Best creative art rant ever! As a fellow alien with perfectionist issues, I have had a long writer's block because I find the gatekeeper gauntlet very daunting and rejection is really uncomfortable! LOL I've finally decided that I'm good on my own - I'm a good writer and an even better editor so independent is going to be my friend!
Would we have some of the worlds greatest artwork to enjoy if the artists followed the main opinion on what art should look like? No, we have it beacuse they walked their own path and didn't give a sh**
Now that I know this, I did encounter a gatekeeper. My crafts teacher in high school. She seriously tried controlling what I created. I’m thinking she was a bit of a narcissist too. And apparently jealous & intimidated. By the way, I watched “Ice Pirates” the other day. Good movie! Sending you lots of hugs and love David!❤️
Hugs and love right back at you Val! I think that one comment was spot on. We are all artists until we start hearing from authority figures that we can't, shouldn't, etc. I'm happy when people find their creativity again!
You do you boo. I love that saying. I'm excited that you're putting out such wonderful prose. You know what works for you. I can understand how a new writer would not have confidence to self publish. All roads lead to Rome.
I barely had the confidence to do it myself, but my metric for success was "finish something." Everything that happened after that was the cherry on top!
The trend of storytelling structure these days is the "Save the Cat" structure and it's become so popular that it's talked about ad nauseam. It's like a lot of modern authors, well at least the ones I see on RU-vid, mostly adhere to that structure. Well, I don't! I believe ANY structure can be used as long as it's used skillfully in telling the story.
Writing is so subjective, and you have a point. Do writers need other people’s approval in order to publish? They shouldn’t, but it often happens that good writing never makes it into print. Gatekeepers in book publishing are all about the business side of things, marketing, and they have their biases. There’s nothing wrong with self publishing.
Absolutely. If great writing doesn't make it into print, there's a failure elsewhere in the chain - often because people feel that they HAVE to earn someone's approval to publish the word. But that's not the reality of it.
I think what pisses me off these days in the publishing industry is the use of "sensitivity readers" which takes gatekeeping to a whole other level. It's the worse kind of gatekeeping. There are publishers out there that are looking for books that will check off the boxes for what they're requiring such as having an LGBTQ+ character, check, a diverse cast of characters, check, a writer can't write a character of a race, or ethnicity different from them, etc, etc, etc. And I don't feel like my stories should or have to fit this proscribed set of rules nor should any writer have to write on eggshells because they're afraid of offending readers and being canceled. This is a huge problem and this hinders creativity. If an author has a character that uses an offensive word there are readers out there that will jump to the conclusion that that word is personally coming out of the author's mouth and not out of the character. This, to me, is judgmental and juvenile of the reader and instead, they should take a more nuanced and complex approach in their thinking. And I'm seeing a lot of these modern Hollywood movies focusing their attention on checking the boxes instead of telling a good story; storytelling these days in films is bad. I don't want to see the publishing industry continuing on this trend because that will be the death of creativity and freedom for the writer. It's the "sensitiveness" that bothers me.
Oh believe me, I am 100% with you here. I have a video planned on Sensitivity Readers and let me assure you, I am not going to be kind to the topic lol.
