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Workshop: Accounting for Taste

Workshoppers:

Here's another set of Listposts from the Workshop (WORK: topic mask) and you have Margaret Carr and Kaas Baichtal to thank. 

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 17:04:37 -0500 Subject: WORK: Did the character "ask" for it? FROM: Jacqueline Lichtenbrerg -- (1999 comment -- in 1996, the Virtual Selyn Listserv ran on a University Server and Leigh Kimmel was "listowner" for us.

Nola wrote:

It's been my experience that oftimes someone likes or dislikes a story without being able to say *Why* they feel this way. I've even read of professional editors who had had this problem. I've known people who been on the other side of the coin. Send a story off to a friend for *constructive* criticism...only for them to come back with: "It's cute!"

JL here: Actually, the inability to say why you like or don't like something betrays a level of amateurism that I want to be sure "graduates" of this workshop never display.

A professional attitude means that when you have an inexplicable emotional response to a work of Art in any medium - you don't rest until you've explained your reaction. It may take decades - but you figure it out so you can produce that effect in others at will - or avoid it at will. Professionalism means knowing what you are doing and being able to do it at will whether there's inspiration or not. Being able to produce the piece of goods that will evoke the emotional response from the reader that your contract says the Work should evoke - a Romance, a Horror novel, etc. Whatever you've been paid to make it - that's what it has to be. In order to become that kind of professional, you must know why you react the way you do.

I've been gradually working up to an introduction to this topic - by the time I get there (How To Account For Taste) I expect you all to have read all of my columns that are posted on the Web. (http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ ) Lots of the points I make are really aimed at writers - but are couched in terms of the readers' perspective. There are a couple of those columns that discuss how to account for taste. Where it comes from, and how to cultivate it.

Meanwhile, when the new web site that Robyn King-Nitshke has been designing for us becomes available there will be a feminist version of my article on INTIMATE ADVENTURE. (1999 - see the index page where you found this article)

Writing students should be reading not only my columns but also the BOOKS that are reviewed there. At least as many as you can lay hands on. And each of those books should be analyzed for the elements we've been discussing and practicing.

(1999 comment -- also check for other review columns under www.simegen.com/reviews,/reviews/ and treat the contents of those columns similarly. You may not read every novel mentioned, but should have a working familiarity with a general cross-section of the novels reviewed. Also read about the novel and about the author on amazon.com -- you can use the handy search slot at the bottom of the rereadablebooks/ pages to find authors and titles on amazon.com without spending an hour wandering around.)

Live Long and Prosper, Jacqueline Lichtenberg