The Myth of Easy Success
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Now, let’s talk about being a student of technique
But first, let’s take care of some business—in 3 parts:
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Now, let’s discuss: Is Effort Cringe?
"Technique is the test of sincerity."
Ezra Pound
The other day, Pablo Báez reached out to me, saying, “I have a question: how do you approach technique? Am I wrong for consciously wanting to implement them, as opposed to letting them come naturally? I saw someone post something about people like that being ‘try-hards’ and not really ‘having IT’. Not that I care, but it did make me wonder.”
I told him that was nonsense. Intentional implementation is learning and growth.
Thanks for coming to my Thad Talk.
Easy Success is a Myth
The machine works hard to make fame look easy. We glorify the destination and overlook the journey, and the reason might be for the purposes of identification with the idol. The more we understand the sacrifice and work it takes to achieve success, the more alienated we feel from it. The star who seemingly stumbled into fame is celebrated because we can imagine that tomorrow, it may be our time to be plucked out of obscurity.
Rebecca Spelman shared a similar thought on Notes recently, talking about how she gets embarrassed promoting her work, as if quality alone will draw an audience. She knows better. She has a marketing degree that tells her otherwise, and yet the myth persists, shaming her for the effort it takes to succeed.
Her Note is also featured the illustration above. Thank you
We can play it cool and get nowhere. To become good at something, we have to be willing to be bad at it. To achieve anything, we have to embrace the cringe.
There are many approaches to art. If your approach is to do what comes naturally, I’m not going to argue with you. There are people who are against ever doing a rewrite or edit, believing it perverts the initial artistic vision. I don’t agree, but whatever you do and why-ever you do it, go for it.
What we do is scary, and people need reassurance. Many people find that assurance by believing, and preaching, that their approach is the path to success and no other path works. That’s what so many writing rules boil down to: insecure people convincing themselves that they’re going to make it because they found the secret formula.
There’s no such thing.
Condemning the “try-hard” is an effort at double consolation. The writer is consoled for not making an effort and takes this lack of effort as proof that he has a special quality that those working harder than him lack, therefore assuring him that he is on the path of success.
Listen. Do whatever you want, but don’t tear down others for having their own way.
Discover all my essays on:
Middlebrow Literary Fiction on Substack
I’m not here to pick a fight with
, but his recent article fits into this discussion. I have a few issues with it, but I also subscribed to this publication because of it. It’s complicated.The ploy used by the article is to come out swinging at The Auraist for focusing on literary fiction that’s middlebrow, as opposed to the experimental stuff he reads. I can’t fault him for that. Some within the writing community play a similar game, challenging others to make a name for themselves. I have a soft spot for The Auraist because I won that challenge to prove the existence of the self without circular reasoning, but I’m not here to come running to their defense, either.
Besides, I’m really interested in what experimental fiction Elkins is going to recommend. I’m here for it.
No, the point in question is this:
And so—the last point—if you focus on your writing style you are apt to mistake the effect for the cause. Anger, frustration, skepticism, fetishization: those are feelings that bring style along the way a dinghy might be carried in a flood.
Book recommendations can come from anywhere. I’m interested, yes, but this line is ultimately why I subscribed. It felt like a personal challenge. I had to subscribe.
It’s not personal, of course. He’s an academic who refers to Booker-prize winners as middlebrow literary fiction. I’m a group home manager who writes about line-level prose techniques. The man’s going after George Saunders. I’m just a middle-aged dude with a few genre pieces to his credit and one kick-ass literary story.
But I do want to examine that line of his.
First, I’ve written before about how slippery the notions of style and voice are. No one really agrees on what they mean, and I don’t think he means the study of technique to improve your prose. He’s not shaming us for being students of the craft. When he talks about style, I think he’s referring to those personal rules people use to intentionally differentiate their work.
When William Faulkner said that people who concentrate on their style don’t have much to say, that’s what I think he meant, too. I didn’t know to see it that way when I wrote the tongue-in-cheek essay, To Hell with William Faulkner, but now, I’m pretty sure that was his intent.
Even if they were referring something closer to what we do here, I wouldn’t particularly feel the need to defend our honor.
Elkins says if we focus on our style, we’re likely to mistake the effect for the cause. I think he’s encouraging writers to focus on the feeling that you bring to your work and the feeling your work produces. Those emotions shape a personal style, rather than the other way around.
