Feb 22 2008
I’m such a troublemaker…?
I had a work-related teleconference this morning, at which I had to introduce myself, following which another attendee said, “Oh, you’re the one who started the biggest flame war of all time on the company chat board.”
Huh? I’ve been on the company chat board about five times in the last four years, and I open only innocuous threads such as “daily funnies” and “Thanksgiving plans” because I don’t want to be exposed to any drama. How could I possibly cause any drama?
As it turns out, Thanksgiving 2006 is what did me in. Someone asked what everyone’s plans were. I said I was having friends over and cooking everything except stuffing. Everybody was bringing their own stuffing because everybody had a different idea what constituted stuffing—bread and savory vegetables, or rice and cranberries, or barley and apples and walnuts… People couldn’t even agree whether to call it stuffing or dressing. My solution kept the peace, not to mention making less work for me. I wished everybody a great holiday and bailed.*
This provoked 400+ comments of escalating hostility that continued well past the Christmas stuffing/dressing season.
“It’s stuffing.”
“No, it’s dressing.”
“I looked it up in the dictionary. It’s stuffing.”
“Well, I looked it up in my dictionary, and it’s dressing, bitch.”
“Well, if your dictionary is as retarded as you are…”
And so on and so forth.
The inflammatory nature of one person’s comments was such that she allegedly was fired as a result.
In 2006, this would have shocked me. Now, not so much. In the last year, I’ve seen people stroke out over some of the most nonsensical things. Defending your family’s stuffing/dressing tradition to the death actually makes more sense than some of the other dustups I’ve seen.
This week’s “damn, people need to calm the fuck down” moment is brought to you by the letter M, as in “muse.” Use that word to anthropomorphize your creative process, pop some corn, grab a comfy seat, and wait for the grenades to start flying.
“There’s no muse! You can’t be a professional writer and flit around waiting for inspiration to strike! You sit your ass in the chair and write whether you feel like it or not!”
You’d think writers would be less literal, but no. As there seems to be some confusion, let me clarify that nobody talking about “the muse” really thinks there’s some chick in a toga whispering ideas in their ears. Or, if the upset stems from a sense of ”hey, no fair, I have to think up my own ideas,” nobody actually has some chick in a toga whispering ideas in their ears.
For probably the first time, I’m removing a book from my to-buy list because of online exposure to an author, not because I found her anti-muse outburst personally offensive, but because with it, she impressed me as utterly lacking imagination and fancy, which doesn’t fill me with confidence about her forthcoming book.
* For the record, I am so noncommittal on the issue, I use “stuffing” and “dressing” interchangeably, and I support your right to put anything in it you want.
Just don’t expect me to eat it.
9/30
11/4
11/4
11/25
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
My muse is a fat little guy in a cheap suit, with sweat stains around his collar and a stinky cigar. He looks a little like Danny DeVito, but isn’t nearly as cuddly. He’s given me the distinct impression that he dislikes me - like maybe he got stuck in rush-hour traffic and caught the assignment nobody else wanted.
He is as real to me as any character I’ve ever written, so…I dunno. There are some days he abandons me completely for other pursuits. (I suspect he has a gambling problem - likes the ponies, you know?) And there are some days he sits in the chair next to my desk and says stuff like, “If you were any good at all, we’d have a three-book contract by now.”
And there are SOME days - damn few just lately - when he takes a big puff off that cigar, leans his greasy head against the back of the chair and says just the right thing, at the right moment, about the right plot point or characterization quirk, and it sets me up for a full week of glorious inspiration and productivity.
Believing in my muse works for me. Mostly.
Now, I really must know…where did this conversation you reference take place? I’d love to get in on that noise.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 am
I’m not sure where it was. I had time to kill and was going down the sidebar somewhere (maybe RTB). I know wherever that link went, it was for a defunct blog, and I had to redirect to get to the new one. It wasn’t the blog of the Very Serious Professional Author; she merely pissed me off as a commenter. Maybe it was a group blog…?
In case you couldn’t tell, I have the memory of a 90-year-old with advanced Alzheimer’s who dropped a lot of acid as a young whippersnapper.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen muse bashing, though. Mention of a muse is apparently quite the blow to authorial professionalism because it makes light of the work involved. Because clearly writers should be viewed with the same gravity as people who risk their lives daily or are working to save lives at their jobs. It’s totally the same thing.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I don’t have a muse (obviously, because such beings do not exist), but if I did (and I’m not saying I do), I wouldn’t tell anyone because I imagine (not that I signed a contract to this effect or anything) it would be like the Fairly Odd Parents–reveal its existence and some jacked-up bodybuilder muse with a bad Austrian accent comes to take it away.
My characters don’t talk to me, either. That’s just silly.
And they never, ever try to seduce me. That’s crazy talk.
Writing is a very sober, dull, unimaginative process that must be pursued with the utmost professionalism every minute of every day, and no doubt we would all have multi-book contracts if we embraced this as the truth.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the Very Serious Matter of having a half-naked vampire wield the pop-top from a tin of peaches as a deadly weapon.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I live my life surrounded by people who do Very Important Jobs that Save People’s Lives. I’m the flake who burns dinner because she didn’t want to interrupt the flow of a love scene. It’s really hard to equate the two when Mr. Very Important Job comes in, stethoscope still hanging from his neck, and wants to know why the f*** the kitchen is filled with smoke, and what happened to that poor chicken? AGAIN.
So yeah. Other Very Professional Authors may have the luxury of kidding themselves about how important their life’s work is, but not I. And I’m a happier - if slightly hungrier - girl for it.