21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Level

I am reposting this from the indispensable The Review Review, but I encourage you to go to the Source for more wonderful advice on writing: 21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Levels | The Review Review

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21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Levels

By Robin Black

Offered in the hope of sparing others some of the bumps and bad moments I have experienced over the past thirteen years. . . 

1. Publication doesn’t make you a writer. Publication makes you a published writer. Writing makes you a writer.

2. Your “writer friends” are suddenly going to seem a lot more interesting, understanding, sympatico, and just plain fun than the friends (and sometimes family) you had before you threw yourself into this pursuit. I mean, they get you! But be gentle with the ones who were there all along – and remember the support they’ve given you, and the care, and try not to hurt their feelings by making it clear how much more compelling the ones who “speak writer” now seem. (And may not always seem. . . )

3. The best you can do is the best you can do. There’s a fine line between learning from other authors, and trying to be them. Be yourself. There are more than enough different types of readers out there for us all. I can’t tell you how much time I have wasted wishing my work were more “hip”  and “edgier.” And every single moment was indeed a waste of time. I didn’t even like much of the writing I wanted to emulate. I just liked the attention heaped on the people who wrote it. Write the book you’d most like to read – not the one you think will win over the editor du jour.

4. Not everyone will love your work. Not everyone will like your work. Some people will hate your work. Don’t put energy into pursuing the fantasy of universal adoration. It has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with guaranteeing that you’ll never be satisfied.

5. Don’t expect yourself not to be jealous; but don’t let yourself act on it. Be jealous and be generous. Be jealous and feel generous.

6. You will make mistakes. You will seem too pushy. You will seem falsely humble. You will forget someone in your acknowledgements. You will rush publication on something not ready to go. You will say things to your editor you wish you hadn’t. You’ll accept edits you shouldn’t accept. You’ll give a friend unhelpful advice on a draft. You’ll forget to read a draft you promised you’d read. You’ll ask for one favor too many.Don’t expect perfection of yourself. Do your best. Feel bad when you screw up, apologize if necessary, and don’t let it make you hate yourself. A lot of writers seem awfully prone to self-hatred. Try to cut yourself some slack.

7. But be vigilant about being a jerk. We all make mistakes – but it’s also frighteningly easy to become a taker, a user, a self-absorbed neurotic wreck, and not even know that’s what you’ve become. Don’t be too hard on yourself, but don’t assume you haven’t fallen into bad-colleague practices either.

8. Many writers live in bubbles. It could be family. It could be editors, friends, an admiring workshop. Your bubble loves you and loves your work. Your bubble may give you inflated ideas about the impact your work is going to have on the universe. Before you step into the great big world, try to remember that the world may not receive your work the way your bubble has. Try not let yourself be set up for a huge disappointment. It’s such a privilege to have readers at all – don’t undermine the joy of that privilege by setting your sights so high you forget to feel grateful.

9. Speaking of which, know what counts as success for you. If it’s the NYT Bestseller List, then know that. If it’s the grudging respect of a former lover, own it. If it’s critical acclaim and not so much about sales, try to remember that fact. There are cultural templates of ambition – prizes, lists etc – that the world will tell you count as success. But don’t fall for believing that they’re necessarily what you want. Only a very few writers get those things, so if that’s all that counts as success for you, you’re just setting yourself up to fail.

10. If you have kids, don’t insist that your career be the center of their lives. It’s more than enough if they’re engaged and happy when good things happen for you. It’s not their job to see your artistic life as the center of their home. They may even push back a little bit. Kids are smart. They know what’s competing with them for your attention and they aren’t always going to welcome their rivals. Nor should they. I grew up in a home where a parent’s career (my father’s) was in many ways the emotional center of the household; and trust me it’s a lousy way to grow up.

11. If you have success of any kind, don’t believe your own hype. Maintain a little skepticism about your own “victory.” The most inspiring authors to me are those who respect their own work, and are even proud of it, but don’t give off an air of entitlement, don’t act like they’ve been owed that seven figure book deal since birth.

12. Network only as much as you can bear. Don’t obsess about your followers or your platform. Time spent on platform cultivation is almost always time better spent writing. If you enjoy Twitter that’s one thing, but if you don’t, then skip it. As much as publishers say they love authors with platforms, no extraordinary book has ever been rejected because of a lack of a Twitter following. And if you’re doing it to sell books? People would love to think Twitter sells books, because then we’d all know something that sells books; but the internet is littered with people who made splashy online names for themselves and then had sales numbers that still keep them up nights wondering what the hell went wrong.

13. Don’t suck up to famous writers so they’ll blurb your book – the one you wrote that’s soon to be published or the one you’re sure you will write one of these days. I didn’t ever do that; but then at a certain point (big confession) I kind of wished I had. And now I’m very glad I never did. It’s just icky. Plus, they know you’re doing it.

14. It isn’t in the power of an editor (agent, etc.) to tell you whether or not you’re a writer. It’s that person’s job only to tell you if they want to work with you and your manuscript. Don’t view rejections as the final word on your worth – or even on the worth of the pages that were returned. You are the only person who gets to decide if you’re a writer or not.

15. Before you decide that someone will reject your work, give them the opportunity to do so. You might well be shocked by who falls madly in love with what you wrote.

16. If your Goodreads, Amazon etc. review of a friend’s book is going to lower their average, don’t review the book. Your integrity as a literary community member does not require you to make things harder for your friends. And if you loved the book, consider taking the two minutes it takes to tell the world.

17. There are only so many manuscripts you can read for free before you begin to resent the people who are emailing them to you. Try not to get in the habit of doing “favors” that tick you off. Find a way, when it’s appropriate, to make a reading fee clear – or just say you don’t have time. It’s not doing anyone a favor to read a draft with steam coming out of your ears. When you offer to read a manuscript, do it because you want to be a help to a friend, or because the project interests you, and not because you haven’t learned how to say “no.”

18. Annnd. . . don’t ask people to read and comment on your work for free – unless you gave them a kidney once (or read their book for them). But if they offer, don’t hesitate to accept. Take them at their word, and offer to reciprocate if that’s ever a help to them.

19. You cannot write the pages you love without writing the pages you hate. Nothing that you write is pointless, useless, or unnecessary. The product requires the process. The good days may be more enjoyable, but the tough ones are the ones they’re built upon.

20. Don’t believe there are rules. There is only advice. There is only opinion. There are only my experiences and yours and yours and yours. . .

21. Make your skin as thick as you are able to, for your career. Keep it as thin as you can tolerate, for your art.

Robin Black’s new novel LIFE DRAWING is forthcoming from Random House, July, 2014, and Picador UK, April 2014. It has been called “a magnificent literary achievement,” by Karen Russell, and “a riveting story about the corrosive effects of betrayal,” by Alice Sebold. Her story collection IF I LOVED YOU, I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, was published by Random House in 2010 to international acclaim by publications such as O. Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Irish Times and more. Robin lives in the Philadelphia area with her family. Her website is www.RobinBlack.net. This article appeared previously onBeyond the Margins.

