A 3-Point Commentary on the Latest Short Fiction Kerfuffle [EDITED]

[snurri]

1. Writing is hard.

2. You get no points for doing your best.

3. Readers award no points for difficulty. (Suggested by Greg van Eekhout.)

Comments

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Wow . . . I can't quite tell if you're serious, but if you are, that's really interesting and I want you to elaborate.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I wasn't serious, but I wish I was. Then I could have a reason to be indignant about how badly I write and how little of it I sell.

It's an interesting idea in theory, but stories are mechanical at the level I was thinking. In the sense that, you can't apply the aesthetic principle of wabi sabi to something that must "go." If it doesn't go, it doesn't work, and it's aesthetic value is meaningless.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

True. I wonder, though, if you aren't onto something anyway. I often have things in my stories that I'm not sure I can entirely justify, but which just seem to belong, and a lot of the works I really enjoy do the same. The exemplar, to me, is the Mike Yanagita scene in "Fargo"; in a lot of ways it doesn't belong there, but it also kind of perfects the film.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting example and I'm going to have to think about this more now.