As he said earlier in the post: There’s writing that is so taxed by rage or anger that “style” is just the rhythm of its throat while it yells.
If that’s what he means, do I agree? I don’t know, yet, but I very much want to see where this is going.
— Thaddeus Thomas
The latest entry in the shared reading of All The Pretty Horses is currently sitting at 2,163 views. Have you read it?
Weekly Flash Fiction for Paid Subscribers—these won’t be emailed to you, but you’ll find the link in my regular posts. Here’s the beginning of a flash serial: Forgotten Blood.
I can't believe that anyone was actually claim that if you're trying to improve your art, you're a tryhard. Or that you don't have IT. That's preposterous.
I take specific offense because I am most definitely a tryhard. I want everyone else who writes to be a tryhard as well. All of the best authors that I know personally are tryhards.
According to things like standardized testing, which since I recently packed up most of what is left of my childhood which fits in a small document box, I was able to go through many years of these test results at once. I was precocious in the sense of written and verbal communication. in first grade according to a Stanford test result sheet I found during this process I basically broke the metric. A total and complete outlier.
What people mistake for natural talent at a young age is almost always a precociousness or predisposition towards a certain thing. Everyone else has to start from relative zero. Famously one of my favorite authors cannot spell for the life of him. And he fully admits it. He's written over 20 books and he still turns in final drafts That will give a copy editor a seizure.
Not only that, he's a literary author, populist author, approves stylist, and he comes from a very distinctive background tautologically.
Thaddeus, I think that me and you could come up with a pretty good dissection of voice versus style. And the differentiation between the two. Because I already have my own pet theories about it but I would like someone to share them with. And around here you're one of the people that I trust to talk about these sorts of subjects with.
I digress. I digress constantly but still.
It also comes to mind for me personally us that anyone not meeting a story or a piece of work on its level but expecting something from it which isn't there. Never was there and never will be is a disingenuous act. I I feel like people who write externalized arch plot narrative stories, you know the big names, the ones that you can get at the airport. The fiction that I call airport fiction. People don't understand the fact that these are some of the hardest stories to write because they have specific forms. They almost always have specific expectations from the reader. And I've seen too many authors who haven't put in the time, who insist on the absolution of their artistic vision as being what is going to move the needle or reinvent the wheel when trying to write one of these stories. They're actually incredibly hard to write. This is why even though they may not have the best prose, or they may not be my preferred anything to read, I do respect these authors, because it's very hard to do what they do.
As far as marketing goes, if you're not willing to market yourself you can be the next van Gogh. In fact, with my one published short story, my business as an editor and my imposter syndrome telling me I have nothing to say, especially nothing to say worth buying and putting a book, I'm well on the way to eating yellow paint in an effort to allay my depression.
I know some amazing authors who want people to just find them. It's not going to happen. On the other hand, I'm a carnival barker and I will if I feel the need insist myself upon you. If you're someone whose work I admire, I will do the same for you as well. But there's certainly no shame in working actively at what you do and what you love.
And a lot of artistic endeavors and industries but I've heard it used most around the music industry. There is a short saying that sums it up.
"They're a 10-year overnight success story."
This is most artistic endeavor for most of us in a nutshell. Anyone who says otherwise is a Philistine.
And this is coming from someone who will work with self-laid constraints for a certain type of story. Someone who enjoys writing traditional narrative fiction. Someone who is a formal and informal experimentalist. But the one thing I'm always trying to do is I'm trying to outdo myself. Because I want my next story to hit as hard or harder than the one that came before it. If it doesn't, there's no point to putting it out.
Anyway, it's always a to pleasure to be an early commenter on your posts Thaddeus. I do hope you have a good day. It is looking like it's going to rain tonight.
Substack is like working in Corporate: even if you don't like it, you must invest in "personal marketing." Being good at your work (or writing) will only take you to a certain point, and you'll need to "convince" someone else to level up, as Mario needs Luigi to rescue Princess Peach. It feels cringe, bad, pedantic... you name it, but it is necessary. No one will knock on your door because they "knew" you would be there. It's the other way around; you have to make them fall in love with you, and want your work, books, and whatever you have to offer. It's the necessary evil, and I would love not to have to hold hands with that cringy feeling, but somehow, I chose it :)