21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Levels | The Review Review

I am reposting this from the indispensable The Review Review, but I encourage you to go to the Source for more wonderful advice on writing: 21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Levels | The Review Review

 

Print
Email
21 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Writing: Must-Read Advice for Writers at All Levels

By Robin Black

Offered in the hope of sparing others some of the bumps and bad moments I have experienced over the past thirteen years. . . 

 

1. Publication doesn’t make you a writer. Publication makes you a published writer. Writing makes you a writer.

2. Your “writer friends” are suddenly going to seem a lot more interesting, understanding, sympatico, and just plain fun than the friends (and sometimes family) you had before you threw yourself into this pursuit. I mean, they get you! But be gentle with the ones who were there all along – and remember the support they’ve given you, and the care, and try not to hurt their feelings by making it clear how much more compelling the ones who “speak writer” now seem. (And may not always seem. . . )

3. The best you can do is the best you can do. There’s a fine line between learning from other authors, and trying to be them. Be yourself. There are more than enough different types of readers out there for us all. I can’t tell you how much time I have wasted wishing my work were more “hip”  and “edgier.” And every single moment was indeed a waste of time. I didn’t even like much of the writing I wanted to emulate. I just liked the attention heaped on the people who wrote it. Write the book you’d most like to read – not the one you think will win over the editor du jour.

4. Not everyone will love your work. Not everyone will like your work. Some people will hate your work. Don’t put energy into pursuing the fantasy of universal adoration. It has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with guaranteeing that you’ll never be satisfied.

5. Don’t expect yourself not to be jealous; but don’t let yourself act on it. Be jealous and be generous. Be jealous and feel generous.

6. You will make mistakes. You will seem too pushy. You will seem falsely humble. You will forget someone in your acknowledgements. You will rush publication on something not ready to go. You will say things to your editor you wish you hadn’t. You’ll accept edits you shouldn’t accept. You’ll give a friend unhelpful advice on a draft. You’ll forget to read a draft you promised you’d read. You’ll ask for one favor too many.Don’t expect perfection of yourself. Do your best. Feel bad when you screw up, apologize if necessary, and don’t let it make you hate yourself. A lot of writers seem awfully prone to self-hatred. Try to cut yourself some slack.

7. But be vigilant about being a jerk. We all make mistakes – but it’s also frighteningly easy to become a taker, a user, a self-absorbed neurotic wreck, and not even know that’s what you’ve become. Don’t be too hard on yourself, but don’t assume you haven’t fallen into bad-colleague practices either.

8. Many writers live in bubbles. It could be family. It could be editors, friends, an admiring workshop. Your bubble loves you and loves your work. Your bubble may give you inflated ideas about the impact your work is going to have on the universe. Before you step into the great big world, try to remember that the world may not receive your work the way your bubble has. Try not let yourself be set up for a huge disappointment. It’s such a privilege to have readers at all – don’t undermine the joy of that privilege by setting your sights so high you forget to feel grateful.

9. Speaking of which, know what counts as success for you. If it’s the NYT Bestseller List, then know that. If it’s the grudging respect of a former lover, own it. If it’s critical acclaim and not so much about sales, try to remember that fact. There are cultural templates of ambition – prizes, lists etc – that the world will tell you count as success. But don’t fall for believing that they’re necessarily what you want. Only a very few writers get those things, so if that’s all that counts as success for you, you’re just setting yourself up to fail.

10. If you have kids, don’t insist that your career be the center of their lives. It’s more than enough if they’re engaged and happy when good things happen for you. It’s not their job to see your artistic life as the center of their home. They may even push back a little bit. Kids are smart. They know what’s competing with them for your attention and they aren’t always going to welcome their rivals. Nor should they. I grew up in a home where a parent’s career (my father’s) was in many ways the emotional center of the household; and trust me it’s a lousy way to grow up.

11. If you have success of any kind, don’t believe your own hype. Maintain a little skepticism about your own “victory.” The most inspiring authors to me are those who respect their own work, and are even proud of it, but don’t give off an air of entitlement, don’t act like they’ve been owed that seven figure book deal since birth.

12. Network only as much as you can bear. Don’t obsess about your followers or your platform. Time spent on platform cultivation is almost always time better spent writing. If you enjoy Twitter that’s one thing, but if you don’t, then skip it. As much as publishers say they love authors with platforms, no extraordinary book has ever been rejected because of a lack of a Twitter following. And if you’re doing it to sell books? People would love to think Twitter sells books, because then we’d all know something that sells books; but the internet is littered with people who made splashy online names for themselves and then had sales numbers that still keep them up nights wondering what the hell went wrong.

13. Don’t suck up to famous writers so they’ll blurb your book – the one you wrote that’s soon to be published or the one you’re sure you will write one of these days. I didn’t ever do that; but then at a certain point (big confession) I kind of wished I had. And now I’m very glad I never did. It’s just icky. Plus, they know you’re doing it.

14. It isn’t in the power of an editor (agent, etc.) to tell you whether or not you’re a writer. It’s that person’s job only to tell you if they want to work with you and your manuscript. Don’t view rejections as the final word on your worth – or even on the worth of the pages that were returned. You are the only person who gets to decide if you’re a writer or not.

15. Before you decide that someone will reject your work, give them the opportunity to do so. You might well be shocked by who falls madly in love with what you wrote.

16. If your Goodreads, Amazon etc. review of a friend’s book is going to lower their average, don’t review the book. Your integrity as a literary community member does not require you to make things harder for your friends. And if you loved the book, consider taking the two minutes it takes to tell the world.

17. There are only so many manuscripts you can read for free before you begin to resent the people who are emailing them to you. Try not to get in the habit of doing “favors” that tick you off. Find a way, when it’s appropriate, to make a reading fee clear – or just say you don’t have time. It’s not doing anyone a favor to read a draft with steam coming out of your ears. When you offer to read a manuscript, do it because you want to be a help to a friend, or because the project interests you, and not because you haven’t learned how to say “no.”

18. Annnd. . . don’t ask people to read and comment on your work for free – unless you gave them a kidney once (or read their book for them). But if they offer, don’t hesitate to accept. Take them at their word, and offer to reciprocate if that’s ever a help to them.

19. You cannot write the pages you love without writing the pages you hate. Nothing that you write is pointless, useless, or unnecessary. The product requires the process. The good days may be more enjoyable, but the tough ones are the ones they’re built upon.

20. Don’t believe there are rules. There is only advice. There is only opinion. There are only my experiences and yours and yours and yours. . .

21. Make your skin as thick as you are able to, for your career. Keep it as thin as you can tolerate, for your art.

 

Robin Black’s new novel LIFE DRAWING is forthcoming from Random House, July, 2014, and Picador UK, April 2014. It has been called “a magnificent literary achievement,” by Karen Russell, and “a riveting story about the corrosive effects of betrayal,” by Alice Sebold. Her story collection IF I LOVED YOU, I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, was published by Random House in 2010 to international acclaim by publications such as O. Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Irish Times and more. Robin lives in the Philadelphia area with her family. Her website is www.RobinBlack.net. This article appeared previously onBeyond the Margins.

