Katdish.net

image courtesy of photobucket.com

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve not been writing or reading any blog posts lately. There was a time I felt compelled to write and publish something at least twice a week. I still enjoy writing and reading blog posts and the blogging community that goes with it. I’ve just been preoccupied with a few projects which keep me from my own writing–which is completely okay with me. I’m probably one of the few bloggers who have no immediate aspirations of being published in book form. It’s not that I couldn’t write a book, but I know myself well enough to know that I’m too busy (Read: lazy) to write a good one–at least right now.

Even though I haven’t been reading blogs, I have been reading: books and books-to-be mostly. However, I do have a great app called Zite. It searches the interwebs for stories you might be interested in based upon your pre-selected topics of interest. I was skimming through the Writing section when I came across an article written by a blogger/writer who I’m already familiar with. I typically don’t read his stuff because it’s a blog by a writer writing about being a writer written for writers, and as I said in my last Why I hate writing post: katdish, dream crusher, that’s just a little too much navel gazing for me. But the subject matter caught my attention.

This writer is just sick to death of self-promotion.

He’s sick of his own self-promotion and if you’re sick of his self-promotion, well, he’s really sorry about that. He’s ready to turn over a new leaf. He’s going to generously help promote others, not himself.

Oh, and by the way. You should, too.

Because the sub-text of this article (in my sometimes jaded and cynical perspective) is not so much that he’s tired of his own self-promotion.

He’s mostly just tired of yours.

There are so many people shouting about themselves that all that noise drowns out the voices that deserve to be heard and heeded.

You know…like his.

You, wanna-be-desperate-to-catch-a-break-diaper-changing-working-two-jobs-struggling-writer? Stop with all this disdainful self-promotion. It’s annoying. Yes, his blog has over 100,000 readers and yours has 10 (including your immediately family), but really–enough already. Put aside your dream and help someone else achieve theirs. You’ll feel much better about yourself.

Okay, maybe not. You are a writer, after all.

Self-loathing sort of goes with the territory, am I right?

Never mind his advice.

Either he’s never really known the sting of countless rejection letters from agents and publishers because you don’t have a “sufficient platform” or…

in the words of Roland Deschain,

“He’s forgotten the face of his father.”

In a perfect world, writers could spend their time writing and leave the promotion to those who believe in their work and are happy to share it with as many people as possible.

Clearly this is not a perfect world.

So, as I said before, never mind his advice.

Cling to your dreams and do what you feel is necessary to share your work.

He’s not the boss of you.

I have a fondness for rabbits. While I’m not a big collector themed items, if you were to stroll around my house you would find a few bunnies here and there:

I remember having a brown rabbit as a child. It was actually my sister’s rabbit. She always had a penchant for slightly untraditional pets. It spent most of its life in a raised pen in the back yard. I never liked that; felt like it should be able to roam about freely. But our cocker spaniel who also occupied the back yard made that freedom unlikely. Unlikely, but not impossible. One day the rabbit escaped its cage. Our dog did what most dogs would do, she chased the rabbit. We found him lying dead in the yard, untouched and unmarked by the dog. It literally died of fright.

It wasn’t long after the rabbit’s death that I read Watership Down by Richard Adams. I had no idea what the book was about other than the main characters were rabbits. It’s true what they say about not judging a book by its cover. I was incorrect in my assumption that Watership Down was a childrens book:

From Wikipedia:

Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language (Lapine), proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel recounts the rabbits’ odyssey as they escape the destruction of their warren to seek a place in which to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.

The novel takes its name from the rabbits’ destination, Watership Down, a hill in the north of Hampshire, England, near the area where Adams grew up. The story is based on a collection of tales that Adams told to his young children to pass the time on trips to the countryside.
Published in 1972, Watership Down was Richard Adams’ first novel, and is by far his most successful to date.

There are some very violent passages within the pages of that book. I was probably too young to read it when I did, but also within the pages of this remarkable book I was able to follow along and imagine that our little brown bunny had escaped the dangers of suburbia and found a life of freedom. It also taught me that being small  does not prevent you from doing big things and that brawn and bravery are not necessarily synonymous.

