Forum / Conflict

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 03, 10:52pm

  Conflict seems to interest all people who are interested in writing. I feel that when conflict arises in social settings that relate to writing, that people in those settings become Characters in each other's minds, but without the grandeur of Characters and with far too much Free Will, layered thinly, especially online, to fit inside a meaningful plot or story. It may seem a comedy of broken words and easy shots, anything to cause a little pain where causing love is unlikely. The writer ought to attempt at least in their real work, as Gary Snyder calls it, to bring awareness of human feeling, including charity, anger at power structures that hurt the environment and economy and families, and friendship to the table. An unwanted guest at the table requires tolerance, patience, and compassion and it may elicit intolerance, impatience, and gossip to have an unwanted person near, meanness about someone instead of understanding. Michel de Montaigne wrote that he never said anything worse of a man than to him.

• 
  mxi wodd

  Jul 03, 11:30pm

  ok.

• 
  Elizabeth Kate Switaj

  Jul 04, 09:32pm

  I am interested in stories without conflict: http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-significance-of-plot-without-conflict

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 04, 11:33pm

  Is the entry communally written, Elizabeth? It is very good, replete with excellent sourcework. Thanks for sharing. I disagree that "conflict" is preached in workshops, maybe in literature classes and seminars? Larry Woiwode doubted conflict was necessary in fiction and taught that. Other workshop professors, Lorrie Moore, James Robison, Rosellen Brown ... didn't teach it as necessary or not necessary, did not emphasize it? Shrug, cannot recall its emphasis. Literature professors and English teachers perhaps insist that conflict exists in stories, but I cannot recall that emphasis, either, and in total, there were 40 literature professors for me.

  BUT, my paragraph as I wrote it above is not about art. It is about faux fiction taking place away from the page, the fictive mind of the group creating it of thin stuff, without fiction's grandeur, as Lorrie Moore described fiction in a review of three memoirs in the New York Review of Books.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Jul 05, 03:08am

  Agreed. But there does not seem any gain in discussing it further, when everyone involved believes the fault lies with others.

  Lxx

• Frankie Saxx

  Jul 05, 09:59am

  I think it is not just writing communities, Ann. People mostly just imagine how other people are in a way that fits their preconceptions, world view & agenda. And it's my experience that sometimes people instigate & exaggerate interpersonal conflict & drama because they're bored & it make their lives more interesting. (see: facebook)

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 05, 04:54pm

  I believe in attribution, but here, I over-attributed. Lorrie Moore wrote of fiction's grandeur in reviewing three memoirs in NYRB.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 05, 05:12pm

  Letitia, I agree with YOU that those engaged in writing believe the fault in antagonizing or gossiping about others--or what Tao Lin has called "shit-talking"--lies outside of one and lands on others. It is true that some people engaged in writing are more peaceful and some more antagonistic. Online behavior and personality are often different from behavior in real time or face-to-face. That is WHY--the fault seeming to lie with others--that I stopped to read and respond to a forum conversation at LinkedIn about what to do when a writer in a writing group causes trouble for others by "throwing verbal wrenches" at every opportunity, as Heather Marie (that forum's initiator) described it so violetly. I realized instantly and had already started to realize that ART is a lot harder to produce than petty argument online or in town. Writers are interested in conflict, and maybe it is, as Elizabeth Switaj suggests in her linking the article above, because we are Western (American) rather than Eastern (Japanese) and have oppositional or different traditions in narrative.

  Frankie, here is a question for you, if you care to answer it. If writing communities are no different from other kinds of communities involving people, then why are writers in writing communities trying to write, and do they or when do they transcend an average way of perceiving life as based on their own preconceptions? Also, if people who tangle are in general acting or feeling bored, why, if they are writers, do they not instantly turn to reading fiction or eeking out a story about someone caught in ephemeral conflict or confrontation when their boredom strikes?

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 05, 05:23pm

  Those questions to Frankie read as if I phrased them rhetorically, meaning without specific answer or with only answers I have to them in mind. I do not have answers to those questions in mind nor think of them as having no responses for anyone. I hope Frankie will reply or that someone will.

  Frankly, what I like best about this so far is my own description (sorry):

  "I feel that when conflict arises in social settings that relate to writing, that people in those settings become Characters in each other's minds, but without the grandeur of Characters and with far too much Free Will, layered thinly, especially online, to fit inside a meaningful plot or story. It may seem a comedy of broken words and easy shots ... "

  and:

  " ... my paragraph as I wrote it above is not about art. It is about faux fiction taking place away from the page, the fictive mind of the group creating it of thin stuff, without fiction's grandeur, as Lorrie Moore described fiction in a review of three memoirs in the New York Review of Books."

• Frankie Saxx

  Jul 05, 07:34pm

  I suspect, Ann, that you hit on the answer somewhere else (I forget which discussion) when you said something along the lines of writing being hard work. It's easy to antagonize other people, fire off a clever quip, whatever. I think the feuding you get in any community is basically just procrastination. Writers do it in writing communities because they can pretend then that it's in some way related to writing. Computer programmers do it in programming communities because they can pretend it's related to coding. Etc. etc.

  And online I think it's probably even easier to imagine interactions being with characters rather than people. Aren't we all just sitting alone in our rooms typing anyway?

• 
  Elizabeth Kate Switaj

  Jul 05, 08:13pm

  Ann, I believe it was communally written.

  Is it different, I wonder, for writers to make faux fiction away from the page than for anyone else to build interactions and lives based on what they understand to be the pattern of story?

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jul 05, 08:29pm

  Frankie and Elizabeth Kate, I love both your replies, not that I hope to be in a position to moderate, but I do love both replies. They are full of (ozone-fragrant) air not error, or so they seem to me.

• Frankie Saxx

  Jul 05, 09:49pm

  @Ann : I missed this first time around
  "why are writers in writing communities trying to write, and do they or when do they transcend an average way of perceiving life as based on their own preconceptions"

  Hehe. We're all attention whoring dirt monkeys. There is no transcendence here, we're still tribal little animals with petty biases and jealousies and bigotries, and when we fling our poo at each other, we might congratulate ourselves on our artistry in crafting it, but it's still monkey poo.

• 
  Elizabeth Kate Switaj

  Jul 06, 05:46am

  Poo aside, I'm not sure monkeys are a bad thing to be.

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