Don’t Let Anybody Tell You No: MK Asante on rejection, hip hop, and writers who are better tha

If you are one of the lucky, then you were able to attend the  meet and greet today at the Library at Georgia Southern, where bestselling writer, film maker and hip hop artist MK Asante quickly turned the event into a hall of wisdom for aspiring writers and music artists.  If you weren’t, here are some nuggets of wisdom:

On Rejection: When one of the participants proposed that being a writer is an exercise in rejection, Asante said, right off, that he wiped all rejections out of his mind.  He would not expand any energies towards that.  “The only time I remember who rejected me is when I’m successful.  Then I’m like… I know who you are.”  You get a feeling listening to him talk that you wouldn’t want to be on the other end of that pointing finger.  MK Asante then went on to give us two examples of why rejections are a waste of time:

  1. When he was 14 years old in the streets of Philadelphia, one of the things he had to do if he wanted a social life was having to walk up to young ladies he’d never met before and try to talk to them and see what happened.  “Some of them wouldn’t even acknowledge your space,” he said. So he moved on to the next one, or the one after that, “and maybe then it works out.” He also reminded us not to take it personally.  “Maybe that girl had a boyfriend, or she was interested in girls. You don’t know.”
  2. When one of his friends applied to film school and got rejected, upon receiving the standard rejection letter, he showed it to Asante and said, “This is only the beginning.”  Thinking this was time for a “move on and forget it” speech, Asante went along with it and told his friend he didn’t need to go to film school, film school is not the only path, etc.  Well, his friend shook his head no.  “You don’t understand. This is just the beginning of the negotiations.”  The next day, the friend sent an email to the Dean of the school, telling him that he really felt like he belonged at that program, etc.  The Dean responded, not in so many words, you and 1,000 other people who get rejected, buddy. Still the friend persevered. To make a long story short, by the end of the next month, the friend had turned a rejection into an acceptance.

Summary: “If you want something bad enough, you will get it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

On writing, music, and the Beat generation

If you’ve read Asante’s work, you will notice it has a rhythm to it not unlike hip hop.  It is not an accident that the soundtrack of his book, BUCK features such greats as Stevie Wonder, King Mez, Mike Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Talib Kweli.  When asked if music influenced his writing, Asante confessed his love for the Beat generation of poets and writers who freestyled their work inspired by African American jazz musicians: Kerouak, Burroughs, Corso, Ferlenghetti, Ginsberg were the big names and they were inspired by jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Bird, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis.  “These poets were good,” said Asante, “but when I listened to black poets inspired by jazz, they were great.” Among the favorites, coming up a few times during these conversations is Amiri Baraka.  Now hip hop is inspiring a new generation of writers, and hip hop is about to undergo what Asante calls a resurrection.

Here is a link to a SoundCloud streaming of Asante’s Buck soundtrack.

On writers who are better than you.

When a student asked Asante what someone should do when confronted with a writer or artist who is much better then you.

“I ask questions,” said Asante without missing a beat.  “The best way to deal with people who are better than you is to ask them questions.”  Ask them how they do or did the thing that you want to do.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  Asante reminded us again and again of the generosity of his own mentors, people like Maya Angelou who certainly had more things to do then to help a young graduate student with his film, yet as these people put time aside for him, so does Asante feel like has to put time aside for the next generation of aspiring writers.

We certainly feel that Asante has been extremely generous to students at Georgia Southern with his many tidbits of wisdom and his time.

If you haven’t had a chance to meet him yet, there is still time.

His reading and performance will be on Thursday October 15 at 7pm in the College of Education auditorium 1115

#BUCK #Beatpoets #LauraValeri #MKAsante #Writingtomusic

Don’t Let Anybody Tell You No: MK Asante on rejection, hip hop, and writers who are better than you.

Asante Workshop PictureIf you are one of the lucky, then you were able to attend the  meet and greet today at the Library at Georgia Southern, where bestselling writer, film maker and hip hop artist MK Asante quickly turned the event into a hall of wisdom for aspiring writers and music artists.  If you weren’t, here are some nuggets of wisdom:

On Rejection: When one of the participants proposed that being a writer is an exercise in rejection, Asante said, right off, that he wiped all rejections out of his mind.  He would not expand any energies towards that.  “The only time I remember who rejected me is when I’m successful.  Then I’m like… I know who you are.”  You get a feeling listening to him talk that you wouldn’t want to be on the other end of that pointing finger.  MK Asante then went on to give us two examples of why rejections are a waste of time:

  1. When he was 14 years old in the streets of Philadelphia, one of the things he had to do if he wanted a social life was having to walk up to young ladies he’d never met before and try to talk to them and see what happened.  “Some of them wouldn’t even acknowledge your space,” he said. So he moved on to the next one, or the one after that, “and maybe then it works out.” He also reminded us not to take it personally.  “Maybe that girl had a boyfriend, or she was interested in girls. You don’t know.”
  2. When one of his friends applied to film school and got rejected, upon receiving the standard rejection letter, he showed it to Asante and said, “This is only the beginning.”  Thinking this was time for a “move on and forget it” speech, Asante went along with it and told his friend he didn’t need to go to film school, film school is not the only path, etc.  Well, his friend shook his head no.  “You don’t understand. This is just the beginning of the negotiations.”  The next day, the friend sent an email to the Dean of the school, telling him that he really felt like he belonged at that program, etc.  The Dean responded, not in so many words, you and 1,000 other people who get rejected, buddy. Still the friend persevered. To make a long story short, by the end of the next month, the friend had turned a rejection into an acceptance.

Summary: “If you want something bad enough, you will get it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

On writing, music, and the Beat generation

If you’ve read Asante’s work, you will notice it has a rhythm to it not unlike hip hop.  It is not an accident that the soundtrack of his book, BUCK features such greats as Stevie Wonder, King Mez, Mike Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Talib Kweli.  When asked if music influenced his writing, Asante confessed his love for the Beat generation of poets and writers who freestyled their work inspired by African American jazz musicians: Kerouak, Burroughs, Corso, Ferlenghetti, Ginsberg were the big names and they were inspired by jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Bird, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis.  “These poets were good,” said Asante, “but when I listened to black poets inspired by jazz, they were great.” Among the favorites, coming up a few times during these conversations is Amiri Baraka.  Now hip hop is inspiring a new generation of writers, and hip hop is about to undergo what Asante calls a resurrection.

Here is a link to a SoundCloud streaming of Asante’s Buck soundtrack.buck-white

On writers who are better than you.

When a student asked Asante what someone should do when confronted with a writer or artist who is much better then you.

“I ask questions,” said Asante without missing a beat.  “The best way to deal with people who are better than you is to ask them questions.”  Ask them how they do or did the thing that you want to do.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  Asante reminded us again and again of the generosity of his own mentors, people like Maya Angelou who certainly had more things to do then to help a young graduate student with his film, yet as these people put time aside for him, so does Asante feel like has to put time aside for the next generation of aspiring writers.

We certainly feel that Asante has been extremely generous to students at Georgia Southern with his many tidbits of wisdom and his time.

If you haven’t had a chance to meet him yet, there is still time.

His reading and performance will be on Thursday October 15 at 7pm in the College of Education auditorium 1115

Let’s Define Literary Fiction, Shall We?

