The Living, Breathing World of the Reader-Writer Relationship

If there had not been a web, I would probably never have been a writer. I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have the kind of dialogue I have with the people who read my stories and my essays.

Of course, the interaction does get addictive. And I have been accused of being the literary equivalent of an exhibitionist from time to time. It’s a fair criticism – I probably am. From time to time, though, I get these wonderful comments on a story, where people have read it and then either revisited an experience in their own past and reflected on it differently, or tell me how they wish the story had ended in another way.  Sometimes people see parallels to their lives in certain aspects of my stories and then I feel that amazing envelopment of being allowed into a reader’s mind. It’s wonderful. I doubt I would write without it.

Then, sometimes, I get readers whom I’ve disappointed. And they let me know that something I have written has disturbed them, or jars with their experiences. Sometimes it’s just that they believe I’ve gotten something wrong. And sometimes I have.

After reading my story Pleasure’s Apprentice, Korhomme gave me some crits on twitter. One I took to heart, feeling it was very important to incorporate the change into the story,  and the other I decided to ignore because I disagreed. He has written a post on it at his new blog “The Empirical Reader“. I told him I thought he was what Umberto Eco described, in his essay “The Author and his Interpreters“, as an ’empirical reader’ because facts were very important to him, and when he found something that he felt was untrue, it really spoiled the story for him.  I didn’t mean it as an insult. I tried to explain that some readers were simply much more likely to suspend disbelief than others. Most writers, from time to time, make factual or grammatical errors. Some people find that unbearable, and some people find it easy to overlook because they are engrossed in the story.

Nonetheless, I gather I hurt his feelings. It wasn’t purposeful on my part. I do appreciate criticism from my readers, both negative and positive. That doesn’t mean I will necessarily take it to heart and change the story. People have a right to their opinions but, when I disagree with them,  I am the writer of my stories – my name is on them and I take responsibility for them. And so I feel justified in saying that I disagree and giving my reasons why.

Similarly, I have had people criticize me for using words they are unfamiliar with. This has happened more than once. Surveying other writers who aim for the literary side of their genre, I don’t think I use a particularly large vocabulary, but I’ll own that it may be a little more extensive than other writers within my genre. However, this is something I won’t give on. I don’t use my vocabulary to make anyone feel small. I use the words because I think they are the best ones for the job. Similarly, I often run across words I don’t know or phrases or usage I’m not familiar with, and I have am proud to admit that I have the OED in my browser’s quick links bar. I love learning new words. Every time I am challenged to look something up, it feels like a gift to me. We have this gorgeous, rich, constantly changing language – who can know it all?

But if you are someone who feels like the need to look up a word is a personal slight, a mind game, or me trying to make you feel small, you might want to give my writing a miss.


Comments

15 responses to “The Living, Breathing World of the Reader-Writer Relationship”

  1. I have a friend who works with words, she describes herself as a wordhoarder, I think it is a wonderful phrase and think perhaps it would suit you too RG.

  2. Well said. I feel like everyone who reads my blog expects immediate gratification, and when I write a longer or more complicated post, people start complaining. It’s incomprehensible.

  3. I’m never afraid to expand my vocabulary. Sometimes I have to interpret from context to keep the narrative flow going and look the word up later, but I don’t let a thing like that stop me. Doesn’t spoil the story, it’s usually a joy.

    However, another thing that can take me ‘out of the story’, at least for a moment, are homonyms. One particular favourite seems to have become “reign” vs “rain” vs “rein”, the usual culprit being something like “She gave him free reign to indulge his fantasies.” (Should be “rein” in this context.) Silly things like that give me a small wince before I plunge on…

    But some things I read, and sadly I mean professionally as well as in my personal reading, are simply bad. Incomplete sentences, missing or inappropriate punctuation… these things can make things difficult to interpret correctly, or at their worst can invert the sense altogether. Someone said to me that “Arts students didn’t have to learn to spell,” and I had to bite back the reply that, from what I’d seen, they didn’t have to learn to write at all, and neither did Science students.

    Modern technology may well have made communication easier, but sadly modern education doesn’t seem to have kept up.

    Chuckle. I’ll get off my ‘curmudgeonly old man’ soapbox now!

    1. My particular sin is there-they’re-their. I write too fast, try and proofread too fast and miss it. God bless the people who find it for me.

      I do have to feel sorry for students these days, though. They are not getting taught grammar and their essays are not being sent back to them unmarked because of spelling or grammar mistakes. How does one learn to use a language well and precisely if no one will teach you?

      1. I agree entirely with both steveh11 and with you RG. I am one of those pedantic readers who can immediately spot the single typo or incorrect use of punctuation in a 500 page book, and it does annoy me. The fact of being pulled up short by it is almost as annoying as seeing it in print. And like steveh11, use of the wrong word because it is a homonym drives me insane. It’s like people are so unused to reading any more, they just guess from the sound of the word.

        Equally, I am frustrated by the lack of teaching these days. It used to annoy me at school back in the day, because I was educated at a time when the teaching of grammar in English was considered old fashioned. This made it so much harder for most students to get on with foreign languages, because they had never been taught what a noun, verb, adjective or adverb were. Let alone the more complicated parts of speech.

        I was lucky, because my parents taught me grammar at home – we once had a class discussion on whether it was “If I were…” of “If I was…” which ended in the teacher asking my opinion. His final argument was “Morag says it is ‘if I were’, so now you know.” I resisted the urge to add “because it’s a conditional not the indicative”, on the basis that I might get lynched!!

        I know I was lucky to have a family prepared to correct me, because that is how we learn best. My best friend thought the word was “bokkle” not “bottle” till she was 18, because no-one corrected her till then (I thought she would take it amiss from me, sad to say). Mind you, I laughed at one of my friends who corrected her son’s essay about his hamster before he took it in to school – she corrected the word to “hampster” throughout and was gutted when I told her her son had been right all along!

