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Thursday, 24 May 2007
Hone, Hone, on the Range
Honing my craft.
Define.
You'll remember in this blog a while back me saying no-one at any level of writing could define "Show, don't tell." Well, here's another meaningless little would-be aphorism for you. "You should spend more time honing your craft."
Absolutely, all for it, if only we knew what it was.
Okay. My chosen craft is writing. Now I must hone it.
Hands up those who know what honing is, or when they last did it? Do you even know how it feels to hone?
If we are not exactly sure how to hone, or even why we might hone, how the fuck do 'they' propose we actually do hone?
Hone -vb. To sharpen or polish with or as if with a hone.
Hone n. a fine whetstone, esp for sharpening razors.
Fine, the translation therefore is:- "You should spend more time sharpening your craft with a whetstone until it is sharp as a razor."
Useful advice for woodcarving maybe, not so great for a novel. Although I do think the world needs more razor-sharp everything. On the other hand I'm looking around me and seeing a hell of a lot of professional writing that's as sharp as a woolly sweater. I'm guessing there's not a whole lot of honing going on.
In all my sad and sorry years of being a writer I have only ever seen this maxim spouted in two places, the same two places, coincidentally, where I have also seen "Show don't tell." In the ranks of perpetual amateurs and in form letters from large publishing houses.
I once even managed to combine these two when I got an editor from a large publishing house who talked about writing with all the stunning incomprehension of someone who'd never actually done it, plus she managed to use both phrases at once.
But I like to think she was the exception rather than the rule. (If only.)
I came across "honing your skills" tonight on a sci-fi writer's blog. He/they (he was part of a writers' group – aieeeeeeee) offered forums where you could "hone your skills." Which made me immediately click on the little cross on the top of my screen with the darkly muttered words, "Oh, fuck off and die."
Talk about instantly losing your credentials and your audience. That in turn brought me up short, wondering why my reaction was so emphatic, and I realised just how often I read those words on the net and how utterly, unbelievably stupid they are.
It's like some universal panacea for the original-thinking-challenged. All these poor suckers going to their little websites, their local classes, believing that 'doing' 1,000 words every Thursday and letting Needle-head, Broadbin, Strawberry-moon and Carribbean_boy 'critique' them is somehow "honing their skills."
Sharp as a razor? I don't think so. If there was anything sharp about them they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Is it all just a question of ignorance then? Is it simply that they have not yet learned better? Yes and no. The very young may be duped for a while by such pocket catchphrases, but anyone who has been writing for more than a year or two should begin to notice what works and what doesn't. More importantly, if you're serious about writing you shouldn't have to fall back on hackneyed nonsense to express yourself. If you're not sure what the phrase means exactly why the fuck are you using it?
No, there is something a little more sneaky and dubious afoot with these cheery little phrases, and it's the form letters that give us the clue.
Why would 'the professionals' use them, if they don't mean anything?
You've just answered your own question. Because they don't mean anything. That's what a form letter is, an official statement of not meaning anything.
If a publisher never wants to hear from you again he isn't going to offer you genuine criticisms of your work. He doesn't want to get into a debate with you, he wants you to go away. So this is what he says:-
You should "buy a copy of the Writers & Artists Yearbook." – Translation: Go away and don't bother me. I'm not a fucking resource.
You should "hone your craft." – Translation: I didn't read your MS, so I have no idea what the quality of your prose is. As this statement doesn't mean anything I am not actually asking you to do anything you could actually do, and therefore you will go away and not bother me.
You should "show, not tell". Translation: No two people understand the same thing by this phrase, therefore you have no idea what I am asking you to do, therefore you cannot do it, and come back and bother me.
They have a lot more of these "not legally binding" expressions they love to use, all equally vacuous, but because they have appeared on so many form letters, for so many years, amateur writers have adopted them like Pavlov's dogs learned to get food – the publishers keep saying them so they must be true.
What must be true? They haven't actually said anything. That's the point.
This is why falling over phrases like these on 'writers' sites makes me switch off – if they are so undiscriminating and gullible (or patronising and pedantic) to use this line in bull, what could they possibly teach me?
The use of any of these phrases by a writer – amateur, professional or somewhere in-between – is a sign of bullshitting, plain and simple. Sometimes professional writers will use them, but usually only on amateur writers. After all, they've learned from the masters on how to make the little people go away.
These phrases show up most often used by one amateur against another as a sad attempt at one-upmanship. Among the legions of amateur writers on the net their use is rife, screaming a total lack of genuine experience. You can hardly go ten yards in any direction, in any field of amateur writing, without falling over some 'Queenie' type (and it is usually a woman, I'm sorry to say) holding court over her disciples, captivating them with her writerly wisdom, which is supposedly based on writing erratic quantities of unedited short 'stories', seen by no-one but her net acquaintances, but which is really based on memorising as many useful maxims and phrases from 'professional writers' (i.e. manuals and articles by other amateurs) as she can.
A bona fide is as good as it sounds, to someone who's even more ignorant than you are.
I've been a full-time, professional writer for 20-odd years (can't remember and I'm not fucking working it out). I have enough writing credits to tattoo both arms and part of my chest, but you will never see a list of them anywhere.
That's not anywhere. Ever.
Why? Because parading old writing credits is sad beyond belief and a sign of rank amateurism. The only time I ever used them was when my CV was sent to magazines that had not used me before. I couldn't even tell you now who I wrote for. I can barely remember three of them… when I try hard. I tend to remember the ones I missed rather than the ones I got (thus proving you regret what you don't do rather than what you do). I rely on my human memory stick (Mr Scratchmann) to remember shit like that.
I stopped freelancing in the eighties, although I did a little briefly in the nineties – why the fuck would I want to remember what I did twenty years ago? What bearing would it have on anything? Why would that impress anyone? Other than sad amateurs, of course.
It's like the club thing. Remember Avocado (see preceding blog) with her Romance Writers of America? Well, in the eighties when I was freelancing we got the notion that it would help our credentials to join The Society of Authors.
For those not in the know this is the writers 'club' in the UK. It's one of Britain's two professional bodies, a sort of writers Trades Union. It's expensive to join, but, more important than that, you can't just get in for the asking. It has a strict professional credits system. You have to have done not only enough, but the right kind of work, paying the right level of money – no five copies and a stick of bubble gum for these mothers. What's more, it gets far more applications than it can handle and it doesn't need your money.
Well, we applied and got accepted. We were members. We belonged.
And what changed? Nothing. After the first glow of 'I must be a real writer' wore off we realised that it didn't get us more work – the quality of our work and our reputations did that. All the Soc of Auths did was cost us fees. We stayed in it for a year or two and then quietly let it slip away, unnoticed and unmissed.
You are only as good as your writing. Not your proposed writing, or the writing you would do if you weren't too busy criticising others' writing. Not the writing you'd do if you were writing the screenplay to the new Batman, not the writing you could do because you are a member of the Romance Writers of America, but your actual bona fide writing. That stuff you're supposed to be honing, remember?
Come to think of it, that's what honing might be if it actually existed – just sitting down and writing.
Rather like this now, in fact.
Fuck, I've been honing all along and I didn't even know it.
Well, whaddya know?
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