Mary Sueishness
22/4/10 09:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyWith the recent discussion on Mary Sues I am having a lot of times where I read a post and say, "Well, yes, that," and then I read a post from the entirely opposite point of view and say, "Well, yes, that also."
And I am reminded of some of the best advice I've received about creativity: at any moment, you must believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world. And you must be able to laugh at yourself for thinking it has any importance at all.
Writing is always an act of ego. It is hard to create anything and have it not be an act of ego, though it's possible to work against it, like Buddhists who work for days or weeks creating a mandala from sand and then sweep it away as a meditation on impermanence. And writing is also an act of getting your ego out of the way. If you don't, it's not just a problem of Mary Sues. It's a problem of getting so tied up in what people will think of you that it's hard to write anything at all, or you can only write in a way that follows all the "rules" so you won't be criticized. You won't take risks. You won't write anything personally self-revealing.
I've written about this before regarding Love Story, but putting ninjas in it was in retrospect a way of faking myself out. "It's a book with a ninja musical in it. Nobody gets to take it seriously. If it's bad, well, what on earth do you expect from a book with a ninja musical in it? Also it will be hilarious if one of the major review journals gives a starred review to a book called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad. Not like that will ever happen, hah hah."
Writing wish-fulfillment fanfic is, I guess by definition, egocentric. But so is being the Mary Sue police. So is being rigidly proud about how you always make sure to put the right number of flaws in your characters so that nobody can think they're Mary Sues. So is looking for a codified definition of Good Writing that you can follow so that you can distract yourself from pulling something out of the white-hot uncomfortable parts of yourself. And these are all things I've done myself. These are things I'm still doing myself, because not doing them is HARD.
Everybody's at their own stage in the process and you have to meet them where they're at. Saying, "Hey, you're writing Mary Sues, stop it!" might make someone feel bad about their writing, might make someone feel bad about showing off their writing, but it's not going to help them know how to write well-rounded, realistic characters, and it's not going to help them with the personal self-development that's required to take the Mary Sue instinct and transmute it into something that other people can relate to and connect with.
And I really do think it's an issue of personal self-development! It is, at least for myself, a courage that I did not have even a few years ago and am still struggling with. If you are still thinking, "Maybe if I always do the right thing or say the right thing, everybody will like me," you can't help but write characters that reflect that. You can't critique people out of that, and it's probably not your job to therapy them out of that either.
But maybe that kid who grows up wishing that she lived in the wilderness with wolves to play with is going to mature artistically to the point where she writes something as deep as Princess Mononoke. You don't know. You've got to leave room for that growth to happen.
And I am reminded of some of the best advice I've received about creativity: at any moment, you must believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world. And you must be able to laugh at yourself for thinking it has any importance at all.
Writing is always an act of ego. It is hard to create anything and have it not be an act of ego, though it's possible to work against it, like Buddhists who work for days or weeks creating a mandala from sand and then sweep it away as a meditation on impermanence. And writing is also an act of getting your ego out of the way. If you don't, it's not just a problem of Mary Sues. It's a problem of getting so tied up in what people will think of you that it's hard to write anything at all, or you can only write in a way that follows all the "rules" so you won't be criticized. You won't take risks. You won't write anything personally self-revealing.
I've written about this before regarding Love Story, but putting ninjas in it was in retrospect a way of faking myself out. "It's a book with a ninja musical in it. Nobody gets to take it seriously. If it's bad, well, what on earth do you expect from a book with a ninja musical in it? Also it will be hilarious if one of the major review journals gives a starred review to a book called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad. Not like that will ever happen, hah hah."
Writing wish-fulfillment fanfic is, I guess by definition, egocentric. But so is being the Mary Sue police. So is being rigidly proud about how you always make sure to put the right number of flaws in your characters so that nobody can think they're Mary Sues. So is looking for a codified definition of Good Writing that you can follow so that you can distract yourself from pulling something out of the white-hot uncomfortable parts of yourself. And these are all things I've done myself. These are things I'm still doing myself, because not doing them is HARD.
Everybody's at their own stage in the process and you have to meet them where they're at. Saying, "Hey, you're writing Mary Sues, stop it!" might make someone feel bad about their writing, might make someone feel bad about showing off their writing, but it's not going to help them know how to write well-rounded, realistic characters, and it's not going to help them with the personal self-development that's required to take the Mary Sue instinct and transmute it into something that other people can relate to and connect with.
And I really do think it's an issue of personal self-development! It is, at least for myself, a courage that I did not have even a few years ago and am still struggling with. If you are still thinking, "Maybe if I always do the right thing or say the right thing, everybody will like me," you can't help but write characters that reflect that. You can't critique people out of that, and it's probably not your job to therapy them out of that either.
But maybe that kid who grows up wishing that she lived in the wilderness with wolves to play with is going to mature artistically to the point where she writes something as deep as Princess Mononoke. You don't know. You've got to leave room for that growth to happen.
(no subject)
22/4/10 14:40 (UTC)One of the things that has made it really hard for me to break out of this long "writer's block" I've been in is this notion of, well, am I writing a Mary Sue? Am I writing some thinly veiled thing about what I wish I was? The novel I am currently painfully trying to drag myself through writing involves characters and a story that I've carried around for more than ten years -- there's a distressing tension between the knowledge that this must be important somehow, if I haven't dropped it after all this time and the notion that if I just write what ten-years-younger me would write, I'm going to get it Wrong. Then there are all the other ways in which I could mess it up.
I think that the "Mary Sue" criticism is a valuable reference point, because that type of character does exist, and it's problematic for a variety of reasons. (And I'm hardly someone who doesn't complain about Mary Sues!) That said, I sure wish that more people came from a workshopping kind of viewpoint, and one where writers acknowledge a need to stretch out a bit, to play a little. Mary Sue could be a good jumping off point; Mary Sues probably ought to be first draft material. But I agree so much with what you say here -- a zero tolerance for Mary Sues sort of gets in the way of both readers & writers, I think.
(Also! It is way easier to write about writing on DW than it is for me to put the internets away and work on the novel. Cat vacuuming for the win!)
(no subject)
24/4/10 03:47 (UTC)I think there's a lot of power in writing about what you wish you were, if you can deal with the wishing and not just the getting. So it's a shame to shy away from that power out of fear of committing Mary Sue.