        1. Oh, and I was incandescent with rage (four attempts at spelling that word correctly!) when I went to my niece’s school. The children’s work was on the board, with notes from the teacher, including “Your a star” from the teacher on one. I nearly ripped it off and stormed to the head’s office to complain – if the teachers can’t spell, what hope do the kids have?

          Right, I’ll shut up now. 🙂

          1. One of the problems with self-publishing, which essentially what blogging is, comes from not having editors. In fact, I know that most publishers don’t have them now – in the old fashioned capacity. If they do, they are in charge of how the author markets him or herself, rather than being a critical friend to the work being published. I’m ashamed to admit that means that I end up with spelling and grammatical mistakes on my blog. So, if something pulls you up short, please feel free to play proofreader and drop me a message about it in the comments. There are great aspects to producing work ‘in the raw’ as I do here, but the downside is that I have no one to proofread for me.

  4. City Different Avatar
    City Different

    I’m sorry Korhomme’s feelngs were hurt, and I trust you two understand each other even better now and are even faster friends. How wonderful to have that kind of emotional engagement not only *about* a text, but also *around* it. Certainly this particular moment, and the way you’ve both shared it with us, makes us better readers, makes us appreciate more richly these amazing whirling clouds of relationships with texts at their center.

    About vocabulary (and beyond): I never feel put down–quite the opposite–when a writer I respect and trust invites me to something new. To me, it says the writer believes in me as a reader. And yeah, I’m with you: Our language is gorgeous and rich and rewards exploration. And I like learning new stuff. Thanks, Rgrl.

  5. The last bit made me chuckle. Sadly, my mother is such a one that seems to take offence at “big words”. The first time i participated in NaNoWriMo, i wrote a novel i was proud of – my first voluntary fiction ever – shared it with her, and her response was “very nice, dear, but don’t you think you’re patronising the reader using all these big words…?” In response, I laughed my ass off, asked her if she didn’t think it much more patronising to assume one’s reader had a small vocabulary and write accordingly, and wondered aloud that she wasn’t more proud of her daughter’s vocabulary. Like everyone above, i consider new words and phrases an exciting gift, and have been known to read with my OED – one of my most cherished books, BTW – ready at my elbow. I know you’ll keep on helping us to expand our thoughts and vocabulary, RG, and i for one am very happy about that. X

  6. RG. Big words must be used, or like the dodo bird, they will go extinct.

    March on, writing soldier(ette).

  7. As someone who writes, edits, and teaches writing, I deal with this a lot, from different sides–how important is the reader’s opinion? How important is *a* reader’s opinion? Sure, without being read, the writer is the tree who falls in the forest; and while some writers are fine with that, I think most of us do like at least a bit of an audience.

    I try not to ask for comments on something I’m not willing to change. Although it’s a bit intimidating, I do try to ask for comments on something I am willing to change. But any one reader’s opinion is just that–one reader’s opinion. It might resonate with me and I’ll make an adjustment, but I also have the right to consider it and then decline. (I’m talking about content comments, not someone pointing out a typo or grammatical mistake).

    There was a nice point made in a book I love, “The Subversive Copy Editor,” that no two editors will edit a manuscript in quite the same way–because there isn’t only one way a piece of text could (or should) be. I’ll press authors pretty darn hard on something I feel is actually wrong (I have some particularly strong feelings about punctuation!). But where it’s really just a matter of opinion, my personal rule is that I’ll give mine, with reasons, twice; after that, if the author still resists, he/she gets his/her way–because after all, I am not the author.

    Different readers like different things, and I know you didn’t ask for a vote, but I’d like to cast one anyway, in favor of big or unfamiliar words. I love meeting new vocabulary, and I can get a little excited by a word being used in an unexpected way.

    1. I think using words in new ways is how the language stays a living and breathing thing.

      You’ve given me so much to think about, I think this requires a post.

      1. I like to think of a word as being a “mot juste”–a word that is just right for the spot you’ve placed it in. Ultimately that sense of “right” should be the author’s feeling. The author might have X in mind and in haste or error grab Y instead, and then when a reader or an editor offers Y, recognize it as what she meant all along. Sometimes what is wanted is a word that fits so smoothly the reader barely notices it; sometimes the word should stand out a bit. Sometimes it is the syntax that should get the reader to see familiar words in a new light.

        I’m probably a better editor than I am a writer–I remember telling an author as she went through her work to make sure that “Every word there is necessary, and every necessary word is there,” yet I couldn’t claim that such is always true of my writing. 😉

        I know I have a blog post simmering in me on revising and rewriting and being edited, and this is pushing it to the fore.

        1. “Every word there is necessary, and every necessary word is there,”

          I’m not sure that I adhere to that dictum. And I guess I’d defend my disagreement by saying that fiction writers aren’t journalists and shouldn’t be. That’s not to say that writers wouldn’t benefit from editors. But the journalistic style of writing that rose in the early 20th Century and grew to prominence with writers like Hemingway is a style – not a correctness. Some writers are tight with words, some are whimsical. I think what matters is – does it work in the eyes of the reader?

        2. Oh, but beautiful words are “necessary”! It’s not like making the shortest sentence. So I didn’t mean that comment to be journalistic at all (especially since I have 0 background in journalism).

          Not that you need to agree, not at all, but I’m going to stick by that. In an ideal piece, every word there would be the right one–the function words (prepositions and articles and quantifiers and whatnot) as well as the content words (nouns and verbs and their modifiers). Sometimes a “wordy” sentence is what’s beautiful in a certain piece, and then every word in it would be “necessary.”

          (I can’t seem to reply to your comment, only to my own comment… I hope this is going to line up correctly!)

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