“I looked for stories with narrative ambition, complex characters, and imaginative use of language, the familiar staples of good storytelling. I prefer, on the whole, stories that present readers with situations requiring resolution, inviting moral choice, finding ambiguity in life experiences we are tempted to simplify…. [Stories that] explore classic themes embedded in unexpected or topical contexts. They involve characters who must choose between integrity of the heart and integrity of conscience. The stakes for the protagonist in each story are substantial, and the most honorable outcomes aren’t always the most welcome.” C. Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor for The AtlanticFrom The Atlantic “Fiction Matters” Blog, 2009 Issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/08/fiction-matters/307570/

A lot of times I find myself at readings or at conferences where the writers feel the necessity to excuse themselves either for writing genre-fiction or else for thinking of some of those so-called genre novels as literary.  Sometimes, these writers are defiant and angry. They want to defend (and rightly so!) the challenge and scope and beauty of their work, and resent having to contend with the stereotype that goes along with a label like “historical romance” or “cozy mystery.”  I have friends who write in this genre and they are brilliant, maybe far more brilliant than some of my other friends who only write literary.

First, sort of out of context, here is a factoid for you:

Ezra Pound loved mystery novels and tried his hand at writing them a couple of times.  Because I know of no famed Ezra Pound mystery novel, I assume that he must have failed at the task.  He was much better at poetry, I guess.

Second, and this is important:  It seems to me that people either have forgotten or never understood that literary fiction IS a genre.  Probably, the reason why they don’t consider it a genre is because that genre is so damned hard to define!  And for good reasons. One of the most distinguishing marks of literary fiction is that it defies labeling and defies plot.  So, since most genres today are labeled according to the type of plot, it is natural that literary fiction is the “that other stuff” cover all category.  You can’t even say that it’s “that stuff that doesn’t have magic, vampires, ghosts and zombies” because unfortunately  or fortunately there is a lot of literary fiction, really good literary fiction, that is littered with all those pesky supernatural creatures and events.

Then, it seems to me that people misuse the word “literary” as a synonym for pretty writing.  Here, too, I think the misunderstanding stems from the fact that people just don’t understand what makes this genre a genre.  Do you know that there are many, many works of literary fiction that purposely, deliberately butcher language, use it either in pathetically minimalist and simplistic ways, or else cut it up and throw it around in the guise of different forms, (for instance, a telephone interview, or else part of a script for a play — see Moby Dick for examples), or else go on and on and on and on for pages and pages, sustaining the sentence on commas, semi-colons, colons, dashes, ellipses…. ?No. Literary does NOT mean pretty prose.

Also, by some snobs, literary fiction is used as a synonym for “good fiction.”  No wonder the genre writers get defensive.  You will all have heard, “sure she published three books, but they were genre, not literary.”  Well, mmhmm. If we could agree on a clear definition for literary fiction, I think that we would also have to agree that there is a lot of really bad literary fiction out there.

Here is another misuse of the term “literary fiction” that I blame on agents and publishers.  It’s a literary novel IF it has the following words in the blurb “UNCOVERS A FAMILY SECRET” or “A NOVEL OF GRIEF AND SURVIVAL” or the blessed words “COMING OF AGE”  Those novels with vague, hazy plots are automatically categorized as “literary” simply because there is no other place to put them… unless they have a happy ending and involve women protagonists, in which case they become the somewhat diminishing WOMEN’S FICTION category.  Mmmm.  This too comes from basically failing to understand what, exactly, literary fiction is.

So, I thought I’d take a stab at a definition, since I’m working on a book hat talks about all the elusive distinction between the fiction genres — inspired by the many run ins with students and writers (published writers!) of fiction who showed a fundamental lack of understanding of many of the styles and genres they were reading, publishing, and, yeah, sorry to say, even teaching.

So, before I turn too much into The Professor, you know the one who, during a revolution writes letters to the dictator advising him that he should make his underlings read Confucius  (Ezra Pound did that)– before I turn too pedantic, in other words, let me try to define literary fiction. (I wanted to use the word disambiguation that I learned from reading Wikipedia, but, alas, I could not fit it in a sentence. )

What distinguishes this genre — and it is a genre — from all the others, it is that its purpose is to challenge or confront the reader on at least one, if not multiple levels of perceptions. Literary fiction may attack a reader’s perception of language by using the kind of complexity for which Jorge Louis Borges and James Joyce became famous for or by stripping it of all its fluff to test its bare-bone efficacy as the minimalists did for decades, but it might also challenge our sense of what is right and wrong, as Albert Camus’ The Stranger did for generations of readers, or it may question our certainty about what we understand as reality as did Garcia Marques’ One Hundred Years of Solitude and all the incarnations of magical realism that the South American literary movement engendered. It may challenge our certainty of the benevolent nature of communication technology as, more recently Dave Eggers did with The Circle, and Aldous Huxley with Brave New World, or might shine a mirror on our own souls and ask us to re-evaluate our own moral compass like with Updike and Chekov’s work, and it may ask us to consider whether or not we may be complicit in a crime against humanity, like Orwell’s celebrated 1984, or against an entire race, like Richard Wright’s Invisible Man. It may also re-evaluate our perception of evil, as Cormac McCarthy’s novels have done now for some decades.

So, the quote that started this blog: it comes from a long time editor of The Atlantic, and I think it’s as good a definition of literary fiction as might be conceived, except that it seems to exclude (without intending to, I’m sure) those stories that aren’t told in traditional story-telling forms, stories that are undoubtedly literary because, among other things, they also challenge our perception of what a story should be.

With this definition in mind of literary fiction as a type of fiction that challenges perceptions, you may see that there are novels and stories labeled under some genre or other that rightly deserve to be considered literary.  For me, one of these is the Hunger Games, but there are many more mislabeled works. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance, was launched onto the market as science fiction, but it didn’t seem right to throw Atwood’s dystopian vision of a society in which the dogmatic religious views of a few destroy American democracy for everyone together with stories about epic battles against intelligent bugs populating a distant planet. Thus we began the painful permutations of labels like Speculative Fiction, Innovative Fiction, and all those other finicky variations that wanted to both honor the literary spirit of the novel but separate it from the traditional snobs that could not conceive of allowing dystopia into a definition of literary.

So, to those editors, publishers and marketers who label all those coming of age stories as “literary” I want to say, are you sure?  Because it seems to me that maybe at some time in the past it felt challenging to our sense of morals to read about people’s inner rebellions, divorces, and personal losses, but is it still the case? You can only challenge a perception so many times before it becomes old news.  Thus, now that we know so much about quantum physics and time travel, a novel about such distortion cannot be considered literary unless it challenges something else besides our traditional notion of time.

Capish?

And now that you know everything there is to know about the literary genre, GO FORTH AND WRITE! (And change some perceptions while you’re at it).

#genre #definitionofliteraryfiction #TheHungerGames #EzraPound #whatisliteraryfictiongenrevsliterary #literaryfiction #Speculativefiction #genreexplanation #LaurieLovellandLauraValeri #definitionofgenre

Let’s Define Literary Fiction, Shall We?