It also began my life long love of reading fiction. No matter how difficult my real life was (my parents divorced not long after the rabbit died), I could always find safety and adventure inside the pages of a well crafted story.

Which is why I suppose my love of wabbits and writing are forever linked. It’s also why it’s important that writers heed Stephen King’s advice: “Do not come lightly to the blank page.” Your words can create wonderful worlds where your readers can escape their lives, if only for a time.

Your words matter. Maybe more than you’ll ever know.

One of many rabbits whose warren is under the tool shed of our yard. Living freely within the confines of my unfenced yard.

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
― Richard Adams, Fiver’s Dream

Here's another bunny taking advantage of the absence of my neighbor's dogs and enjoying the sweet grass growing in their pen.

You are not a great writer.

You may be a talented writer. You may a gifted writer. You may be a very good writer.

But trust me when I tell you, you are not a great writer.

And you probably never will be.

I think I’ve shared with you that I’m not a huge fan of writers writing about writing. Although I will readily admit that some people do it incredibly well and there is a wealth of helpful information for fellow writers, for me, it just seems counter intuitive for someone to spend large chunks of their time advising others about their craft rather than actually practicing it. Sort of reminds me of all those no money down real estate seminars they’re always hawking on late night television. If they’re so good at it, why are they wasting their time trying to sell you their secrets? Oh, it’s not that I think writers writing about writing are in any way dubious or trying to sell a bill of goods to unsuspecting wanna be writers, I just think we waste a whole lot of time waxing poetic (read: navel gazing) about writing rather than actually writing. There are obvious exceptions. Writers like King, Pressfield, White, Leonard and a few others have the gravitas and resumes to tell us what constitutes good writing because they’ve put in the hours. They are best selling, critically acclaimed authors, recognized, seasoned authorities in their field. They’ve done the work; bled on the page.

I read a post recently on a popular writing blog. The writer claimed that what sets the great writers apart from the good ones wasn’t skill or talent, but proper writing habits–a claim I vehemently disagree with. What separates great writing from good writing has EVERYTHING to do with skill and talent, and to suggest that all any person needs to be a great writer is proper habits belittles the craft.

Before I go any further, I will tell you that I don’t consider myself a great writer. I don’t even consider myself a good one. Heck, I barely rise to the level of mediocre except on my very best days, and even that’s a stretch, because I believe the word great when attributed to the craft of writing should be reserved for a very select group–a group I don’t even dare to aspire to be apart of.

I have no problem with someone claiming, for instance, that what sets a good sandwich apart from a great sandwich is fresh baked bread rather than store bought, because it’s just a sandwich, for crying out loud!

But if you were to ask me to provide a list of great writers, it would contain names like Hemingway, Poe, Tolstoy, O’Connor, Steinbeck, Dickens, Irving, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Dante, Homer…

So unless you can read Anna Karina and declare Tolstoy a hack, you could rewrite A Christmas Carol with a better ending, you could edit Dante’s nine levels of hell down to six and make them more compelling and terrifying, you are NOT a great writer, and by my definition, you never will be.

And before you accuse me of getting hung up on semantics, remind me that there are varying degrees of greatness and I’m being overly legalistic about the word “great”, consider the true greats that have blazed the trail before you, and remember that the proper use and placement of words is part of what good writing is all about in the first place.

So yes–always strive for greatness, but be humble enough to accept the fact you’ll probably never attain it. That’s okay, being a good writer is a noble and worthy aspiration not to be undertaken lightly.

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind or heart. You can come to the act with your fist clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I’m not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s not the moral Olympics, and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

~Stephen King, On Writing

Digital publishing has opened up opportunities for writers like never before.

In years past, literary agents and publishing houses were the guardians at the gate. A writer’s work was at their mercy. They decided whether a manuscript was worthy of being shared with the masses.

But all of that is changing. If you’ve got enough money, you can be a published writer. I’ve got mixed feelings about this. There are plenty of very talented writers who have now been given the opportunity to share their words with the world without having to pass the muster of an agent and a publisher willing to make investments in both time and money. And that’s a very good thing.

However, there are also many writers who perhaps publish before they are ready. Before their manuscripts are ready. And I wonder if they do their future work a disservice by offering a product that is substandard today.

