Is A Writer A Philosopher Too? · 11:50pm Oct 17th, 2019
Blog Number 62: The Writer's Umbrella and What It Covers Edition
When you write, you're writing about humans. When you write, you're making the reader ask a question about what it means to be human. The best writers are the ones who make their readers ask the most insightful, meaningful questions.
- Source: Cold in Gardez's first blog post, "About". See https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/4304/about
Breakthrough! I think I might have identified a solution to one of the ongoing problems I've been having.
It is explicitly my intention to write something with staying power. To write the literary equivalent of cheeseburgers - routinely prepared, mildly enjoyed, instantly forgotten - is not enough. Hence, generally, I try to give any particular fic a unifying theme or thread for interconnectedness, between what might otherwise prove to be pretty random elements, to make it more robust.
Not a strategy I've used consistently, I'll admit: it's mainly in the last few years I've started incorporating it more thoroughly into my methodology.
But it doesn't strike me as enough. Looking at the fandom's most prized fics, I think there are broadly two main categories they fall into, one of which doesn't interest me and one of which interests me deeply:
- The pioneer fic. Whether it's good or bad, it becomes (in)famous for being the first of its kind, or being an early contender at the fandom's prime.
- The personal fic. Fics that have a big impact on the people who read them, in some cases as big as the show has had.
Pioneer work isn't an option this late. In any case, I'm starting to have doubts about what constitutes creativity and imagination, given how hard these qualities are to pin down anyway. The personal work, however, is exactly the sort of thing I want to achieve, and that's where the quotation at the top comes in.
Last week, I mentioned learning more about grammar and its terminology. Mostly that's because, if you're going to deal in words and sentences all the time, you better get used to them ideas, 'cause you'll be dealing in them a lot. Whether or not you know them consciously.
This time, I'm thinking a much larger subject needs to be broached: philosophy. More specifically, ethics: how people go about living their lives.
Think about it: not only does literature - and art in general - grapple with questions, as indicated in that quotation, of "what it means to be human", i.e. questions of ethics. Literature (et al) also comes from a human with a pre-existing ethical outlook already, even if they haven't explicitly signed up for it, or could even articulate one if they tried.
The upshot of this is that, if you haven't paid much attention to ethics, you'll correspondingly be limited in what you can do. If you're not even aware of what you're doing when you write - really aware, of every layer present - how can you hope to do it well? Or better? There'd be no conscious feedback to build upon.
So that's my solution to what I think is a major problem: study ethics.
A writer is only as good as their toolkit. In the case of ethics, that's questions of moral right and wrong, duties and obligations, freedom and choice, and knowledge and rationality. There are also dilemmas, debates, complexities, and conundrums involving the same; viewpoints and philosophical movements throughout history; mythologies and folktales and other stories exemplifying same; various subfields including politics, economics, and frankly a lot of the humanities; and issues such as technology, prediction, what forces govern human life, and even broader cosmologies.
Toolkit thus expanded, it should be possible to find a way of incorporating it more intelligently into a fic, with a greater understanding and (possibly) a little more wisdom than usual as to what it is and how it is being applied. A meaningful engagement should naturally lead to a more meaningful fic, which will hopefully fulfil the quotation up above:
The best writers are the ones who make their readers ask the most insightful, meaningful questions.
I can't promise this is the solution to all my problems - it doesn't, by and large, guarantee that lasting power I identified, especially if there are other factors making a fic obscure or unpopular - but I think I'm on the right track. If nothing else, maybe this might help someone in passing, say, by drawing their attention to that blog post.
On a minor note, I've been continuing that grammar stuff from last week too. A large part of it centres around the different types of clauses and phrases. I figure if you learn those, you're a huge chunk of the way there. It's certainly a lot less daunting than I thought, thank goodness! 
Anyway, that's about all for now. It's too soon for a statistics update, so I'll leave that for another time. For now, Impossible Numbers out! But hopefully not for long...
This is not a critique, it is a stream of consciousness. I like your work, and I respect that you’ve been struggling with it of late. We all struggle, some more than others.
So then: a writer has a story to tell. Whether the story reflects on the human condition or not does change how it will be received, and whether it has depth. But all you need, is a story to tell. Who cares if it’s well received or not? As long as you get to tell it, that’s all that matters in the end.
I don’t believe this. I think there are always new horizons, new challenges. The trick is to not be discouraged if you don’t happen to be the one who leads the expedition. You have to realize that everyone who builds upon a previous pioneer’s work is as important as the original pioneer. What good would the Lewis & Clark expedition have been if no one followed up on what they did? But never believe that there is nowhere new to go. Otherwise you’re giving in to decadence and decline.
I guess writers are philosophers after all. Just wish I were a stand up philosopher.
Grammar and philosophy? Oh, be still my heart!
Did you know I wrote a 10-page blog about paragraphs, once? I promised a part-two, but never got around to it :(
I should go back and finish it, one of these days.
5141500
I want to thank you for commenting so. A heads-up in advance: I'm not 100% on the same page as you, and do have a few words to say about what you've written. But I'm at least glad you said your piece, and I'm grateful for the help and understanding you've provided. It hasn't fallen on deaf ears, I assure you.