“I looked for stories with narrative ambition, complex characters, and imaginative use of language, the familiar staples of good storytelling. I prefer, on the whole, stories that present readers with situations requiring resolution, inviting moral choice, finding ambiguity in life experiences we are tempted to simplify…. [Stories that] explore classic themes embedded in unexpected or topical contexts. They involve characters who must choose between integrity of the heart and integrity of conscience. The stakes for the protagonist in each story are substantial, and the most honorable outcomes aren’t always the most welcome.”  C. Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor for The Atlantic

From The Atlantic “Fiction Matters” Blog, 2009 Issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/08/fiction-matters/307570/

A lot of times I find myself at readings or at conferences where the writers feel the necessity to excuse themselves either for writing genre-fiction or else for thinking of some of those so-called genre novels as literary.  Sometimes, these writers are defiant and angry. They want to defend (and rightly so!) the challenge and scope and beauty of their work, and resent having to contend with the stereotype that goes along with a label like “historical romance” or “cozy mystery.”  I have friends who write in this genre and they are brilliant, maybe far more brilliant than some of my other friends who only write literary.

First, sort of out of context, here is a factoid for you:

Ezra Pound loved mystery novels and tried his hand at writing them a couple of times.  Because I know of no famed Ezra Pound mystery novel, I assume that he must have failed at the task.  He was much better at poetry, I guess.

Second, and this is important:  It seems to me that people either have forgotten or never understood that literary fiction IS a genre.  Probably, the reason why they don’t consider it a genre is because that genre is so damned hard to define!  And for good reasons. One of the most distinguishing marks of literary fiction is that it defies labeling and defies plot.  So, since most genres today are labeled according to the type of plot, it is natural that literary fiction is the “that other stuff” cover all category.  You can’t even say that it’s “that stuff that doesn’t have magic, vampires, ghosts and zombies” because unfortunately  or fortunately there is a lot of literary fiction, really good literary fiction, that is littered with all those pesky supernatural creatures and events.

Then, it seems to me that people misuse the word “literary” as a synonym for pretty writing.  Here, too, I think the misunderstanding stems from the fact that people just don’t understand what makes this genre a genre.  Do you know that there are many, many works of literary fiction that purposely, deliberately butcher language, use it either in pathetically minimalist and simplistic ways, or else cut it up and throw it around in the guise of different forms, (for instance, a telephone interview, or else part of a script for a play — see Moby Dick for examples), or else go on and on and on and on for pages and pages, sustaining the sentence on commas, semi-colons, colons, dashes, ellipses…. ?No. Literary does NOT mean pretty prose.

Also, by some snobs, literary fiction is used as a synonym for “good fiction.”  No wonder the genre writers get defensive.  You will all have heard, “sure she published three books, but they were genre, not literary.”  Well, mmhmm. If we could agree on a clear definition for literary fiction, I think that we would also have to agree that there is a lot of really bad literary fiction out there.

Here is another misuse of the term “literary fiction” that I blame on agents and publishers.  It’s a literary novel IF it has the following words in the blurb “UNCOVERS A FAMILY SECRET” or “A NOVEL OF GRIEF AND SURVIVAL” or the blessed words “COMING OF AGE”  Those novels with vague, hazy plots are automatically categorized as “literary” simply because there is no other place to put them… unless they have a happy ending and involve women protagonists, in which case they become the somewhat diminishing WOMEN’S FICTION category.  Mmmm.  This too comes from basically failing to understand what, exactly, literary fiction is.

So, I thought I’d take a stab at a definition, since I’m working on a book hat talks about all the elusive distinction between the fiction genres — inspired by the many run ins with students and writers (published writers!) of fiction who showed a fundamental lack of understanding of many of the styles and genres they were reading, publishing, and, yeah, sorry to say, even teaching.

So, before I turn too much into The Professor, you know the one who, during a revolution writes letters to the dictator advising him that he should make his underlings read Confucius  (Ezra Pound did that)– before I turn too pedantic, in other words, let me try to define literary fiction. (I wanted to use the word disambiguation that I learned from reading Wikipedia, but, alas, I could not fit it in a sentence. )

What distinguishes this genre — and it is a genre — from all the others, it is that its purpose is to challenge or confront the reader on at least one, if not multiple levels of perceptions. Literary fiction may attack a reader’s perception of language by using the kind of complexity for which Jorge Louis Borges and James Joyce became famous for or by stripping it of all its fluff to test its bare-bone efficacy as the minimalists did for decades, but it might also challenge our sense of what is right and wrong, as Albert Camus’ The Stranger did for generations of readers, or  it may question our certainty about what we understand as reality as did Garcia Marques’ One Hundred Years of Solitude and all the incarnations of magical realism that the South American literary movement engendered. It may challenge our certainty of the benevolent nature of communication technology as, more recently Dave Eggers did with The Circle, and Aldous Huxley with Brave New World, or might shine a mirror on our own souls and ask us to re-evaluate our own moral compass like with Updike and Chekov’s work, and it may ask us to consider whether or not we may be complicit in a crime against humanity, like Orwell’s celebrated 1984, or against an entire race, like Richard Wright’s Invisible Man.  It may also re-evaluate our perception of evil, as Cormac McCarthy’s novels have done now for some decades.

So, the quote that started this blog: it comes from a long time editor of The Atlantic, and I think it’s as good a definition of literary fiction as might be conceived, except that it seems to exclude (without intending to, I’m sure) those stories that aren’t told in traditional story-telling forms, stories that are undoubtedly literary because, among other things, they also challenge our perception of what a story should be.

With this definition in mind of literary fiction as a type of fiction that challenges perceptions, you may see that there are novels and stories labeled under some genre or other that rightly deserve to be considered literary.  For me, one of these is the Hunger Games, but there are many more mislabeled works.  Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance, was launched onto the market as science fiction, but it didn’t seem right to throw Atwood’s dystopian vision of a society in which the dogmatic religious views of a few destroy American democracy for everyone together with stories about epic battles against intelligent bugs populating a distant planet. Thus we began the painful permutations of labels like Speculative Fiction, Innovative Fiction, and all those other finicky variations that wanted to both honor the literary spirit of the novel but separate it from the traditional snobs that could not conceive of allowing dystopia into a definition of literary.

So, to those editors, publishers and marketers who label all those coming of age stories as “literary” I want to say, are you sure?  Because it seems to me that maybe at some time in the past it felt challenging to our sense of morals to read about people’s inner rebellions, divorces, and personal losses, but is it still the case? You can only challenge a perception so many times before it becomes old news.  Thus, now that we know so much about quantum physics and time travel, a novel about such distortion cannot be considered literary unless it challenges something else besides our traditional notion of time.

Capish?

And now that you know everything there is to know about the literary genre, GO FORTH AND WRITE! (And change some perceptions while you’re at it).

