In Stephen King’s
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he tells a story that resonates with me quite a bit. It’s a story about a little 8-page “book” he made on his home printing press as a boy, his print adaptation of the film version of “The Pit and the Pendulum” which he’d just seen at the movies. He took it in to school and sold copies of it to his friends.Alas, when his teacher discovered the book, King was summoned to the Principal’s office. Oddly, it wasn’t the copyright law violation or the issue of plagiarism his teacher and principal objected to. They just didn’t like the idea of him turning the school into a marketplace, especially not, his teacher added, to sell such trash as “The Pit and the Pendulum”.
“What I don’t understand, Stevie,” she said, “is why you’d write junk like this in the first place. You’re talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?”
She had rolled up a copy of my book and was brandishing it at me the way a person might brandish a rolled up newspaper at a dog that had piddled on the rug.
She waited for me to answer - to her credit, the question was not entirely rhetorical - but I had no answer to give. I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since, too many I think, being ashamed about what I write.
I know how he felt. When I was at camp, we used to have Saturday Night Campfire, where the kids would get together and do little skits. Some of them were old standards, reproduced week after week, year after year. Some people would improvise. I used to write my own.
One in particular, based on the Mad magazine cartoons I loved at the time, was a series on “How People are Stupid”. Basically, my friends and I would come out, set up a situation, and then have something horrible happen, stemming from our character’s stupidity.
For instance, one skit involved somebody cleaning his gun in a stupidly careless fashion (we used a toy gun in the skit) and shooting himself in the head. Personally, I thought this was funny, as well as educational. We had riflery lessons at the camp, and one of the things we were taught many times is to make sure the gun was unloaded, including the chamber, before doing anything like cleaning it, looking down the barrel, what have you.
In one skit I was playing a stupid guy hauling water to the garden using a bucket with a hole in it, thus getting to the garden with an empty bucket and having to start again. The character was getting more and more upset, and I believe the ultimate destination of this finely-developed narrative was a hilarious fatal heart attack. However, before it could go that far, a counsellor stood up and stopped the skit.
“I think we’ve all seen enough,” she said. “This isn’t appropriate. Why don’t you do skits about how smart people are?”
I didn’t answer. I took my bucket with the hole in it, and sat down with the rest of the campers in embarrassed silence while we went on to sing some camp song or other. Maybe it was a hymn.
In retrospect, the answer is, “Because doing a skit about how smart people are isn’t funny.” Stupid can be funny, or tragic, or can provide the groundwork for a cautionary tale. Smart and wholesome and heroic is all fine and dandy, but not very interesting. It’s certainly not the stuff of Saturday Night Campfire Skits. But maybe that’s just me.
Someone even came on this blog one time giving me crap about a story I wrote, which had a very violent ending. I got a very nasty note from this random person who posted the comments anonymously at my blog, claiming that based on the story, I was unstable enough that they were scared to even post their name. I felt bad about the reaction this person had, and took the story down. I wish I hadn’t.
Everyone has an opinion, and people are certainly entitled to air theirs. But it’s funny how many people want to tear your work down, or even tear you down. My advice to you aspiring artists and writers out there is just be brave. Do what you do and ignore the self-appointed Art Police. They’re always looking for something to complain about, and if they’re talking about your stuff, it was just your turn this time. They’ll forget you soon and move onto someone else.
I think King is right about this. His final words on the subject sum up my feelings perfectly:
I think I was 40 before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write, or paint, or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose, someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.
