Dignity, Always Dignity

Dignity, always dignity.

I was handed an object lesson a few weeks ago, in a Zen-like way. Depending on whether you have read any of my other articles you may or may not know point-three percent of my present audience thinks that my book needs "serious editing", a charming expression that has now entered my vocabulary. When I find myself getting bogged down with editing work I simply try frivolously editing it. The results are astounding. Useless, but astounding. I heartily recommend it and I think that the originator of this phrase should start a writers' movement and teach it, like the Stanislavsky method of acting (believe it or not I read that book when I was about ten - now that's a story in itself).

So, editing. Apparently poor Anne Rice made the mistake some while ago of getting into a scuffle with her readers. Here I consider myself to be very lucky in the Chinese fable sense of good luck/ bad luck.

I've never been successful, in the rich with big houses, four films to my credit sense. It's a curse to have too much success too soon (so they tell me - hah!) because when they start pelting you with shit you can't understand it. Why have they turned on you?

Ah, someone didn't read their Voltaire.

Parisians were lining the streets to see him at his most feted and when someone called him to the window to see he said, "Why? They would come to see my execution just as quickly." (Or words to that effect - I got rid of all my books of quotations). Absolutely. Even bona fide fans will greedily gobble up nasty material on their beloved.

Now I know I've read one or possibly two of Anne's books, before they were famous, but it was so long ago I have no memory of them. I seem to recall I found them too florid and affected and that her vampires were too pretty, too 'gay' and too Laura Ashley, for want of a better description. I like my imperfections, my raw ferocity and she had neither. But she only had one or possibly two books out at the time and for all I know she went on to write the most savagely brutal and ferocious literature in the horror genre.

Coincidentally, I was on her website a few months ago. I went on a lot of high profile sites when our new web site was being constructed to see what the authors put on and how it was presented. As it so happens the only site I liked was Stephen King's but Anne's was certainly interesting. It read for all the world like an evangelist site - which certainly explains why I found her vampires too clean and pretty - and there were way too many blessings to her audience - something else that made her sound like a TV evangelist. But I can see now why she might have been wounded by her audience turning on her. To have been tied up into that - forgive me here, but to me it always feels amateur - dependency on what others think of you, the preciousness of your audience, is a very risky path indeed. I've seen Stephen King veer into similar territory occasionally.

The audience is not your friend. Don't get me wrong here, they're not your enemy either, they're just there , like the people shopping with you in Tesco's. They don't know you. If they are very astute they may learn a lot about you from your work, after all it's all in there, but that's a big if. They are more likely to jump to the wrong conclusion, based entirely on their own experience.

I heard the author of Evil talking on the extras on the DVD of the Swedish film of the same name. He was saying he was often asked which parts of his novel are made up and which parts are true, as it was based on his own life. He said, "The parts you are wondering about - they are all true."

Oddly enough no-one's asked me that question about DANNY. I suspect that because I'm female and my story is so male that people assume it's entirely fictional. Or that because it's so extreme it can't be true (there's a BIG article in that one). But actually, murders aside, the parts you are wondering about - they are true. Depending on how kinky you are, of course. And that proves my point. We can't know anyone that well through even the most honest of novels because we always bring our own perspective to the table. And that's not allowing for readers who are sloppy or lazy, or impatient or who miss great signposted flags and sometimes whole events.

But Anne...

Apparently this squabbling with her audience has done her no favours.

One to one discussion with a reader is not for me, not even in private. There just isn't enough hours in the day.

When DANNY first came out there was a flurry of activity from book collectors. They all wanted signed copies, and then signed posters and signed bookmarks. And then it was first lined. I'd never even heard of this. It's when they want you to write the first line onto the book and sign it. Assumably this is like getting a bit of manuscript.

With DANNY it so isn't, since the original opening of DANNY was changed. The first line of DANNY is actually, "It was August." In the Poison Pixie offices it still is and is still quoted extensively on all sorts of occasions, which would be completely meaningless to anyone who doesn't know the original. But when I found myself sitting writing "Danny was waiting for the bathroom" ten times on a box of books I knew it had to stop. I haven't signed a book since. It was stupid beyond belief, and one of God's other little jokes that he so loves to play on me that my first line would involve queuing for the bathroom. It was August has more dignity.

Which brings me back to dignity.

I suspect Anne is just plain livid and probably deeply hurt by her hanging party, but the Zen path that brought me to this was someone saying she should have more dignity. I thought this was an odd, suspicious remark. Like a lot of criticisms it has that hearty ring of truth which in turn makes it feel dangerously reasonable and plausible. After all, I was agreeing. Why would Anne, big, 'successful', care what a few pipsqueaks thought?

For me, personally, it would have been a case of I cried all the way to the bank. I'm absolutely one hundred per cent behind the legions of celebrities who never read reviews. Why would you willingly do that to yourself? For every intelligent one there are five trained chimps missing the point together over tea and backstabbing. As soon as my book sales merit it someone else can plough through the shit looking for the happy quotes to sell more copies.

But, of course, she probably wasn't reading Amazon reviews. She was almost certainly told about it by her publisher or agent or someone, panicking, in that Hollywood way, about Audience Reaction. She was probably hurt, stung into an angry retort. Good on her. Why should the little fuckers get away with it?   After all, why be dignified?

From experience I find that this belongs to any other attempt to control your behaviour and so stop you from making someone uncomfortable. Whenever someone wants you to be 'dignified' what they're really saying is 'Your behaviour is touching a sensitive spot in me and you are making me feel bad. Stop it right now.'

Anyway, I have no idea what Anne's reader/author barney was about, but whatever it was I'm with Anne - fuck dignity, bite the hand that feeds you, that's what I say.

After all, what's the worst that can happen? All your readers abandoning you together? Unlikely. After all, where are they going to go for their Anne Rice fix?

No, even that most obsessive and dedicated of fans, the fan fiction writer, needs you more than you need them. After all, they can't think up their own characters, why the hell would they fare any better with their own plots?

Screw dignity, speak your mind and grow old disgracefully.

After all, no-one was ever remembered for being ordinary.