[writing] look into the navel and the navel looks back at you

intensely subjective criticism ahead


It strikes me, reading literary journals and collections of modern short fiction, that nearly everything that is published is almost unbearably self absorbed. "This happened, and it made me feel this." "I lost my mother/was abused/had a haircut and here are the excruciating details of it all." It's too self-referential. I don't know you, and there is no reason, beyond beauty of language, that I should care about your ingrown toenail.

Beauty of language is not enough, people. Writing is an act of communication, of opening, of exchange. If you want to confess, find a priest or your best friend or head on over to Postsecret, but don't pretend that it's art. It is not enough to simply say, this happened, and I felt this. What does it mean to you? Where is the place where your life intersects with a larger concept, with what is means to be human, with something that matters, dammit? In a hundred years, they will still be reading Yeat's "The Second Coming" and Lorde's "21 Love Poems" and "Lady Lazurus" by Sylvia Plath, and no one will give a crap about your heartfelt poems about throwing up in the girl's bathroom in eighth grade unless you make it matter.


Bah.