Olga Rudge’s Romantic Defiance

“One god permeating everything might as well not exist. She wants her god incarnate. She is not trying to tell him He is a god, but her only feeling of god is in him.” Olga Rudge, in a letter to Ezra Pound, cir. 1930

I’m reading a biography on Olga Rudge, a concert violinist who was Ezra Pound’s lover from 1923 until 1972 when Pound died. Olga was, in fact, buried next to him in Venice.  As I read this biography, I find myself more and more fascinated with this brave artistic soul that was Olga Rudge, her strong spirit of independence and self-sufficiency defying a world-order that considered women dependent and inferior. She  supported herself financially while pursuing a career as an artist, had a child out of wedlock and maintained a life-long, true affair of the heart with the married Ezra Pound. I can’t fathom the courage that it took for this woman to follow her heart, both in her professional career as an artist, in spite of the financial realities of the time, and in her choice of lovers.

Although the narrative in this biography is sometimes choppy and filled with non-sequiturs, the biographer is especially successful in excerpting letters the two artists wrote to each other that truly evoke the spirit of their minds and the nature of their relationship.

One in particular struck me as being especially emblematic of the paradox that Olga’s one-minded devotion to Ezra seems in the face of her fierce independence and self-reliance.

During the Great Depression, Olga’s father, who had been helping Olga financially throughout her life, suffered great financial losses, and had not Olga purchased her own home the year before the market crashed, she would have been homeless, penniless, and alone responsible for raising Mary, her child with Ezra Pound.  She made numerous efforts to become financially wealthy, concert touring, writing, and at one point, even taking up typing lessons to become a secretary. It seems clear that Mary was primarily Olga’s responsibility, at least financially, and that Olga supported herself, refusing Pound’s financial help.

But when the Depression was at its worst, Olga’s fears and most pressing concerns for the future — not so much financial as they were that the end of her affair with Pound had come to an end —  reflected in the letters she wrote to her lover, where she confessed to considering suicide.  To which Ezra responded:

“Only she would be perfectly wrong to stop living Now, now of all times…She got rid , as her father said, of her religion…You can’t scrap a whole thing like that, pericoloso, pericoloso, unless one has another house to go to…”

To which Olga poignantly replied:

“She doesn’t think that she has “given up” her religion, because she doesn’t think that with her character, anything that she had “had” could slip away as easily as water off a duck’s back…As for god, she is probably at a stage of low development. One god permeating everything might as well not exist. She wants her god incarnate. She is not trying to tell him He is a god, but her only feeling of god is in him.”

It’s puzzling to think of Olga and Ezra in romantic terms, considering that throughout their affair Ezra was married to Dorothy Pound, and also had a child by his wife, although Mary was born first.  It’s also clear that both Olga and Pound had other love interests throughout their lives.  Yet their devotion to each other survived all tests: Ezra died holding Olga’s hand. Given that Ezra and Olga remained lovers to the last, it is touching to see the earnestness of their feelings, so alive in their words.

#OlgaRudge #EzraPound #LiteratureandLove #LauraValeri #OlgaRudgebiography

Olga Rudge’s Romantic Defiance

“One god permeating everything might as well not exist. She wants her god incarnate. She is not trying to tell him He is a god, but her only feeling of god is in him.” Olga Rudge, in a letter to Ezra Pound, cir. 1930

I’m reading a biography on Olga Rudge, a concert violinist who was Ezra Pound’s lover from 1923 until 1972 when Pound died. Olga was, in fact, buried next to him in Venice.  As I read this biography, I find myself more and more fascinated with this brave artistic soul that was Olga Rudge, her strong spirit of independence and self-sufficiency defying a world-order that considered women dependent and inferior. She  supported herself financially while pursuing a career as an artist, had a child out of wedlock and maintained a life-long, true affair of the heart with the married Ezra Pound. I can’t fathom the courage that it took for this woman to follow her heart, both in her professional career as an artist, in spite of the financial realities of the time, and in her choice of lovers.

Although the narrative in this biography is sometimes choppy and filled with non-sequiturs, the biographer is especially successful in excerpting letters the two artists wrote to each other that truly evoke the spirit of their minds and the nature of their relationship.

One in particular struck me as being especially emblematic of the paradox that Olga’s one-minded devotion to Ezra seems in the face of her fierce independence and self-reliance.

During the Great Depression, Olga’s father, who had been helping Olga financially throughout her life, suffered great financial losses, and had not Olga purchased her own home the year before the market crashed, she would have been homeless, penniless, and alone responsible for raising Mary, her child with Ezra Pound.  She made numerous efforts to become financially wealthy, concert touring, writing, and at one point, even taking up typing lessons to become a secretary. It seems clear that Mary was primarily Olga’s responsibility, at least financially, and that Olga supported herself, refusing Pound’s financial help.

But when the Depression was at its worst, Olga’s fears and most pressing concerns for the future — not so much financial as they were that the end of her affair with Pound had come to an end —  reflected in the letters she wrote to her lover, where she confessed to considering suicide.  To which Ezra responded:

“Only she would be perfectly wrong to stop living Now, now of all times…She got rid , as her father said, of her religion…You can’t scrap a whole thing like that, pericoloso, pericoloso, unless one has another house to go to…”

To which Olga poignantly replied:

“She doesn’t think that she has “given up” her religion, because she doesn’t think that with her character, anything that she had “had” could slip away as easily as water off a duck’s back…As for god, she is probably at a stage of low development. One god permeating everything might as well not exist. She wants her god incarnate. She is not trying to tell him He is a god, but her only feeling of god is in him.”

It’s puzzling to think of Olga and Ezra in romantic terms, considering that throughout their affair Ezra was married to Dorothy Pound, and also had a child by his wife, although Mary was born first.  It’s also clear that both Olga and Pound had other love interests throughout their lives.  Yet their devotion to each other survived all tests: Ezra died holding Olga’s hand. Given that Ezra and Olga remained lovers to the last, it is touching to see the earnestness of their feelings, so alive in their words.

Agent Search 2.0: Getting Your Agent/Editor Through Pitch Parties

Twitter Pitch Party

Selling your manuscript in the age of Social Media isn’t done the same way it used to be in my days…I can’t believe I’m actually old enough to say, “In my days…”

In my days, searching for an agent was a pretty straightforward deal.

  • Author looked up potential agent in Big Agent Book (writer’s market or whatever)
  • Author sent query
  • Author waited, waited, waited
  • Author either got to send full ms. or else got a rejection
  • (These days, if you don’t get an answer within 3 months, you can bank on a rejection: agents are too busy to bother writing back).

But in comes social media, and this is where we get Agent Search 2.0.  I didn’t even learn about it until a little over a year ago when I caught up with a former college friend who told me all about the Twitter Ptich Party.

