Comments on Simon Strantzas: Mystique of withdrawing

Thank you for writing, G. I think a closer analogy...

2009-09-16T19:34:21.730-04:00

Thank you for writing, G. I think a closer analogy to Lovecraft's letter would be emails sent rather than blog posting. Blogs are closer to articles, I'd imagine, except there is no editorial control. We live in an age of "too much information", and it robs the author of the mystique he once had. I mean this in general terms. Authors are no longer as "other" as they once were. I don't know if I can describe the feeling exactly, but it's the difference between, say, seeing a pretty girl in a magazine, and knowing that pretty girl. The former is a fantasy, the latter a reality. The same sort of thing with writers we know too much about. We gain a closer connection to them, but lose a bit of that mystery that can be so alluring. When I comment on the "cult" status of Ligotti, I don't mean to imply the end goal is to achieve cult status, rather the status he has achieved, that of cult status, might not have been possible without that mystique. Were he to have run a blog and participated on messageboards, his circle of fans might very well be less. That allure of mystery enhances the writer in some ways.

As for my book ... well, I never said it was "dynamite"; I said I think the book is dynamite. Your or anyone else's opinion of it won't change mine. That said, I hope you like it when your copy finally arrives.

Maybe you have not thought about readers from fore...

2009-09-16T17:54:29.255-04:00

Maybe you have not thought about readers from foreign countries (not English speaking, I mean) who are tired of reading that sort of stuff that is being translated (into Italian, in my case) and whose only possibility is the net. Now, for example, I’m waiting for “Cold to the touch” from Tartarus ; before buying it, I wanted to know something about the author (not about his dogs or holidays or job, but what he thinks about literature and the art of writing, philosophy, politics and so on);
it’s interesting to know, say, what Mark Samuels thinks about religion and science, or that he is a catholic (which does not seem to me wholly consistent with the atmosphere of his tales, by the way). I think that blogs, ect., could be, in a way, what letters were a century ago. (imagine we didn’t have Lovecraft’s letters; what of his materialist/mechanist Weltanschauung? Does it really emerge from his tales? Would he be the prey of occultists like, say, Kenneth Grant?).

>>>One can email pretty much any author nowadays and, with a few notable exceptions, get a >>>personal response. Now that I can touch these people, some of their magic is gone.

Well, what kind of magic is gone? This is the first time I post a comment, and I don’t expect to get any response whatever; anyway, a response will certainly not destroy the only magic a writer should be interested in: that of his work.

>>>The mystique has helped writers such as Thomas Ligotti, who may not have reached the cult->>>status he has without it.

To a mature reader, the “cult status” means nothing; it’s really a childish way to think about literature, don’t you think?

Moreover, how many artificial cult writers...

>>>...I have this new book out that I think is dynamite...

Ehm...ok...we well see...

g.

That's the biggest fear, of course (reanimated and...

2009-09-16T08:14:08.663-04:00

That's the biggest fear, of course (reanimated and Ian): you're heroes turn out to be the last people you'd like to know. True, the art is not the artist to some degree, but it's still a major disappointment.

I think blogs/websites/Twitter/Facebook can be ext...

2009-09-15T17:46:12.518-04:00

I think blogs/websites/Twitter/Facebook can be extremely useful for a writer, assuming he/she knows what they're getting into.

I've gotten to know a lot of writers via their online presence. Some I'm glad to have met, others I wish I had just stuck to their books. :)

Interesting topic. My first interactions with auth...

2009-09-15T13:47:11.478-04:00

Interesting topic.
My first interactions with authors came when the net was just a wee baby and I came to the quick conclusion that maybe it wasn't such a great thing to be able to mingle with your heroes with the click of a key.

What if your favourite author was an asshole?

Luckily, in most cases, it turned out that i was the asshole.

Nowadays i flat out dig the interactions with writers. I LOVE to write so to me its kind of like playing tennis at the public courts and in walks Nedal and Federer to hit a few balls, say what what and all that... give a few pointers (like Simon said, i wouldn't want to read blogs about dogs and kids but if the author has similar reading habits as me or love for horror film that i do, i enjoy their input on such topics)

When i become a famous writer ;) i'm gonna have a wicked web page yo! When i'm driving my bus i'm thinking about blog titles and shit. It's gonna be pimp! and fly! and dope!

