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Are You an Artist, or a Craftsman?

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neodoering

Minstrel
So. I read an article online that offered 25 tips to beginning writers. One of the tips was that writers are craftsmen, and should treat their writing as a "profession." I looked up craftsman, which was defined as someone who follows the methods and best practices of their industry to produce functional objects. In today's publishing industry, this means mass-produced fiction, where ideas, characters, scenes, plot arcs, etc. are viewed as snap-in, snap-out, interchangeable widgets. Got a black man as main character, and market research says the white majority won't buy him? Change him to a white guy, and adjust his background a little bit. Snap-in, snap-out. The story has no integrity; it's just cheap, mass-produced elements.

The artist, in contrast to the craftsman, will use whatever tools and methods it takes to convey an aesthetically pleasing story with a powerful message of some sort, either personal, artistic, or social. The artist's story isn't made of snap-in parts. Change pieces of it, and it falls apart and loses its power.

Before you say, "Society values artists over craftsmen," I'd really think about that if I were you. Craftsmen are accepted in the publishing industry as the industry standard; most everyone aspires to be a craftsman. If they make it to professional levels, they will be quite well-paid, famous, and successful. Contrast this to artists, who are seen as inflexible, weird, possibly mentally ill, and hard to work with. Very few writers as artists make it in the publishing industry. Their work tends to be challenging in a trade that prizes works that are simple and mindless entertainment, and that goes against the industry ethos. Those who go against the grain are generally not rewarded. Ask yourself this: how many modern, fantasy epic poems in the vein of Beowulf or Inferno have been published in America in the last ten years? How many full-color, illuminated fantasies in the style of the Middle East, or even Medieval England, or China, have you seen? The publishing industry does not encourage artists. Publishing professionals do not like taking risks on something as subjective as art. They want to manage risk, by publishing mass-produced, low-cost, low-value craft items that are not a big loss if the market rejects them.

As to me, you have only to go here: http://www.rdoering.com/temples.html, to see which I am. I am currently looking into what it would take to bring out a paper version of this book. I look forward to being rejected by the publishing industry.

Which are you, craftsman or artist?
 
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Alyssa

Troubadour
I think this is somewhat of a gross generalisation. I write what you would probably call "craft" fiction. It's standard, west-centric in cultural terms and in terms of literary history. And that's fine by me. I am happy to be part of a continuing thread of literary tradition that has continued unabated for centuries in an eternal golden braid. It is not a mark against its merit that it is widespread, neither is it one that it is popular.
No, what I take umbrage at, is the condescension in the suggestion that even though I want to make a piece of writing for my own sake, by dint of it being constructed partially upon a framework of normative western cultures, values and behaviours, it is in some way lacking and mechanical despite my focus instead being directed more to elements thematic and narrative in nature. Elements I daresay I find beautiful and worthy in their own right. I have not met a writer who writes without having some love of their "craft", without viewing it as some greater artistic expression, drawn over months out of the wellspring of their soul.
I'm not singly a craftsman or an artist, because I do not view them as mutually exclusive. My craft is my art, I write because it I find it beautiful. Yes it may be comprised of these so called snap elements with white characters (although I never mention it because it's just not that important) and all the widgets and gizmos and thingamajigs. And yet just because I find the narrative behind it beautiful, the thematic elements, so disparate against such a familiar background, you somehow have the gall to say that I write because I want to be published, evidenced by the literary tradition I follow, rather than because I find it beautiful and I could not live without being able to write. I think you ascribe too much upon other writers who do not share your particular views and your focus on your sole work. By all means write what you will, I am more than happy to read it if I find it beautiful. But on no account should you cast aspersions on or denigrate other people's work, in order to justify and aggrandise your own.
There's room enough in the world for one more book without another having to give way, or be seen as less because of it.
Writing is not a subtractive game of mutually exclusive elements. It's a craft which is an art, and art is its product.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I hesitate to respond because I disagree with the premise of the question. All art is part craft, writing more inherently so than most, because we work within the restrictions of words and language. And all artists wishing to make a living work within the restrictions of the market.

The old artist isn't appreciated until they're dead thing just ends up with a lot of dead, unappreciated artists who died with an excuse to never perfect their craft.
 

Gryphos

Auror
I think when people say to think of writing as a craft rather than an art, the crux of what they're getting at is that you shouldn't think of writing (or any art, for that matter) as something mystical. It's not. Artists are not prophetic souls reaching out to the muses to pour divine ambrosia onto the page; no, an artist is a person who wants to make something pleasant/interesting/thought-provoking, studies how best to achieve this, and constructs an object to their own liking with the hopes that others will like it too – this is the mentality of a craftsman.
 
The two are really not different, only a less mature artist strives to be a "craftsman", but he/she will eventually get there.