Then there’s the matter of payment. Very few published authors make enough money at their craft to be able to write full time. To compound the problem, writing jobs such as weekly newspaper columns and short stories for magazines which used to garner writers payment for services rendered are now often written for free with the promise of “exposure to a wider audience”.

In the following video clip, Harlan Ellison has some very strong opinions about writers giving their work away. What do you think? Does working for free ever pay off, or do you think a writer should expect to get paid for his time and talent?

Warning: There is strong language in the following video which may be offensive.

Whenever someone asks me to review a book they’ve written, I approach the task with an equal mix of flattery and trepidation–flattered that my opinion of their work means something to them and wary that I won’t be able to write a glowing, positive AND honest review.

After receiving one book a year or so ago and realizing I couldn’t possibly in good conscious write a positive or even passing review, I made a personal decision that I would rather not write anything at all than write a bad review of something a person has devoted so much of their life to. (For the record, the author of this book is not anyone I’ve ever heard of or had any personal interaction with. It was sent to me by a well meaning publicist who probably assumed because I was a Christian I would give an automatic glowing review for a fellow Christian.)

When I received a request from Shawn Smucker to review his latest book, “Building a Life out of Words”, I was again flattered and wary. I’ve not read any of Shawn’s previous books, but based upon what I’ve read from him online, I know him to be a talented writer. But what gave me pause was the title of his book.

What I’m about to say will probably not win me any friends in the writing community, but here goes.

I’m not a big fan of writers writing about writing.

Unless they’re of the caliber of Stephen King, Steven Presswood or E. B. White, I consider (probably unfairly) whether they have the gravitas required to give advice about the craft of writing or a writer’s life. And yes, I know I’ve written several stories about writing, but I’m just a blogger. Furthermore, my writing posts are primarily from the viewpoint of the reader, not from that of someone who claims to be an expert in the field.

However, a few pages into Shawn’s book I realized that I had been wringing my hands for naught, because Building a Life out of Words succeeded in accomplishing one of the most important goals (for me, anyway) of compelling writing:

Show, don’t tell.

Shawn doesn’t tell you that you will fail and be rejected, he shows you his own failures and rejections with a raw honesty and humility that I rarely ever see in the written word.

He doesn’t tell you the importance of a supportive wife and family, he shows you how his wife Maile believed in what most spouses might consider a silly pipe dream with stories of sacrifice, loyalty, love and understanding that, even now as I think of them make me want to give that woman a giant hug.

But I don’t want to give the impressions that this book is just about the difficulties of life as a full time writer. Shawn also shares his victories–big and small–and reminds us that perseverance is every bit as important as passion, regardless of whether you aspire to write, paint, perform, run your own business or (insert dream job here).

Using first person narrative, personal journal entries and stories contributed by other writers and bloggers, Building a Life out of Words is less of a blueprint of how to write full time and more a reflective and encouraging handbook for anyone who feels like the life they long for is beyond their grasp.

The book is peppered with encouraging quotes from Shawn, all worthy of clipping and pasting onto your refrigerator, but it was his closing words that I found most encouraging:

This is what I hope for you. Not that you would be known as “that person who gave up their job to do what they loved to do.” As good as that sounds, and as exciting as that would be, that step is just the beginning of a wider, deeper, richer story.

I hope that you will be known as a person who lives. Really lives. Someone who makes decisions, not based on what’s expected, but on what’s possible. Someone who does things, not because everyone else is doing them, but because it’s what you want to do more than anything else in the world.

Now that would be a life worth living.

- Shawn Smucker

Got a dream life waiting?

I dare you to move.

Shawn Smucker is the author of several books, and is currently living out of a forty-five foot trailer, traveling the countryside with his wife Maile and their four children. You can catch up with his comings and going at ShaunSmucker.com

You can order Building a Life out of Words here.

“Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death hath no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.”

~J. Swartz

Harper Lee: The literary one hit wonder. A woman who wrote what many consider the greatest novel of the 20th century and then never published another book.

Pose the question, “Why do you write?” to ten writers and I would venture a guess that eight of them would respond with, “because I can’t not write.”

But writing and having people read what you write isn’t the same thing, is it?

Perhaps the more honest answer to that question would be, “I write to be read. I want people to read what I write and tell me I’ve done it well.”

