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Thursday, October 7, 2010

They Get You Coming and Going

Thing is, peeps, if the rejecting agents and editors don't get you, the critics and naysayers will. And maybe worse yet, your own community or your fellow/sister writers who feel like busting on your book for being too this or not enough that. It's a tough world, which is why artistic integrity is all we got. Check out what Sapphire has to say about it at Sampsonia Way Magazine. Here's a highlight:
Imagine if they had come to Kafka after The Metamorphosis and said: "Look how you depicted the Jewish family; you depicted Gregor Samsa as bug and his family as killing him. Is the family so filled with greed that they kill him once he doesn’t go to work any more?” Are artists going to bend to the dictate of a community and paint a false picture? Or, even if there is a lot of positivity within that community, don’t I get to choose my job? Suppose I wanted to spend my whole life, like Edgar Allen Poe, looking at the dark side of life? I have a right to do that. Artists can pick their subject. 
In other words stick to your little mouse guns. Also, if you haven't already, you might want to read Sapphire's other books (by now you've probably read Push, as well as having seen the movie Precious, based on the novel): American Dreams and Black Wings & Blind Angels. Power literature all the way.

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