[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by samhy

Thank you Prestidigitweeze for sharing this interview. I really like her work and found her more humble in the interview than expected.

You're welcome, Samhy!

I think that Smith's humble approach to writing is partly a strategy for doing the best work she can -- i.e., without the interference of vanity.

This could be literal-minded of me to say, but I think I can see that reflected in her work; cf. her emphasis on characters who are nothing like her personally or culturally.

Gmw:

I think it can be important to distinguish between the qualities of an individual writer -- and their attitude toward their work -- and the ultimate subjectivity of writing itself. Not doing so when talking to another writer is rather like telling a physicist that "everything is relative" and then being surprised when their lip twitches. You can also damage someone else's unstated process by interfering with or discouraging it.

For example, I think it can be insensitive to tell a writer who sees their own work as an exercise in perfectionism that their effort is worthless, their view mistaken and the task itself impossible. That might be true for you, but a writer who works best through heavy revision (William Gibson, for example) but who is susceptible to criticism might be discouraged or haunted by such a remark. Dismissals of people's way of working can create obstacles for them, which is something I try never to do. It's a matter of conscience.

This is my way of telling you (in a way that I hope seems friendly rather than shrill) that arguing over the possibility of a writer's being a perfectionist isn't fun for me.

And you're right, some novels reach beyond their static nature and transport the reader. There are some novels I could pick up in almost any mood, and they would carry me into their own. But reading reviews here on MR and elsewhere is a reminder that different people have different novels that do that for them. So what's perfect? It doesn't exist, there is only what seems best at the time. I think that's an important thing for a writer acknowledge - if not before they start, at least before they get too far into redrafting.

We live in a culture in which the acknowledgment of subjectivity has become the most frequently used excuse for mediocrity. This is why it's often difficult to make out the voices of thoughtful critics amid the din of opinion.

I personally don't think it's an "important thing" to acknowledge that ideas of perfection are subjective unless I'm editing another writer (especially one with a completely different style and approach) or talking to them about their own work -- or unless I feel that adhering to that standard is harming them on some dire and drastic level.

I think it's fine to be absolutely merciless with oneself about craft, and to believe in one's standards as one does in life and death -- or not.

If your point is that people should keep their perspective about their ambitions, then I can agree with that. But perfectionism needn't have anything to do with self-importance. In fact, the goal can be the opposite: To remove all traces of oneself.

That goal, too, can be deemed impossible, but the ultimate impossibility of an artistic task is often irrelevant. In the words of Stravinsky, I limit myself in order to free myself. Or as Houdini said, I load myself down with chains, then try to get out of them.

However, if acknowledging the subjectivity of perfectionism is an important thing for you, then I can see that. After all, you mentioned on another thread that an insensitive twit who was being paid to offer practical advice was utterly dismissive, which could put anyone off the idea of perfectionism, since the sensible alternative to said twit's advice is to keep working.

By the way: I've seen editors sacked for doing the same thing as that person. The editor who dismisses rather than helps to improve the work they've been given has forgotten the specifics of the task. They haven't been asked to judge the book according to their personal tastes, or to serve as a panel judge. They've been introduced to someone's novel and told to be of assistance. They've been asked to offer solutions and, in this case, helpful advice.

A novel is a runner who's trying to get through an obstacle course of defects before their opponents -- boredom, confusion and irritation -- can get there first. The finish line is the reader's sustained interest.

The job assigned to the twit you mentioned was to help the runner, not discourage the runner's parent. From the scenario you've described, it sounds as though said twit failed to do their job and, additionally, said things that were untrue and out of line. I'm sorry you had to experience the effects of what they said.

Originally Posted by gmw

The idea that a writer can never truly judge their own work is, I think, a curious paradox.

A writer can't judge their own work ultimately. Obviously, the decisions made by a writer -- from moment to moment and over time -- would be impossible without the ability to judge which choice is best, just as the writer's development is as much a matter of choices as of chance. But to say that a writer can't be a perfectionist about style, for example, is to make no distinction between Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf: Kerouac's "first thought, best thought" versus Woolf's twenty drafts of every minor essay.

Your analogy about red within a sunset seems inapplicable to me (personally and objectively) because, as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset itself and not the color red within it. One's perspective on the entire sunset changes in the sense that the sunset is a primary experience, as is the gestalt of a novel. One's sense of a character in a scene, or of a paragraph within a narrative, is more applicable to one's perception of a specific shade of red within the sunset.

But perhaps that's what you meant and I failed to understand the analogy.