“I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected.”
~Harper Lee, 1964

Ever since the enormous success of To Kill a Mockingbird, millions of people have collectively wondered why Harper Lee never published another book. It’s fairly well documented that Lee was writing a second novel, The Long Goodbye, when according to her agent at the time, “her pen froze”.

I’ve never given much thought to why Harper Lee never published another novel. I suspect she’s written more stories but has chosen not to share them. I have the utmost respect for her disinterest in future publication. There are currently two Harper Lee biographies available on Amazon, neither of them written with the cooperation of Lee or authorized by her.

*In a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Lee’s close friend Rev. Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said that Lee is in an assisted-living facility, wheelchair bound, partially blind and deaf, and suffering from memory loss. Butts also said that Lee told him why she never wrote again:

“Two reasons: one, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.”

Ah, to show that kind of restraint in a world that is constantly telling us what we have attained is never enough. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those rare books which has attained literary immortality. Its author’s recognition of this fact and her acknowledgment of that being enough puts her in the same category.

There is a skill and giftedness involved in saying what needs to be said in just the right way.

But perhaps what’s too often overlooked is the ability to know when you’ve said enough.

Why do you write?

*Source: Wikipedia.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

A subtle state of melancholy comes over me as I sense things must soon come to an end.

That spark of excitement which comes with new relationships has deepened into something more; something that while in the throws of the excitement of adventure I temporarily lost myself in.

And while I’m just enough of a romantic to believe that not all good things must come to an end,

I’m enough of a realist to know that most good things do.

While I was at once rushing through with break-neck speed, impatient and excited to know what would happen next,

I’ve slowed down now.

Savoring each moment.

Wanting to glean the depth of everything.

Of what it all means.

For me.

For you.

And as the adventure draws to a close, there is regret.

But there is also gratitude.

For a story well told…

~THE END~

I close the book.

And look forward to the next adventure somewhere in the stack of books on my nightstand.

****

That’s what good writing does…

Read any good books lately?

Church Lady image courtesy of photobucket.com

“I want to be a Puritan,” my son says.

These are the first words uttered to me when I pick him up from football practice. He’s never been one to ease into a conversation and has a tendency to make extreme, declarative statements as a reaction to something that has upset him or made him uncomfortable. My mind quickly reviews our previous conversations for the week and I remember him suggesting that I not attend his pep rally. “Mom, there is a whole lot of cussing at my school, and I know you don’t want to hear that.” I assured him at the time that none of those kids were going to say anything I haven’t already heard, but him wanting to shield me from it was still admirable.

But back to the Puritan statement.

Me: Why do you want to be a Puritan.

Son: Because they lived good lives. They didn’t cuss or do bad things.

Me: Okay, well you do realize that if you become a Puritan you will have to give up the use of your computer, television viewing, your video games, many of the songs on your iPod as well as many books you may want to read.

Son: I think that’s a small price to pay to live a sinless life.

Me: There’s no such thing as a sinless life. Everyone sins, either through action or thought. Jesus was the only human who lived a sinless life, and He’s God.

Son: Okay, well. Then a life with less sin. I think that would make me happy. Did you know that children who talked back to their parents were subjected to public beatings?

Me: Are you suggesting that I beat you publicly? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live a life free of sin, as long as you understand that you never really will. Besides, if you go around constantly trying to do right, think right and be right, how do you fit grace into that picture? Grace for yourself as well as grace for others?

He was relatively quiet for the rest of the ride home. I’ve considered sending my kids to private Christian schools in an attempt to shield them from the worldliness of public education, and the transition from elementary to junior high has exposed my son to many things I’d just as soon he not have to deal with. But you can’t live life in a Christian bubble. If you’re going to be salt and light, you have to understand that there is much darkness out there, even at the tender age of 14. I’m praying he makes the right choices because he knows better, but I’m relying on grace and mercy because I understand that knowing better does not always equate to being better. Besides, how can you ever truly understand the gift of grace if you’ve never fallen from it?

Which brings me to Reason 11 why I hate writing…

More specifically, the genre of Christian writing and who defines what that means. For me, any decent work of inspirational fiction will contain at least four key elements: Sacrifice, Trust, Hope and Redemption. But the characters and the narrative have to be real in order to be believable.