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I think this is somewhat of a gross generalisation. I write what you would probably call "craft" fiction. It's standard, west-centric in cultural terms and in terms of literary history. And that's fine by me. I am happy to be part of a continuing thread of literary tradition that has continued unabated for centuries in an eternal golden braid. It is not a mark against its merit that it is widespread, neither is it one that it is popular.
No, what I take umbrage at, is the condescension in the suggestion that even though I want to make a piece of writing for my own sake, by dint of it being constructed partially upon a framework of normative western cultures, values and behaviours, it is in some way lacking and mechanical despite my focus instead being directed more to elements thematic and narrative in nature. Elements I daresay I find beautiful and worthy in their own right. I have not met a writer who writes without having some love of their "craft", without viewing it as some greater artistic expression, drawn over months out of the wellspring of their soul.
I'm not singly a craftsman or an artist, because I do not view them as mutually exclusive. My craft is my art, I write because it I find it beautiful. Yes it may be comprised of these so called snap elements with white characters (although I never mention it because it's just not that important) and all the widgets and gizmos and thingamajigs. And yet just because I find the narrative behind it beautiful, the thematic elements, so disparate against such a familiar background, you somehow have the gall to say that I write because I want to be published, evidenced by the literary tradition I follow, rather than because I find it beautiful and I could not live without being able to write. I think you ascribe too much upon other writers who do not share your particular views and your focus on your sole work. By all means write what you will, I am more than happy to read it if I find it beautiful. But on no account should you cast aspersions on or denigrate other people's work, in order to justify and aggrandise your own.
There's room enough in the world for one more book without another having to give way, or be seen as less because of it.
Writing is not a subtractive game of mutually exclusive elements. It's a craft which is an art, and art is its product.

I think I'm a human conversation such as this, we will all have to brush aside any bristles with generalizations we have. For your side, I believe you probably haven't made a snap in snap out story. For his, readers may come for your book that won't read something akin to Beowulf simply because your book is more like the snap in snap out books. Both of you have your points here.





My response. I am an artist. I tend to mix and match very unrelatable items, plot twists, characters, histories, and try to make it all grind somehow (not always successfully)


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oenanthe

Minstrel
I'm finding it extremely puzzling that this is an either or question when you cannot be an artist if you don't engage in a lifelong pursuit of your craft. If you don't have the fundamentals, what exactly can you do?
 
I'm finding it extremely puzzling that this is an either or question when you cannot be an artist if you don't engage in a lifelong pursuit of your craft. If you don't have the fundamentals, what exactly can you do?

I think it's less about fundamentals and more about... the difference between manufactured and hand crafted. Hand crafted can't be switched with other parts, whereas manufactured is easy to switch parts and interchange a lot


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False Dilemma! False Dilemma! False Dilemma!

I'm both. I craft art. I craft functional objects whose function is to be art.

And if someone told me that I need to change the ethnicity of my character...well...Annoyingkid up there put it accurately, if bluntly.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
This is part of an old debate, and I think there are better ways to frame it. For instance you mentioned race as a "snap in/snap out" example, and to me that's confusing whatever point you're trying to make (unless that is your point, and you've gone a long way beating around it). Do you feel the same about, say, an Inciting Incident? Or the idea that an protagonist should be kind of an "everyman/person"? What snap-in model are you talking about?

As for the race issue, that specific example is a bigger concern in film, where there are literally thousands of jobs on the line trying to make the movie a success. It sucks, and I don't mean to defend it, and there are a number of absolutely absurd examples. But the bigger investment means a bigger concern for the mass audience. A movie can be a huge failure after ten million people go to see it. A book, on the other hand, can be pretty successful with.... say, 20,000 copies sold. It only has to do well enough to support the author and some editing/publishing work. That means you can take more risks.

As for the question of being an artist, I think this is a bad framework for tackling that discussion. I read an article about the difference between literary and consumer novels, and they described it as the difference between a postcard and a scene. You can google it yourself. But the thing I noticed was, the literary format had just as much (or as little) of a formula, and could give you crap and gems just as easily. I think comparing the two formats effectively needs to account for the way each one actually works.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
For me, I don't worry about labels. I'm me. One of things about being me is I write. When I write I have a system of organising my thoughts and a certain approach I take that lets me comfortably tackle a project. This system is ever evolving. Call it artistry. Call it craft. Call it the Dumbarse's Approach to Writing. It doesn't matter to me.

I write. I write about what interests me. I do it regardless of if I'm paid or not, but I hope I can make a living at it one day. And if I do make it, call me what ever you want.
 
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neodoering

Minstrel
This is part of an old debate, and I think there are better ways to frame it. For instance you mentioned race as a "snap in/snap out" example, and to me that's confusing whatever point you're trying to make (unless that is your point, and you've gone a long way beating around it). Do you feel the same about, say, an Inciting Incident? Or the idea that an protagonist should be kind of an "everyman/person"? What snap-in model are you talking about?

As for the question of being an artist, I think this is a bad framework for tackling that discussion. I read an article about the difference between literary and consumer novels, and they described it as the difference between a postcard and a scene. You can google it yourself. But the thing I noticed was, the literary format had just as much (or as little) of a formula, and could give you crap and gems just as easily. I think comparing the two formats effectively needs to account for the way each one actually works.