This is how a Twitter Pitch Party works:

  • An author or authors from various camps organize the twitter parties by alerting their blog readers, and by inviting agents and acquisition editors to participate. These authors will release the information on participating agents and general rules and regulations on their personal blogs, so this means you should probably subscribe — which is a nice thing to do, considering these authors are going through so much trouble to help you find an agent.
  • The participants (authors and agents) agree to be on twitter on a certain date, during a certain period of hours, say, for instance, 9am to 7pm on Tuesday January 15.
  • On that date, those authors who have a full, polished manuscript to sell will pitch their manuscript on Twitter, that is, they must come up with a logline that meets twitter’s maximum 140 characters length, BUT,
  • Within your Tweet, you must include the # for that particular pitch event, so, say #PitWars or #SFFPit, plus a # that indicates your genre and intended audience, as in #YA and #SFF if it’s a young adult science fiction that you’re trying to pitch. This will cut into your 140 characters max, so it’s a good idea to come up with a variation on the pitch and practice beforehand.
  • You’re allowed to pitch only once every half hour or so.
  • Since there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants, it is polite to retweet those pitches that sound appealing to you, and hope that someone else returns the favor, so that your pitch will appear more than once every half hour, and so that it won’t disappear too soon below the visible line on the fast moving Twitter read.
  • If an agent or acquisition editor is interested in your ms, they will favorite your tweet. Nothing else. Just a little star. (So tell your friends not to give you heartaches all day long by favoriting your tweet, thinking they’re doing you a favor — only agents and editors should favorite).
  • If you got a star, it doesn’t mean that you can go ahead and send the full ms: the agent will tweet where you can find submission guidelines, and you follow those.  Usually, it consists of a query letter, synopsis, and first ten pages or first chapter.
  • The rest is as usual: you wait for a response, and hope that you struck gold.

Why is it advantageous to go through this tormenting Twitter version of American Idol for aspiring writers? Because it raises your probability of having an agent actually read your work exponentially.  If you were favorited, your query will go to the top of the slush-pile, and rather than having to wait for the agent to read thousands of regular email queries, yours will be read within a few weeks’ time.  Also, if an agent favorited you, you know firsthand that they are interested in the kind of book you write, which saves everyone a lot of time and heartache.

Twitter Pitch Parties that I know of (this is not an all-inclusive list, but these are the ones I do know about):

You also should take care that you are interested in whatever agent or publishing house favorites your tweet.  Some of the acquisition editors come from independent publishing houses, or literary agents and publishers that work differently than the traditional mode. I strongly recommend checking out their guidelines, submissions, and authors contract before you commit yourself.

In addition to Twitter pitch parties, there are similar types of social media pitches, two that I know of are Query Kombat, (which, by the way, I will never, ever, ever subject myself to), and Secret Agent Contest. There are more, but that would be for another blog.

Of course, as more writers with complete manuscripts join the Twitter bandwagon, agents and acquisition editors will come up with ever more ingenious ways to slosh through the thousands of submissions, and Twitter pitches will be old news. But for the time being, this is what is happening.  Best of luck, fellow writers.  May the Tweet be ever in your favor.

To Richard Dawkins: Brahma is not Brahman. You should read up on the God issue.

Om treeThe God Delusion is pervasive like Brahman: it downloads itself on my kindle, and appears unbidden on my Audible.  It seems impervious to archiving, and creepily pops up whenever I scroll through my collection to see what I have that I haven’t yet read.

It must be that Richard Dawkins really wants me to read this book.  And let it be said right here: although I am a believer in such things that other people might consider supernatural, overall, I am much more likely to shake hands with an atheist than I am with a fundamental Christian, Muslim or other literalist of sacred scriptures, especially on the subject of Evolution vs. Creationism.

Nonetheless, Atheist, it should be clarified here, are also fundamentalists.  They brook no contradiction, no variation, and no logic against their firm belief that “there is nothing supernatural” to the world we live in or the Universe beyond it.  Much of atheists (and Dawkins’) argument relies on the premise that there is no scientific evidence whatever of the existence of God. Of course, what we know about the Universe at large, beyond our own world, is next to nil, (and one could validly argue that we know yet so little about our own world that it would be objective and scientific to say “we have no evidence of God just yet” rather than to make bombastic statement that there isn’t any evidence because in a handful of years in science in the long, long timeline of existence we have found none) but this also proven fact is not of a bother to the fundamentalist, who, by principle, is inclined to disregard fact and reason that does not cohere to his principles.

Thus, the introduction of The God Delusion, wherein a man who prides himself on his impeccable logic and rationality in rather narcissistic and unapologetic tones makes the following arguments:

  • Let us dismiss beforehand any concept of God that varies from the idea of an anthropomorphic God: God is the Judeo-Christian God or Allah. Every other definition of God, especially those definitions that define Him as an energy or creative force are “too watered down” and vague to be considered valid, and I quote, “If you think God is energy, then you will find Him in a piece of coal.”  But rather than admitting right there that there could be a scientific argument validating God if we departed from the anthropomorphic old guy in the sky definition, he claims that to use the word God in relations to energy or other encompassing concepts is to abuse language, since God is the God of the Old Testament, period.  The reason behind this exclusivity is vague, but he seems to be under the impression that the God of the Old Testament, in the form of an interventionist God who has a political agenda and butts into the business of populaces and individuals is the God that most people on earth worship, and have always worshipped since the beginning of religion.  We shall return to this point pretty soon, but first let me go on with summarizing his most irksome statements.
  • In contradiction or as an addendum to the above, he emphatically states that he’s not talking about “the bearded guy in the sky” but about the interventionist God who can change nature on a whim to accommodate the wishes of an individual.  I’m not sure why the caveat since the same people who worship the interventionist God of the Bible also believe that He made man in His image, therefore making Him the old guy in the sky, per excellence. If not Him, then who is he talking about?
  • According to Dawkins, he disagrees with anything “supernatural,” except (and this is the part that made me laugh out loud) “those things that we don’t yet understand.”  Since Dawkins himself loves to rephrase philosophical models in childish and infantile reductionist forms, let me return the favor.  His argument is akin to saying, “Only what I say is correct; everything else is incorrect — except those things that might later prove to be correct in spite of what I said.”  So, he’s right about everything, even if it later turns out that he was wrong, he is still right, because it was simply a matter of our (scientists)  not understanding.
  • He gives a pass to pantheists because they believe in the sentience of living things, which in his vision, is a “glorified atheism.”  Hmmm.  Talk about watering down a definition.
  • He gives half a pass to deists.  His logic on this point is quite foggy but as later he claims to have statistical proof that if you believe in God you are either a) ignorant, b) stupid, c) both stupid and ignorant, it’s important for him to make this caveat so as to exclude from the stupid and the ignorant such enlightened minds as the Founding Fathers, engineers of the United States Constitution, who were undoubtedly deists (but not Christian, folks, let’s make this clear).
  • All religions are the same, according to Dawkins, so the fact that he’s focused on Judaism and Christianity should not concern worshippers of different religions, since overall we are still worshipping just the one God.  To prove his point, he brings up Hinduism, which at first blush might appear to be polytheistic, but on closer scrutiny, turns out to be not so, since it is understood that all the deities are just aspects of Brahma, an old guy in the sky type of god.
  • Having made the above (erroneous) point, he says he only mentioned Hinduism for inclusivity’s sake.  He will go on arguing against God and will not discuss Buddhism or Confucianism at all because “it could be argued that these are philosophies of life and not religions.” (Later, he further diminishes Buddhism and Confucianism indirectly by “proving” that philosophy is a senseless waste of time, pretty much in so many words, since it has no bearing or relevance to real life, and cannot provide any answers to life that may be considered anything beyond verbal games.