I think this is a little too basic to be useful as advice, akin to telling a geologist they need a rock to study. Yes, that goes without saying, but the nitty-gritty is how to study them, classify them, identify them, learn about them, and get them recognized by the larger geological community. For me, that demands a certain perspective and honesty about the process; some rocks are just not going to be as interesting as others, and some studies are below professional standard.
Admittedly, I understand the outlook that a writer just has to fulfil the basic requirement to qualify i.e. to write, a storyteller has to tell a story, and so on. It just isn't very reassuring when you start to ask questions like, "Yes, but is it a good story?"
I care. When it comes to quality, an author of the work in question is the last person to ask (you might as well ask any parent if their child is the best). Quality can only be confirmed by judgement from like-minded peers. Ones who don't have the same intrinsic bias.
That's not to say every story has to be published. Not every story has to go through an audience if you don't want it to. But it strikes me that this approach can get very solipsistic and insular if it goes on too long without feedback.
Hm... I would really love to say I agree with this. I have to confess part of me does, to an extent; nothing about coming first, for instance, makes a work intrinsically better. A pioneer could do a botch job, whereas the next person could refine and perfect their own take to remove the major flaws. And in any case, fiction is so open with possibilities that what makes a work a "pioneer" gets a bit shaky, especially when creativity and so on are already so hard to pin down.
That said, I do get the impression pioneers (in this fandom especially) get a lot more respect and attention than usual. It suggests to me there's at least something to consider there.
5141515
Huh, now I'm wondering if there's a philosophy of grammar too...
Indeed, I saw the paragraphs blog post. Not bad, but it did feel a bit "old news" to me personally. And oh aye, you should get right on that.
Hrmm... I think my meanings may have been misinterpreted. This makes sense, because I am a spaz.
Using your example, I meant that this is more like having a hypothesis before studying a bunch of rocks.
I'm saying essentially that you need a goal / final product in mind.
Story example: I want to tell a story about a steel town mare on a Saturday night, looking for the fight of her life.
I think you misunderstood my statement. What I was trying to say was that "well received" does not always equate to "good quality."
Trash often received more accords than things that are well written. Ex: Fifty Shades of Gray, or Twilight (the books, not the Unicorn/Alicorn).
That being said, high amounts of likes and whatnot are not nearly as valuable as good feedback from other authors who you consider good.
True. But again, attention does not necessarily equate to quality. See previous example.
Don't get too upset that ppl can't recognize quality when they see it.
5142295
Oh, I see. No worries: I have that part down pat. I have plenty of goals and final products in mind. Elaborating them from summary to full story is where my problem lies. The philosophy material is meant to help me do it intelligently, with more rigorous standards, and with the knowledge to wield them.
That I already agree to, no trouble. But the trick, and what I'm getting at, is how to earn that good feedback. See, I have plenty of stories I'm itching to tackle; what I need is to make sure they come out correctly. That requires a process which results in as few flaws, and as many successes (or at least, in as many secure foundations) as is reasonably possible, from the story plan and individual elements all the way up to the larger picture.
Having a better understanding of the philosophy, more specifically the ethical topics underlying a lot of the stories, hence should provide a better grasp of how to use them in a story. It's confidence. Without that confidence, the story can't proceed. It'd risk accruing too many flaws. It's weaker as a result. The weaker it is, the more disposable it becomes. And I don't want to waste my or anyone else's time when there are better, more enjoyable, but also more profound works I could be creating elsewhere. No, it's not popularity I want.
5142510
Do you have an editor? They go a long way as far as bouncing ideas and checking to make sure everything is copasetic.
5142546
Only myself, in anything like a consistent manner. Occasionally, I've asked miscellaneous people to read particular works ahead of time, but for the most part I aim to pre-empt criticism and get the methodology right.
5142865
Well, I edit, in case you need one and wanted to see if we’re compatible as author / editor.
5143098
Mmm... I must confess to a certain skepticism regarding compatibility. Mostly, I've had inconsistent experience with proofreading and editing work before now, and I've never had a single dedicated editor (unless you count the Equestria Daily proofreading team, and since they're an anonymous plural and don't identify themselves as editors, I'll follow their example). Certainly not an editor who volunteered for the job, without prompting.
On the other hand, I suppose we could at least try it. If I have something in the works ready for scrutiny, I suppose we could give it a temporary trial run and see what happens.
I'm sending over a PM requesting a few details re: a potential M.O.
5143590
Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to infer that you need an editor. It’s just that, as far as the problems you’re describing are concerned, I’ve found that having an editor or pre-reader has helped extremely with those issues.
As for compatibility, I’m not guaranteeing it, by any stretch. It was just a friendly offer. And again, per personal experience, I’ve found that similar writing styles do not necessarily have any impact on editor/pre-reader compatibility. But you never know if you don’t test the water on a tiny project first.
One step after another. A writer is definitely a philosopher, or can be one if they choose to. Your writing has already shown me that.