Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
For the record, I don't consider being directly or indirectly called "inhuman" and "fascist" constructive criticism, and it isn't exactly making me want to visit this thread, nor to heed anyone's advice when I already feel so on the defensive. . . . I guess this was just a bad idea gone worse.
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Since this is a very long thread, it's possible the above quote is addressing someone else's comments. But if you're talking about my post, then let me point out what a deluge of criticism might have obscured: I never called you a fascist "directly or indirectly," nor "inhuman[e]," nor was that ever my point.
Others on this thread have called you a fascist and said they wouldn't read you for that reason. I merely pointed out that some of the most respected writers in English (particularly the modernists) have literally believed in fascism, and that we still read them despite that fact. Even if such hyperbolic charges were actually true of you, they would not be a useful criticism of someone's writing -- yours or anyone else's -- nor a reason to dismiss it.
Pity you stopped there (assuming you did), as my own best advice to you came later.
I do hope you read the bit about putting your anxiety into the writing itself instead of diverting it to marketing. To paraphrase Rollo May, we live in an age of anxiety. Let that anxiety fuel your novel.
Anxiety works in the context of fiction in the sense that tension makes people keep reading. However, making one's own anxiety the subject of public communications about one's work merely paints a target on one's back.