpful to the author if the intent was entirely lost on the readers. The author can then, hopefully, learn to either clarifiy the writing to get the intended meaning across more succinctly OR the writer can just sit back and think about the various ways readers will bring their own interpretations to the story. Either one is valid.

But when examining technique or use of certain writerly "tools" to get the meaning across, the discussion about intention can be very useful. What one writer may think is working, the readership as a whole might not see at all; a red flag has been raised. It might mean that something other than the intended meaning is drawing more attention than the writer wanted. And it might be the lodestone to the frustration the writer is experiencing. Solving this mystery might help the writer become a better self-editor.

I don't mind people who talk about the things they intend to do in stories. I do it all the time. It's cathartic for me--helps clear out the cobwebs, sometimes.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

I don't mind when my writer-friends talk about what they intend to do, either. It's when you have finished, published books with authors going on about what they intended that I don't really care to hear it in general. Once it's on the shelves, if you didn't write a novel "exploring all the facets of gender" or some such goal, I'm not sure why I should care that you meant to. Comments about what the author meant can be amusing (like when

pameladean said she'd written Tam Lin to give people book recommendations -- I didn't take that as a comprehensive statement of authorial intent, just as a true but amusing summary of one of the things that book can be to people). They can be interesting. But I don't think I'm required to reevaluate a book I disliked and rank it more highly because the author meant to do something else entirely. Or to downgrade a book that succeeded as itself for me just because the author intended more for it.

Sure, if an author asks me for a critique (as opposed to a review) of a published book, I can do one. But I don't think I'm required to do one every time, especially if I don't know the author from Adam/Eve/whatever other protohuman you like and they've expressed no such desire to learn from my reaction.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

Well, and authorial intent can be interesting. I just think it's pretty secondary to my appreciation of books.

You know in "The Producers" when Franz Liebkin says, "You are ze audience. I am ze auzzor. I outrank you!"? He was wrong.

The other reason I think there's probably not more research on hormone cycles and their effects on people in the 20-40 range is that a lot of people come into it with dubious agendas, especially where women are concerned. I also think a lot of people behave as though men have exactly constant hormone levels from about age 20 to...um...well, indefinitely, really, with perhaps a slight tapering off from year to year so that very few 70-year-olds are the horndogs they were at 21. But men's hormones go up and down, too.

From:

cooperati.livejournal.com

that's kind of a nice thing to be able to do, to separate yourself from the natural tendancy to help nurture another's professional ability, and simply read the story. i like that, it sounds liberating.

i'd suppose the only thing left to consider is making sure i would be aware of pitfalls i wouldn't want to oversee in my own work. (one of mine is skipping words, or just assuming they're there. if i read a sentance, or a paragraph, i really go line by line, making sure nothing exceeds the boundaries of english. it's more of a bad habit than a safegaurd, as when i write i still have the same tendancy to just skip words, like in math when one skips a process, knowing it by heart, and the teacher has to explain why it should be included in the answer.)

just last night i sent a new section of my old story to my good friend, and he told me that i still need to work on the complexity of my language, that it will be a complete distraction to the rest of the story. he said i constantly use the toughest grammar possible, and that will make it hard to read and easy to beat by the popular books out there.

i reminded him, it's not for selling. it's practice, for me if me alone, and just to enjoy the grammar. hopefully i will have a complex story to match. our conversation didn't go so far as to mention that complex storylines or complex characters could threaten a story's popularity too. maybe i'll email him about that.

-=T=-

From:

cooperati.livejournal.com

for both my brother and me we didn't really have to watch our sex drives until we turned 25-26. the closer to 26 i got, the more i wanted children, badly. i was nearly out of control, and just a few hours before i turned 26, on the eve of my birthday, when my girlfriend (now my wife) and i were going to this "selective" club in san francisco, she told me she was pregnant. we had been together for five years by that point. for my brother, it was similar, at 25 he wanted to have a kid. lo and behold, not long afterwards, he managed to acquire a pregnant girlfriend. my sister didn't get pregnant until she was ready at 28. my other brother is the only exception. he had his first kid at 21.

that being the only real concern for men in regards to hormones, it's kind of hard to consider any better guage for how much we fluctuate. most guys are waiting for the results of further testing to see if weight gain or loss is a consequence of hormone imbalance, or if being over or underweight induces hormone imbalance. there surely seems to be a correlation.

but, usually, when someone mentions men's hormones, we give a smirk and think of our dad's playboys. it's just not a real issue for most guys.

-=T=-

From:

palinade.livejournal.com

I see what you mean--I agree that hearing about the "intention" after the fact is pretty lame. Humorous anecdotes or plans for the book during construction can be funny (I meant the book to be about X, but the main character wouldn't keep quiet, so it ended up being about W).

But yes, we shouldn't be asked to reevaluate a poorly written novel just because the author has had a chance to verbalize/summarize/synopsisize/explain what the intended story was supposed to be. If the finished piece can't be accepted the way it's written, then (for me) the author hasn't done the job.

I never relook at a book I dislike just because the author has had a chance to "explain". ::rolls eyes::

From:

minnehaha.livejournal.com

"Is 26 supposed to be a hormone roller coaster age for women on a par with 14 or 15?"

No, but I have read several articles on a new phenomenon called the "quarter-life crisis."

Google for it.

B