Neil Gaiman's NaNoWriMo pep talk

"Writing is like building a wall. It’s a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn’t build it it won’t be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in."

Go read it now.

On being a good writer and a good ally

[...] that my writing is more focused on buffering against the inevitable critiques than actually writing. It’s made me a worse writer. It’s definitely made me more jaded, and less interested in engaging with online feminist and social justice communities. I can only imagine how it makes our guests feel. -- Jill from Feministe 

So much of this resonates with me. I rarely comment on feminist blog, have nearly abandoned Tumblr (which has a host of its own problems), and even my writing here has become increasingly labored. It is really hard to write with a litany of possible -- nay, inevitable -- criticisms running through one's mind. While I like feeling like I'm contributing to the greater good, I liked my writing better when it flowed more organically, warts and all. But I also wonder how fair it is to have this kind of "beef" when the feminist blog world is hostile to WOC, working-class, disabled, queer and trans women. A lot of activist work isn't about being "polite;" it's about trying to break down those institutions that grant power to some of the people, and silence the rest.

Sigrid Nunez on Susan Sontag's Relationship With Feminism

(Cross-posted to my Tumblr)

 

“She was a feminist, but she was often critical of her feminist sisters and much of the rhetoric of feminism for being naive, sentimental, and anti-intellectual. And she could be hostile to those who complained about being underrepresented in the canon, urgently reminding them that the canon (or art, or genius, or talent, or literature) was not an equal opportunity employer.”

Sigrid Nunez on Susan Sontag from Sempre Susan

In fewer than 200 pages, Sempre Susan paints a portrait of Nunez’s friend and mentor not as this ominous figure in American literature, but as someone human, flawed, and at times deeply insecure. I wanted to highlight this quote because it briefly touches on Sontag’s sometimes contentious relationship with the feminism, even while being regarded as an one of its icons. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I’m somewhat disheartened, not because I think talent is doled out in equal amounts, but because the whole concept of having a “canon” means someone will invariably be excluded and it’s usually those who don’t fit the straight, white, male model. Just look at the outrage over Publisher’s Weekly’s best books of last year when not one woman made the cut, or any rock music critic’s desert island list where the sole requirement is to be a white man with a guitar.

I also found the comment about feminism being anti-intellectual and sentimental odd, but given that feminism has moved away from its grassroots beginnings and into the classroom, it probably made sense for its time, though I bristle when I hear anything derided as "anti-intellectual." Nunez later said that Sontag wasn't a snob, but an elitist.

If inadvertently, she briefly touched on something that's been very hard for feminism to reconcile: its inability to address the needs of all women, which is a very valid criticism

Why don't we ever talk about women as musicians?

I read a quote from Emma Mayhew in an anthology about popular music and culture called Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity that offered some good insight on why we don't talk about women as musicians:

Women, who have dominated the position of pop singer, have often been devalued through a construction of femininity as an unskilled, and/or "natural musical position. Part of this creative disfunction between men and women has a history not only within music (both classical and popular) but within the visual arts and literature.

There's a lot of truth is this. Breaking it down in terms that's easier to understand, there's a certain "nerdiness" to being a musicians. It's implied that being a good technician is mathematical, not passionate. According to stereotype, bands like Rush, noted for their technical skill are the domain of really, really smart guys who sit in their parents basement playing dungeons and dragons. (When they're not listening to Rush, of course.)



Passion defies logic. Technical proficiency isn't required if one is passionate enough about one's art. This is a good thing. Punk couldn't have happened if, well, if The Ramones knew a few more chords. But as men are allowed to be passionate or skilled (or both), women are only noted for their passion. A well-respected rock critic recently published a book that, in no certain terms, women, as fans, aren't supposed to be "logical." They just want to dance. Granted, there is nothing wrong with dancing, but that kind of gender essentialism makes me uncomfortable. Even though we're talking about pop music, it still takes women out of the intellectual sphere, and takes away their sense of agency. (The music controls me. I don't make it.)

I am not a musician. I can't speak about the act of making music with any authority whatsoever, but I was an art major for a few short seconds, and you know what? Being an artist in whatever media is a lot of work.

Voices (quotes)

Rarely is it that I read something these days that makes me go, "Wow, that's exactly what I would say if I had the vocabulary for it." bell hooks's Teaching to Trangress is two-decades old, but has some really good insight on class, race and the kind of progressive spaces that are supposed to be inclusive:

In the privileged liberal arts colleges, it is acceptable for professors to respect the "voice" of any student who wants to make a point. Many students in those institutions feel they are entitled -- their voices deserve to be heard. But students in public institutions, mostly from working-class backgrounds, come to college assuming that professors see them as having nothing of value to say, no valuable contributions to make a dialectical exchange of ideas.

That pretty much mirrors my college experience and has become a leitmotif for my life. I never felt that my voice deserved to be heard, or when I did, I felt I had a tenuous hold on the little credibility I managed to gain. I simply didn't belong. I spend more time criticizing the progressive, especially feminist, blogosphere that I do actually participating in it, and looking at the lack of parity, it's easy to understand why. There's been no isolated incident that led me to that conclusion, just a general sense of frustration.

Joan Armatrading in American Songwriter

American Songwriter has a nice piece on Joan Armatrading talking about touring, songwriting, and creativity. Here are some of the highlights:

"When I’m touring I might get ideas and I might get a feeling I want to write, but when I write I need to be in a quiet place, and not distracted, and just on my own. On tour there’s too much moving around–you’re getting to the gig, and you’re doing the soundcheck, then you’re doing interviews, and your day is kind of busy…but I might write something down in a notebook, and then when I’m off the road, I just wait for the writing experiences to come to me."

"So I don’t just say “OK, today I’m gonna write.” It’s the other way around, dictated by the song. I’ll start to write, and stay with it for however long that’s working. If I’m in the mood for it for 15 minutes then that’s how long I’ll do it; if I’m in the mood for it from whenever I start ‘til 5:00 the next morning, then that’s how long I’ll do it."

"..my form of writer’s block is writing rubbish! I can always write, but to me they’re just not very good songs. But I must complete whatever it is I’ve started, so I don’t have lots of unfinished songs and stuff like that. I finish everything, even if it’s bad. And then once I finish it, I will just put it away."