The dangers of expertise
Today dancinghorse, who runs the Writers' Camp I enjoyed so much last week, talks about the dangers of the rider who claims to be expert but isn't.
She touches on that brash (sometimes irritating, sometimes insane) sense of over-confidence in other aspects of life.
We have all kinds of ways of conferring socially sanctioned expertise on someone, from medical school/medical board certification to publication. Becoming a doctor has a fairly rigid process (though there are ways around it, unfortunately) and the second has none, beyond some editor somewhere deeming your work potentially worth readers Out There laying down cash for it.
These days, there are many who are bypassing the publishing house editor and becoming their own editors. It's easier every day to self publish, and again, some folks are finding the readership they expected, others aren't; whom the latter blame for their lack of success might be an indicator of why they didn't succeed with the usual process in the first place.
The readers these days are stupid, and don't recognize high literary quality, and other writers who don't see my brilliance are all hacks might make one able to go to sleep at night after another day of no success, but is that going to bring success over the long stretch of a lifetime? I think it's a tough challenge. The writer who says, I flopped. There's gotta be something wrong with what I'm doing. I better find someone to show me what I'm doing wrong because I can't see it and then goes to find that help, is probably going to make their way to success. (Though what we call success is always going to be negotiated, or it can recede like a mirage.)
Then there's the hidden expertise. I find that interesting to think about. Like, since the Lightning Thief movie came out (which I haven't seen) the books have gotten more general notice. I've only read the first one. As I've said in a few discussions, I enjoyed the book, but not with that intense enjoyment that I might have gotten had I been the age the writer intended. Instead, what I appreciated deeply was the author's evident expertise in presenting the sort of book most sixth graders want to read.
The pacing is for sixth graders. The jokes. The characters, the plot. It was also skewed toward boys, though an effort was made for some gender parity, but again, the little signals of a male POV made the author's gender clear.
The author did not appear to be talking past the kids to the award-giving adults, as I sometimes suspect some books' writers do; he wrote that book for kids. His expertise made me wonder if he was a sixth grade teacher, and sure enough he turned out to be.
My belief is that we are all experts at something. It might not be a thing we think we can turn into entertainment, though maybe we can, like Rick Riordan did. But doing a thing, whatever that thing is, over the stretch of days and years makes us able to guide our boat in that one thing with a quick eye and a finger on the wheel. When we try a new thing, we're like that desperate new boat owner, terrified (and exhilarated, sometimes) at our speed, yanking the wheel in one hand, our other hand clutched on the rattling pages of a succession of manuals we hope will the the fastest one to confer wisdom.
She touches on that brash (sometimes irritating, sometimes insane) sense of over-confidence in other aspects of life.
We have all kinds of ways of conferring socially sanctioned expertise on someone, from medical school/medical board certification to publication. Becoming a doctor has a fairly rigid process (though there are ways around it, unfortunately) and the second has none, beyond some editor somewhere deeming your work potentially worth readers Out There laying down cash for it.
These days, there are many who are bypassing the publishing house editor and becoming their own editors. It's easier every day to self publish, and again, some folks are finding the readership they expected, others aren't; whom the latter blame for their lack of success might be an indicator of why they didn't succeed with the usual process in the first place.
The readers these days are stupid, and don't recognize high literary quality, and other writers who don't see my brilliance are all hacks might make one able to go to sleep at night after another day of no success, but is that going to bring success over the long stretch of a lifetime? I think it's a tough challenge. The writer who says, I flopped. There's gotta be something wrong with what I'm doing. I better find someone to show me what I'm doing wrong because I can't see it and then goes to find that help, is probably going to make their way to success. (Though what we call success is always going to be negotiated, or it can recede like a mirage.)
Then there's the hidden expertise. I find that interesting to think about. Like, since the Lightning Thief movie came out (which I haven't seen) the books have gotten more general notice. I've only read the first one. As I've said in a few discussions, I enjoyed the book, but not with that intense enjoyment that I might have gotten had I been the age the writer intended. Instead, what I appreciated deeply was the author's evident expertise in presenting the sort of book most sixth graders want to read.
The pacing is for sixth graders. The jokes. The characters, the plot. It was also skewed toward boys, though an effort was made for some gender parity, but again, the little signals of a male POV made the author's gender clear.
The author did not appear to be talking past the kids to the award-giving adults, as I sometimes suspect some books' writers do; he wrote that book for kids. His expertise made me wonder if he was a sixth grade teacher, and sure enough he turned out to be.
My belief is that we are all experts at something. It might not be a thing we think we can turn into entertainment, though maybe we can, like Rick Riordan did. But doing a thing, whatever that thing is, over the stretch of days and years makes us able to guide our boat in that one thing with a quick eye and a finger on the wheel. When we try a new thing, we're like that desperate new boat owner, terrified (and exhilarated, sometimes) at our speed, yanking the wheel in one hand, our other hand clutched on the rattling pages of a succession of manuals we hope will the the fastest one to confer wisdom.