There is a large contingent represented in the world of Christian publishing who believe that any book which contains profanity, sexual immorality or perverse behavior of any kind is not worthy of the classification of Christian genre. I refer to them as the Blue Hair Mafia, and I’m not the first one to use this descriptive. They want assurances that anything they read will not offend their delicate Christian sensibilities. They want to live inside their safe, Christian bubble and not have to confront the harsh realities of a fallen world when they open up a book. No, they want to escape to a white-washed fantasy world where people say “shoot” instead of “shit”, where unbelieving husbands become believers because their loving wives prayed them back from the pits of hell, where children are tempted by drugs and alcohol but their faith protects them from ever indulging in such sinful behavior and where Jesus snatches them up before any real damage can be done. Who am I to say whether or not they should read nice, safe, Christian stories if that’s what they want to do?

I only wish they would afford others the luxury of writing books which might actually plant a seed of belief in a person who is either without faith or clinging to their faith by a thread. Someone who, by Blue Hair Mafia standards, is living a life of debauchery, a life so far away from Jesus they feel like He could never take them back. How is a book full of white-washed reality going to relate to them?

I’ll tell you how.

It’s not.

What it will do if they manage to get through the book in the first place is convince them they could never be worthy of grace because they are so much worse than any of the characters in the book. Which is pretty much the opposite of what an author who calls herself a Christian should be writing if she claims she want to draw others to Christ through her writing.

In a now somewhat famous sermon from a few years ago, American Christian preacher Tony Campolo summed up my frustration with the mentality which permeates our churches and all forms of “Christian” entertainment when he addressed a congregation with the following introduction:

“I have three things I’d like to say today.
First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.
Second, most of you don’t give a shit.
What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

So what do you think? Am I completely off base with this? Do you think profanity should never be used in Christian books?

It’s week three of The Best of Billy Coffey! If you’re new here, in Week 1, I shared a snippet of Billy’s second novel Paper Angels along with a few ways you can enter to win a copy of Paper Angels, Week 2 was Billy’s Come to Jesus Moment. As promised, I’m still choosing a winner each week. You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Paper Angels. If you’re not big into contests, I still encourage you to head over to Amazon or another online retailer and pre-order a copy. I know once you read it you will recommend it to a friends and family, and word of mouth advertising is the very best kind.

The winner of Week Two is Annie McMahon. Congrats, Annie! I’ll post next week’s winner next Monday.

And now, another one of my favorites. Billy shares some great writing advice in his unique Coffey-esque style:

Writing Naked

image courtesy of photobucket.com

I took exactly one class in writing. It was about fifteen years ago at the community college and was taught by a real published author whose name I cannot recall. But she was published, and as far as I was concerned that was all the credentials she needed.

The first class turned out to be the most useful. That’s not to say the instruction given in the proceeding eleven weeks of the course wasn’t useful. It was. But that first night alone was worth the money.

The twenty or so people in the class formed a semi-circle around the professor, who stood in behind a wooden podium that was much more intimidating than she. We sat at attention, notebooks ready, eager to have our heads filled with the hidden secrets of literary success.

“Tell me,” she said, “what does one need to write?”

The more outgoing among the class were quick with suggestions:

“Time.”

“Perseverance.”

“Skill.”

“Connections.” (That one was met with a nervous chuckle from the rest of the class.)

“Practice.”

Each was met with an approving nod and so was written down by everyone, myself included. But that really wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“Those are good suggestions,” she said, “but you’re leaving the most important aspect out. Anyone?”

No one.

“Courage,” she said.

I didn’t really understand that and snickered under my breath. Courage? Soldiers needed courage. Cops needed courage. EMTs and stunt men and bullfighters. But writers? Sitting on your butt and typing on a keyboard did not take courage.

“There are some who might disagree with that,” she said—and to this day I swear she looked at me when she said it—“and I understand. You disagree because you’re writing with your clothes on. By the time you leave here, you’ll be writing naked.”

I’ll admit I almost walked out then. I’d heard about kooky writing classes given by kooky professors who did some pretty strange things in the name of “art.” I was afraid if I stuck around I’d end up dressed in a blue tracksuit with a cup of Kool-Aid in my hand because a comet was passing by to take me to heaven.

