Writing Is About Risk (So is Slitting Your Wrists)

I have no idea why I titled the post like that. I just liked the sound of it. That and riffing on this quote. In any case, this post has nothing to tie itself together... except maybe your veins after slitting your wrist. Writing (and blogging), after all, is hard work.

From writer Charles Coleman Finlay, here's a great letter from one of my favorite storytellers, Kelly Link, written for an online workshop:

Take risks...Take chances. Write stories whose characters and the endings surprise even you. After you've written them, go back over them and make them even more surprising. And don't think by "ambitious" I mean that the prose style has to be eccentric(although it certainly can be). And read widely -- not just the new stuff, and each other's work, but older work, too. I've been reading through the collection PLATINUM POHL, and there are fantastic and alarming and wonderful short stories in there. Are there some inside you?

This in turn led me to think about something in our review-man from Japan Jay Tomio's post about branding and books (which is a pretty good look at how we label our reading), where he mentions:

When I ponder Magic Realism, the request I have is to ask folks to name me some awful examples of Magic Realism... Apparently there are no novels termed Magic Realism or Slipstream (which I have to admit I generally love) that are considered absolutely awful... Does this sub-genre lack a gutter? Are magic realists automatically leveled-up to at least average/passable writers? I follow SF/F pretty closely and not just my own opinion, but general opinion as well and while I can easily name a 100 awful epic fantasy novels (that are generally considered such), I can’t name a dozen efforts (being wary of percentages) at magic realism that are considered as dire. What’s up with that?

Equally important, small press publisher Lou Anders replied to Jay's post:

I think that the reason you cannot point to an example of truly awful slipstream (though if you had a slush pile, I guarantee you that you could), is similar to the reason it is difficult to point to a truly awful story in McSweeney’s or Tin House. When one writes for the mainstream you lose the defined boundary area of like works in which to compare and contrast “in the tradition” and everything becomes that much more subjective. When one is writing with sincereity and competence about the mundanities of everyday existance, the danger may not be that the story will be truly awful, but that it may be bland.

Interesting, no? And thus endeth my turn to blog without really blogging (or my way of putting up links)...