I recently had a ringside seat to an authorial meltdown that made me cringe on behalf of the meltees. Without me going into too much detail, a couple of writers basically said, “We don’t read other writers in our genre, because we don’t want to compromise our unique voice.” Going by blog and Twitter comments, these two barely edit before self-publishing – and it shows.
I’ve been messing around with writing for almost thirty years. The last time I heard myself utter something like this was probably back in 1995. In my limited experience, writers who say this don’t have a good grasp of their genre, its history, its current trends, or its future possibilities. They’re often so new to this writing thing that it feels fragile and precious, like it could blow away at any second. Or they’re so in love with it that any perceived impediment or criticism feels like a personal attack.
Back in 2007, in partial answer to the Great Laurell K. Hamilton Meltdown, blogger Jamie Hall wrote a very good description of what most of us know as ‘Golden Word Syndrome’:
“Nearly all writers (as in 99.99999999% of them) need editorial direction, and if you ever assume you don’t need it, you’re likely to suffer. Thinking that every word you write is perfect is called Golden Word Syndrome and it is a common affliction among beginning writers. When established writers develop Golden Word Syndrome as an after-effect of extreme fame, it tends to lower their reputation, alienates the publishing world and does not win them new fans.”
Hamilton, in the eyes of many fans, committed the ultimate sin of believing her own hype, and deciding that she would no longer take editorial direction. Her subsequent writing apparently suffered. (I don’t know, because I’ve never read any of her books.)
For a great, detailed, and long discussion on Golden Word Syndrome, check out this AbsoluteWrite thread on the subject.
So, what do ‘Golden Moments’ have to do with this? These have many definitions across media genres, but the one I’m using here applies specifically to people caught up in a perfect moment of creativity.
I’ve blogged before about how creativity is gloriously seductive. I lose more hours doing art and writing than I ever could watching videos, or even reading books. Nearly all of us creative types fall into a moment when the words or brushstrokes come so easily, it’s as if we’re just conduits. Spiritual people often believe this is the touch of the transcendent. I think it’s just our brains getting into the groove. I know many musicians who can vouch for the same feeling.
Trouble is, it’s not a one-time thing. It can be trained, enticed, brought into being with the right disciplines and motivations. To use a more sexual example: some of us are capable of having orgasms just by thinking about them, but most of us need a little more set-up and foreplay.
New writers and artists, once that glorious moment hits, are so desperate to keep it alive that they confuse the product for its action. “It feels so good to do this, so what I’ve created here must carry some of that perfection.”
Often, it doesn’t. Sadly, it takes some of us a lot longer to set the moment free, understand that the physical results may not be pristine from the start, and trust the moment to come back when we need it.
The defensive author, if unpublished or unsuccessful, can fall back on the claim ‘They just don’t understand me.’ The published (often self-published) successful author often meets criticism by answering, ‘Well, I made more money in a week than most of those literary writers make in a year, so there!’ Because they’ve crafted a product that meets a specific market niche, they don’t bother to polish their work more – it’s ‘good enough.’
Building a copious backlist is all-important for these writers, but it can lead to a desperate spiral in which they’re having to write more and more to keep up the pace of sales. Quality suffers. If those authors are attentive and objective, they address the problem by refining their work so it performs better in backlist. If not, they keep on writing ‘just good enough’ and more of it.
I hope that the meltdown writers I mentioned in the first paragraph slow down and refine their style, because they could be really good…once they get the golden words out of the way.
I can understand, perhaps, the avoidance of reading certain books if/when you’re actively writing a project. But to deliberately not read in your genre is to do a tremendous disservice to both yourself, and to other writers. Yes, we are the product of our environments, and absorb things without realizing…I guess in a strictly Cold War Spy sense that makes one “compromised”. Luckily, fiction writing tends to be a bit less life or death.
Agreed. Plus, if a writer doesn’t read ‘in-genre’, they may waste time reinventing the wheel, or thinking their take on something is new and revolutionary when it isn’t.