I stayed in my seat on the whim she was speaking metaphorically.

“There is no greater fear than to face a blank page,” she said. “It mocks and threatens. It challenges you. Give it power, and it will eat you alive. Face it clothed, and you will fail. The only way to beat the blank page is to attack it naked.”

Twelve of the twenty students raised their hands.

“Wait, wait,” she said, moving her hands in a downward motion. “No, I’m not speaking literally. But I’m not joking, either. Let me ask you something else. Why do people write?”

More hands in the air, which she chose to ignore.

“People write because they must. Because there is a story inside them that is meant to be shared with the world. But having that story inside you doesn’t make you a writer. How you tell that story does. And you tell it through honesty.”

She told us to put our pens down and just listen.

“Writers fail because they come to the page fully clothed. They adorn themselves with fanciful plots and layer themselves with complicated character development. They use flowery prose and words you have to look up in the dictionary. They do this not to impress their readers, but to keep their readers at arm’s length. They’re afraid. Afraid to bare their souls and inject themselves into their work. For that they are cowards.

“Don’t simply tell me that faith saves you, tell me how it almost failed you, too. Don’t tell me about love, speak of your passion. Don’t tell me you’re hurt, let me see your heart breaking. I don’t want to see your talent on the page, I want to see your blood. Dare to be naked before your readers. Because that is writing, and everything else is worthless crap.”

I’ll always remember that. In fact, written on an index card taped to my lamp are these two words—Be Naked. Because she was right, that’s what writing is all about. Fiction or non, poetry or devotional, funny or serious, it doesn’t matter. Our calling is still the same:

To bare ourselves so we may be the mirror the world holds to itself.

If you’ve read this blog for very long, you know that I prefer Twitter to Facebook. Having said that, I will also say I’ve found some great links and conversations on Facebook which don’t lend themselves to the 140 character limitation on Twitter. Such was the case last Saturday when I found the following quote via Sarah Reck’s Facebook status update:

Found this quote online today. It’s attributed to Stephen King but I haven’t found a source.

“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”

Like Sarah, I was unable to find the original source of this quote, but I have found a couple of articles where King has been openly critical of Meyer’s Twilight series, including an interview published in USA Weekend in February, 2009:

“…when (Richard) Matheson started to write about ordinary people and stuff, that was something that I wanted to do. I said, ‘This is the way to do it. He’s showing the way.’ I think that I serve that purpose for some writers, and that’s a good thing. Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Mr. King’s criticism isn’t just directed at Meyer, however. He goes on to say:

“Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies. James Patterson is a terrible writer but he’s very very successful. People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.”

I’ll admit I was caught up in the Twilight series when it first came out. Meyer is certainly no Steinbeck, or Rowling for that matter, but I did get caught up in the story. About halfway through the second book however, the story wasn’t enough. I finished the second book and began reading the third but didn’t finish it. Life’s too short to read bad books. I realize what constitutes a good or bad book is subjective, and what compels one reader to keep reading is different from another. I tend to relate to characters in the stories. I found Bella so completely annoying and self-absorbed that I no longer cared what happened to her. I don’t necessarily have to like the main character, but indifference is a real buzz kill for me. I don’t begrudge the millions of readers who loved the Twilight series and cudos to Stephanie Meyer for the incredible success of those books. I’ll save my true book snobbery for autobiographies written by celebrities and quasi-celebrities writing about themselves via a large pool of ghost writers trying to make a living. And I certainly don’t begrudge ghost writers trying to make a living.

What I’m wondering is if you think Stephen King serves the writing community by being openly critical of other writers. King has been the recipient of some of the same kind scathing criticism of his own work, and while I think he’s an incredible writer–probably the best of his generation–he’s written a few dogs himself. My personal opinion is that King’s criticism is less about professional jealousy (as some have suggested) and more about his love of the craft. He takes bad writing personally because he’s done the work, bled on the page and sacrificed so much for the love of the story.

And hey, he’s Stephen King…

What do you think about writers being openly critical of other writers? (I know they’re privately critical of them, because I know how you are, writers.)

What writers have inspired you? (Besides me. Snort!)