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April 25, 2005
genre profiling, and profilic writers
This article is about profilic writers, or really more accurately, it's about the fact that there are some people out there who can write a lot, many many pages every day, and get a lot or most of that work into print. This is in comparison to the rest of us, who wobble along, happy for two solid pages a day, or thrilled with five, or despondent when only a few sentences survive the battle.
I find this subject vaguely interesting, the same way I might stop to read an article about people who can twist themselves into odd shapes or wiggle their scalps or who have photographic memories or perfect pitch. These are not things that can be taught. It would be wonderful to have pefect pitch or a photographic memory, and it would be even more wonderful if I could sit down every day and write 3,000 solid words without breaking a sweat.
Okay, the parallel isn't perfect. People who can write 3,000 words a day were not born with that skill. They developed it at some point, a combination of personality traits and early habits. But I still stand by the comparison, because at a certain point in your life, the possibility of becoming one of these profilic/productive writers has passed. I can't decide to be one now, the same way I can't simply decide to have perfect pitch. It doesn't make any sense to be jealous of somebody who does have perfect pitch, and, it seems to me, the same is true of reactions to writers who can turn out one or two books a year. I will confess to the occasional itch of irritation when I see that Joyce Carol Oates has got yet another title on the new arrivals shelf, but mostly I can shrug it off. I have no idea how she does it, and that's okay.
So I think this is an interesting topic, but one with limited usefulness to anybody, even other writers. And the article bothered me for another reason: there's a big discussion of genre authors vs literary authors (the terminology used in the article) and how less tolerant we are generally of profilic literary authors, because:
It hearkens back to this notion we have of how “serious” novels are created — that every sentence is the result of years of contemplation and agonized toil. Anything less is deemed half-assed — or purely for a commercial audience. Atkinson acknowledges the stigma. “If a Jonathan Lethem produced something like The Fortress of Solitude every year and a half, I think he would be lauded a lot less,” she says.There is a bone deep compulsion to divide things up, it seems to me. Us/them, commercial/serious, genre/literary. Why do we do this? Would it have been possible to write this article and consider the issue of prolific writing without bringing in this largely artificial distinction? Because I think it's patently false that so-called literary authors are more disliked for being prolific than other authors are. If you look at the illustration at the beginning of the article, it's not John Updike they've got there, but Stephen King. People who get pissed off at authors who are prolific and successful at getting their stuff into print are just generally pissy, without genre boundries. It's got something to do with the cultural need to both deify and tear down people who are too obviously successful.
Today, let me tell you, I was prolific. I wrote more than 2,000 words. You may put this down to the fact that I don't write what you might consider serious fiction, and thus those 2,000 words must have come easily. Or you can put it down to the fact that my routine is paying off, at this moment. You may fling tomatoes, if you like, but be assured: this is a temporary thing, and will (sadly) pass.
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