Good afternoon, Devor.
Yes, I feel the same way about an Inciting Incident, or the Caucasian Hero and the Person of Color Sidekick. Or the climax at the 2/3 or 3/4 mark in the narrative. Stock elements: if you don't like the scene set in Paris because there have been several terrorist incidents in Paris over the last year and it's kind of depressing, snap it out and snap in a scene set in London. As if it doesn't matter where the scene is set. You wrote a book with a middle-aged male technical writer protagonist, but market research now comes back saying young women, who are the majority of fiction buyers, aren't into a story about middle-aged men this year. So you snap him out and snap in a twenty-five year old male graduate student instead.

It all comes down to why are you telling your story? If you want to become a professional writer, you need to listen to the market research and to a certain extent write to that. Not because you believe in it--you know it changes by the month--but because the people who pay your advance believe in it, and you have to some extent to give them what they want. Publishing is a business, with focus groups, market research, and a mass production ethos. The focus is on right now and a few years in the future, and yesterday's success doesn't count for much.

In some ways, it's no different for the writer who is an artist. You need a patron, who wants his kids in your story, or he wants the climax to be set on his agribusiness farm. Or you need to please the arts granting committee or academic press editor who is considering bringing out your work. But the focus for the artist-writer is different than from the craftsman. The craftsman in general is trying to pump out "product" that entertains. That's the high and low of it. The artist is trying to get at deeper human truths.

A lot of people are posting that these two categories are not mutually exclusive, and I'm sure they're right, but it's useful to pull them apart and see how people identify themselves. The category that draws you most strongly will determine which publishers you approach, how you present yourself, the elders you compare yourself to, and the type of stories you produce. This is not life or death material, but it can establish what kind of career you have, and how "seriously" you are taken. Good stuff for a thread!
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Yes, I feel the same way about an Inciting Incident, or the Caucasian Hero and the Person of Color Sidekick.

It sure didn't take you long to make it about race again. I think you're making a mistake if you're letting the unfortunate problem of whitewashing tarnish your entire view of the role editors and other experts play in this industry. Fighting the experts is one of the first things anybody needs to get over if they want to succeed at pretty much anything, and writing is no exception.

About race, however, the experts are still telling the truth. If you stand around a mall and give hundreds of people the same book blurb, changing only the first name of the main character, you will get very different ratings depending on whether the name is male or female, traditional or ethnic (or whatever the PC words for that are).

It's awful, don't get me wrong, but denial doesn't fix a problem. You mentioned a black MC, and now a black sidekick. Which does more for the black community - a black MC in a book that nobody reads, or a black sidekick in a work that's popular?

But don't get me wrong. Write a black MC and don't let anyone stop you if that's what you want to do. My main point isn't about race, but about the wisdom of hearing out the experts, and seeing the problems with the depth that they actually deserve. If you want to tackle diversity issues, the solution isn't yelling about it to the internet and swearing to do your own thing. Change happens from the inside.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Totally off topic but fun...

While I doubt this happens in publishing much if at all, in screenwriting this sort of thing has and will continue to happen, both ethnicity and sex of character... it's something that simply must be accepted when in that world for two main reasons, target audience and interested actors. If Denzel will sign onto the pic if he gets the lead... bam! the lead is a black man. Tom Cruise will jump onboard? Bam! The character is white. Jennifer Lawrence wants that story? Your asian dude just grew breasts and turned white. In fact, much screenwriting advice goes to not writing a character of any ethinicity unless it matters to the story. Age is another major flex point.

But hey, that's a different world... once you've sold a script, it isn't yours anymore. Novels are quite different, novelists actually have power upto a point.

False Dilemma! False Dilemma! False Dilemma!

I'm both. I craft art. I craft functional objects whose function is to be art.

And if someone told me that I need to change the ethnicity of my character...well...Annoyingkid up there put it accurately, if bluntly.
 

oenanthe

Minstrel
Yes, I feel the same way about an Inciting Incident, or the Caucasian Hero and the Person of Color Sidekick.

It sure didn't take you long to make it about race again.

...is one sentence literally all it takes to get a mod breathing down your neck?

holy smokes.
 

Nimue

Auror
Yeah, I'm not liking the parental tone of "realistically characters need to be white it's just realistic". Not that Neo's free of the condescension here either, but...come on. Man, I don't like these sweeping hypothetical threads about The Industry without grounding in anybody's actual experience publishing.

My answer to this question: I am a butthole. A butthole knows how to do only one thing, and it just does it. Pbbbbthh.

Oh my god. Sorry. Migraine meds.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Yeah, I'm not liking the parental tone of "realistically characters need to be white it's just realistic".

I am sorry, I can see that I struck the wrong tone and overreached with my last post.

But.... what? That isn't remotely like anything that I actually said.
 
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