*cough* sorry bout that...

:)

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Barbara. Part ...

2009-09-15T12:25:14.328-04:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Barbara. Part of me reads it and says "that's not what I said", but then discovers upon rereading my entry that I said exactly that. The price of not revising these entries (which is another topic entirely).

To respond in reverse: I do believe you're right — that to show doubt is to evoke it. I also think it's the mark of an amateur writer, one who is still not quite sure of him- or herself. I've consciously tried to avoid doing that here for some time (though, thinking as highly of myself as I do, it was pretty easy).

But as for blogs that cover a wide range of topics, I have to disagree with you. As I've told a few people interested in blogging, the trick, I think, is to write the kind of blog you would want to read. For me, I visit blogs of writers because I want to read about writerly things. The last thing I want to know about is how the dog is doing or how the vacation was. Much like the host who pulls out the slideshow of the family's vacation, these things hold no interest for me. I'd rather a blog with fewer postings that are on topic than many that are not. My own blog is exactly the sort I'd like to visit -- where I try and balance news with my own views on writing, and anything tangentially related. I've seen other blogs do something similar, and I find them almost as fascinating as I find my own.

I suppose, though, to get back to the point of my entry, is that sometimes I miss the days where my heroes were not flesh and blood. Writers then were a bit larger-than-life, and I didn't have to imagine, even for an instant, what one might look like doing yoga, or growing old. The mystique has helped writers such as Thomas Ligotti, who may not have reached the cult-status he has without it. I don't suggest something as drastic as becoming a recluse, but rather a writer who just lets the words do the work for him. I recognise the world we live in is different now than even twenty years ago, and the genre itself is different, and in this time we have to be more active in selling our work; and I also recognise that to be a person rather than a mysterious figure probably draws more readers than it loses, but sometimes I just want things to be they were before. I think we all feel that way about something sometimes; this just happens to be my thing, I suppose.

There's a lot here to go at, Simon, so point by po...

2009-09-15T11:56:18.824-04:00

There's a lot here to go at, Simon, so point by point:

Authorial mystique: If that's what you want to cultivate, then fine; but you'll have to stay off teh Interwebz. If you do decide to have an online presence, then you can't really start moaning about loss of mystique. And why cultivate that aura anyway? Unless you're J.D. Salinger, or have convictions for making child porn in your background, making yourself known online can't really do much besides introduce you to people who may not have heard of you.

Using Facebook/Twitter to promote your work: Yeah, go ahead, almost every writer who's on FB (I don't know about Twitter) drops at least the occasional 'Hey, I have a new story/novel/collection coming out soon' mention into their updates; some have a dedicated page. But if you go into Facebook looking at it primarily as a way of promoting yourself, you're going to become one of those tiresome 'friends' whose every update - sometimes several a day - is about their new book. Which is annoying. I look at Facebook primarily as a social thing: it's a way to keep in touch with friends, and make new ones. Look at it that way, and as a promotional tool second, and then just relax and enjoy the interaction with others.

The magic is gone: How, exactly? Speaking for myself, I'm thrilled to bits that I can quickly and easily contact, say, Peter Straub or Neil Gaiman or Mike Mignola. That, to me, is magic. The fact that I know that Peter, for example, is at a given time having a glass of wine in his garden, or that Mike's just finished inking a cover, doesn't 'lessen the magic' for me.

The mystique of withdrawing: Once you've been a presence on teh Interwebz, withdrawing has to be handled carefully, I think, otherwise it might - just might - come across as pretentious ('I don't like the rabble being able to contact/know about me') or calculated ('Hmm, that didn't go the way I'd hoped it would, maybe I should adopt a different persona, mysterious and aloof, yeah, that's it!').

Blogging about the horrors of the literary life: That can get really tedious really fast, since writing is inherently a pretty boring thing for everyone except the writer (and sometimes even for the writer, on those days when you spend more time deleting, or staring at a blank screen, than actually writing). Which is why I tend to prefer the blogs of writers who write about lots of other things besides their own writing (John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman leap to mind).

If you show doubt about a work, is it contagious: I think so, to an extent. If a writer wries about his or her work, I'd like to see enthusiasm and excitement, not 'Well, I did the best I could, but I'm still not sure it works.' This may be just me, but if I were having doubts about one of my stories, I'd keep them to myself.