Dear Richard Dawkins,

There are 2.5 million Hindus in the United states alone, and nearly 1 billion in the world at large, making up about 15% of the world’s believers.  That’s a lot of God-believing people to dismiss wholesale in a short little paragraph that so very incorrectly paraphrases their complex beliefs.  In the least, if you’re going to make the argument that Hinduism is a monotheistic religion, you should get your names right.  It’s as easy as just googling or using Wikipedia.

Allow me to make one small but very important correction to your statement that all Hindu gods, from Parvati to Krishna to Vishnu are all, in fact, just aspects of Brahma, another god, and a ‘bearded guy in the sky” type of god.  I am sorry to say that, like many Westerners, you really just don’t know your Hinduism.

All gods are NOT Brahma.  Brahma is just as you say another bearded guy in the sky.  However, it is true that Hindus believe that all gods (and living beings, and things seen and unseen, living or not living) are BRAHMAN.

To make the distinction simple, and the importance of the mistake evident, let me give you simple, Wikipedia definition of both:

Brahmā (/ˈbrɑːmə/; Brahmā) is the Hindu god (deva) of creation. However, in most texts his creative activity depends on the presence and power of a higher god.[1] …According to the Brahma Purana, he is the father of Manu, and from Manu all human beings are descended. In theRamayana and the Mahabharata, he is often referred to as the progenitor or great grandsire of all human beings. He is not to be confused with the Supreme Cosmic Spirit in Hindu Vedānta philosophy known as Brahman, which is genderless. (Emphasis mine).

Brahman (/ˈbrɑːmən/; Sanskrit: ब्रह्मन्) is a spiritual concept in Hinduism, and it connotes the highest Universal, the Ultimate Reality in the universe.[1][2] It is, in major schools of Hindu philosophy, the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists.[2][3][4] It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes (emphasis mine).[1][5] Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.[1] 

Let me just make it clear: Brahma and Brahman are not the same entity at all, except in the sense that all things are Brahman and Brahman is in all things.  To put it in the way Paramhansa Yogananda explained it: a drop of water is part of the ocean; the ocean is not a drop of water.

Why is it important?  Because:

  1. You claim rather emphatically that the anthropomorphic God is God per excellence, that it would be misleading to assign the word God to notions of energy or other such inclusive phenomena since God is traditionally the God of the Old Testament.  But Hinduism predates Christianity by thousands of years, and it predates Judaism as well.  It matters because the oldest God is not a guy, nor is he the interventionist political meddler that you describe.  Christianity has been around only 2,000 years.  It is still debatable how long humanity has been around, but I suspect that you, as a scientist, lean towards dating humanity to the hundreds of thousands of years.  Still, let’s just start counting from the first evidence of human spirituality and we go back to somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago.  The monotheistic Christian God is rather a late edition, don’t you think?  We do not know what or who the cave painters worshipped exactly, but we do know that shamanism, the oldest form of spirituality to which we still have access, acknowledges and warns of the existence of a supreme deity which is formless, genderless, omnipresent, and well above the lower spirits, devas, and miscellaneous deities that interfere with human affairs. The Yoruba based religions that have survived the earliest forms of shamanism all agree on this one very important fact: when they pray to the gods, they are not praying to “the God.”  That is something else entirely.  That God is neither a non-interventionist entity, nor an interventionist one: it is…Brahman — but not Brahma.
  2. You also make clear that you dismiss anything that is “supernatural” which, I’m sorry to say, includes to the list of the excluded from this conversation all practicing Buddhists. In the United States alone they make up 1.2 million people, a lot of people to exclude from the English-speaking world.  Your argument that if they don’t believe in a theist-based religion then they are atheists sounds like the “watering down” of definitions that you accuse in those who believe in a non-anthropomorphic God.  It is true that Buddha himself said that there is no such thing as God; he also frequently spoke about God and then denied the denial of God when cornered by a Brahmin who missed the point of Buddhism entirely and was trying to verbally outwit him.  However, lumping as delusional-God-believers all those who believe in the supernatural, then you are most definitely also including Buddhists (and Taoists, and many others) in the God-believers sphere, conveniently discounting their definitions of God.  Just in case you are tempted to get into the semantics of the Buddhist concept of “nothingness” which cannot be understood from outside an experiential Buddhist practice, let me just remind you that there are many deities in the Buddhist religion, and that Buddha frequently conversed with gods, including Indra, who appeared when Buddha first found enlightenment and reportedly begged him to teach his discipline to the people. It would be incorrect to assume that Buddhism is equatable to atheism as it would be to discount Buddhist versions of gods and their relationship to the ultimate truth.  Buddhists are very much like Yogis and Hindus: there are gods; they are not the ultimate divinity or truth, whether we call that truth nothingness, ultimate unity, or Brahman.

A typical symbol for Brahman. “Mozzercork – Heart (by)” by mozzercork – Heart. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mozzercork_-_Heart_(by).jpg#/media/File:Mozzercork_-_Heart_(by).jpg

I want to do a little math here.  According to Pew Research, 15% of the world believers are Hindus. 7% are Buddhists. 1% are “other” (Taoists, Jainism, etc.) and 16% are “non affiliated.  Pew has this to say of them: Surveys indicate that many of the unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs (such as belief in God or a universal spirit) even though they do not identify with a particular faith.  If we add them up, that is an approximate 39% or so (maybe a little less) of people who officially do not agree with a definition of God as an external, anthropomorphic entity who has an agenda and an interventionist modus operandi.  They are God-believers, but they are not atheists. They just believe in a different version of the God you have practically reduced to a cartoon.

Let’s revisit the survey that was sent out to people in order to come to the conclusions that all those who believe in a God such as you have defined are uneducated or ignorant, and everyone else is an atheist. To use a religious metaphor, the Devil is in the Details.  If you poll people with the question, “Do you believe in a white old man in the sky who has magical powers and intervenes in your life like Santa Claus” which is basically how you phrased that poll you so eminently talk about, and then ask them to rate their belief on a scale of 1-7, everyone in the 39% mentioned above will go 4 or below.  I have a sneaking suspicion that a vast majority of Christians and Jews will also choose 4 or below, since many of them have come to interpret the Bible figuratively rather than literally, including its bad-tempered God.

But, you say, it is no point at all to argue whether or not a non-interventionist God exists. But I would argue that you are wrong.  It is important to acknowledge the possibility of a Universal sentience, such as is Brahman or the God of many other types of religions that you have failed to mention or perhaps don’t even know about.  If you are amenable to the possibility of sentience, self-awareness, or a collective consciousness that unifies all individual consciousnesses (which would explain the omni-presence, omniscient qualities without the need for a paradox) it is exactly the business of science to study it.  But you cannot study something that a-priori you have excluded from existence.

There is more to say, but this post is already too long, and I was mainly concerned with your exclusion of a definition of God that predates the Judeo-Christian God.

It would never occur to me to argue Evolution with scientists without even having done some rigorous research on the subject beforehand, but your understanding of religions, and your reading on spiritual phenomena is remarkably cursory, and altogether disrespectfully lacking.  If you really want to persuade the world that there is no God, you should at least do your homework.