So. Close.
I am so close to the end of this book. So close. And things keep happening–no, not in the book, only the things that are supposed to happen, happen in there. Out here in the Writer’s World (notice how I avoid the word real) things keep happening to keep me away from the laptop.
Yesterday I was in a state by 5PM. Cranky, tapping at the keyboard, one thing after another, I was finally crowbar’d out of the house and went for sushi and pasta salad at Nature’s up the road. As soon as some brown rice and seaweed hit my stomach my blood sugar started to go up, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in forever. No wonder I was cranky.
After dinner, my mood rising by the second, I popped over into Borders. Yes, I know. I work in a small indie bookstore. I reserve the right to go into Borders if I feel like it, and right then I felt like the smell of paper and dust.
I have since discovered Orhan Pamuk. Cute, in a Nabokovian intellectual type of way; I picked up Snow and started paging through it in the coffee shop there. (Kiwi. Quiet. I am still faithful, I don’t drink the coffee there.) I finally ended up bringing it home and ordering more from the library. I’m going on a Pamuk jag. I can’t help myself.
Sometimes I wish I wrote more lit fic instead of urban fantasy/paranormal romance. No matter how often I defend my genre (or the genre I most often write in, if we’re being precise) I still sometimes have little tickles of wishing I could write something more…well, literary. It was John D. MacDonald or Stephen King (I think MacDonald writing the foreword to some Stephen King short stories) who said writers read anything with two feelings: grinning contempt or grinding envy. I’m not quite there yet, but I do sink into a good book, where I am dissuaded from “looking under the hood” by the sheer story or good craft, nary a hitch to impede my enjoyment…
…and I think, oh, you bastard, at the author. Affectionately, of course.
It’s been a year for good books. (And it’s only March.) There was Clare Clark’s The Nature of Monsters (the ending was a bit of a copout, but I didn’t mind) and a lovely translation of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, A Farewell to Arms (depressing), and Vive le Revolution.
But I am sinking away from my point. Sometimes I wish I wrote more serious, “literary” stuff. I feel a little bit like an intellectual plebeian, eating my Cheetos and wiping my fingers on my nose. It’s hard not to feel like that when the publishing world kind of treats urban fantasy or romance like an embarrassing nouveau riche cousin–yes, she’s got all the money, but does she have to be so gauche? Readers and writers alike are slightly patronized. Yes, urban fantasy’s hot and romance is a billion-dollar biz. But it’s not, you know, literary.
Or so society tries to tell us. Society says it goes like this: If it’s High Art, it’s important. If it’s Low Art, it makes money. Really good High Art made by minorities or women is labeled Low Art and given the additional stigma of being “not serious.” Low Art made by dead (or almost-dead) white guys turns into High Art. (Just look at Andy Warhol. He’s the boss, applesauce.) And Low Art, of course, only makes money about fifteen percent of the time. If it’s Low Art and makes money, it’s a sellout.
*sigh* Now that I’ve completely depressed myself and made some hideously simplistic (and thus arguable) statements, I’m going to bow out. I have writing to do. The kids are watching FLCL, courtesy of Crab Caution, and if I really buckle down and sit here, I think I just might finish this book today and get back to sanity sometime soon.
Wish me luck.
