Clover Jean Gardener - "Professional" "Writer" of "Books" "and" "Plays"
It is comical for me to do an intro post at this point but I figure it might be helpful for people who want them links. Them good good links.
So hello! My name is Clover Jean Gardener, and I'm a queer, PDX-based novelist and playwright. I am here, on Tumblr, where I ramble on the regular and post development updates of what I'm working on. You can also find me on the following links.
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My friend @fukurouonthesea said some words about originality in writing. I've decided to give my response its own post, both to avoid shining a spotlight on their issues and to allow me space to do a proper, big ol' ramble. I have crafted this response as if I'm speaking directly to my buddy, but if you're feeling stifled in storytelling by a fear of being "unoriginal", you can imagine I'm speaking directly to you too.
Because here's the situation, man. I've been writing for a while now in varying degrees of professionalism. I've published some stuff and produced some stuff on stage. And you would never catch me calling myself an original writer. I think there are people on here who can confirm I've actually boldly declared myself derivative on multiple occasions.
I don't consider it an insult. I personally consider it an inevitable part of honing a craft, and that an invaluable trait of an artist is the ability to reverse engineer works they find effective. To scrap it for parts, so to speak. My influences are - to me, at least - blindingly obvious. I commonly default to the same archetypes, cadences, and narrative structures. But because I've been writing for as long as I have, I've found ways to build new flesh around the bones I stole from the graves of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams. I am a graverobber when it comes to the creative process.
This is already getting long, I'm going to add a read more.
Talking about drawing inspiration and where it can be successful or stunt the growth of a project is something I can go on and on about. On a surface level, though, I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Even if you stumble along the way, you can learn valuable lessons on why a certain creative choice may work for one writer and not for another. And I speak from a place of bias when I say this - but I think artists can greatly benefit from being able to observe and introspect on the details in their own work, and the works they engage with.
Perfectionism is something you express worrying about when telling your stories. I still struggle with that myself. I've found I value a sense of trust between a writer and a reader, and I lament all sorts of faults in my work that I think might betray the faith of anyone engaging with it in the future. It makes me sick to my stomach sometimes. I am more distraught over it than what could ever be considered productive.
Something I try and tell myself is that the fear is often less rational than I might think it is. And at its core, it comes from caring about the experience of the reader. You can tell stories just for yourself. I've written about ten full-length novels that no one else will ever read, and I still consider them very educational experiences for my growth as a writer. But if you have any thoughts about sharing your art with another person, it's understandable to consider how the hypothetical person will take in your work. Whether you want to comfort or disturb them, I think the inclusion of the audience in mind can help a lot when finessing your intent as an artist.
To a point, though. To a point. In my experience, I've realized there's only so much I can do as a writer to value the experience of my readers. I can try my best to make sure I don't waste their time. I can present my themes and general vibe early on so that those who aren't into it will know quickly and find a more fitting way to spend their time.
But I've been on Storygraph lately - have you seen Storygraph? It's like Letterboxd, but for books. You can chart books you've read and reviewed them. And I've learned that there can be a book that is utterly clear in its premise, and readers will still not get the hint. People will read a full book and complain about things that are established on the back cover and within the first page. As a writer, I can try my best to value the experience someone has reading my work. But people are often strange, and I fully cannot account for the ways someone might interact with my writing.
What I can do is make my stories hoping not that they're perfect or totally unique, but that they are effective in getting across what I want them too. That is what I think I have the most control over, at the end of the day.
(also fun fact: scott from my series songbird elegies is a reimagining of the protagonist from a previous, unpublished novel of mine that i wrote in high school. and that protagonist himself was a direct copy of the fascinatingly one-dimensional lead of ayn rand's the fountainhead. scott skylark kaufner is very much a copy of a copy of a copy.)
Tell me something you're up to right now that you would otherwise consider too mundane to post about on social media. I want to see some small acts of being alive that I can get hyped about.
Ingram Sparks told me today that my last book is currently being sold at a price margin that actually makes me negative money, but only in Australia.
I said to Ingram Sparks "I don't know man, I'm indie enough where I don't think that's a huge issue and is actually kind of funny to me in a way". But Ingram Sparks was like "We cannot help you make negative money and we don't know why you would want to do this."
I was like "C'mon man don't be a narc", and Ingram Sparks was like "We are literally doing you a favor".
Anyways sorry any potential Australians it will soon be more expensive to buy my writing in paperback. Blame the dorks at Ingram Sparks.
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I don't know if it's my taste in books, or the state of literary criticism as a whole, but every book I've marked on Storygraph has led to me finding a negative review that I find just does not function as an actual critique.
Like if you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and found the prose grating, or the narrative difficult to follow, or the greater commentary asinine and shallow - those are all things that I would say work as critiques you have for the book.
If your main critique is that the whole book is just a guy doing a shit ton of drugs and causing chaos all around Las Vegas? Friend that is just the plot of the book. Like you can say you don't like that, but you cannot act like the book did not make it painfully clear within the first two pages that that was the plot of the book.
"God this Harry Potter guy just does not stop talking about magic and solving all his problems with magic. I read all the books and they never moved past the spells. One star."
I don't know if it's my taste in books, or the state of literary criticism as a whole, but every book I've marked on Storygraph has led to me finding a negative review that I find just does not function as an actual critique.
Like if you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and found the prose grating, or the narrative difficult to follow, or the greater commentary asinine and shallow - those are all things that I would say work as critiques you have for the book.
If your main critique is that the whole book is just a guy doing a shit ton of drugs and causing chaos all around Las Vegas? Friend that is just the plot of the book. Like you can say you don't like that, but you cannot act like the book did not make it painfully clear within the first two pages that that was the plot of the book.
Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)
Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?
Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?
Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?
Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?
Accept that sometimes, you still might not get it. This is perfectly okay.
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Being in writing/book spaces as an adult after an upbringing of severe neglect has kind of put me in an interesting situation. Because even just recently I got in conversation with a bookseller over writers writing experiences that they don't have a direct, personal connection with.
And I saw a lot of her points. My general take has always been that there's a wide spectrum of experience a writer can create in, but if they take a specific they don't have experience with and make it a crucial part of the story, it's way easier to break immersion in the narrative. Or even just trust in the reader.
But also the whole time I was thinking about how my medical abuse led me to think I was perfectly within my rights to write a bipolar protagonist. I have been managing bipolar since I was 12 years old. Drawing on that experience, in my mind, could be very helpful in creating the lead of my most ambitious writing project to date.
Then like three months after publishing the first book it was determined I was not at all bipolar. Showed no signs at all to meet the qualifiers, according to multiple doctors. Every new doctor I see is visibly baffled that I was diagnosed as young as I was, and "treated" for as long as I was.
I would not pull out my niche case in discussions like this, because I know I am once again a very strange exception. But I definitely think about it. Think about it every time the debate comes up.
I just think they should look like larvae. like how kittens and babies do. the young version of something shouldn't just look like a tiny 1:1 replica of the adult iteration
Last night as I was making this I got into an argument with my wife on the validity of calling babies "larval adults". And at one point I pulled up a watermarked stock image of a newborn baby, showed it to my wife, and asked "does this look like a human being to you".
I just think they should look like larvae. like how kittens and babies do. the young version of something shouldn't just look like a tiny 1:1 replica of the adult iteration
I just think they should look like larvae. like how kittens and babies do. the young version of something shouldn't just look like a tiny 1:1 replica of the adult iteration
I just think they should look like larvae. like how kittens and babies do. the young version of something shouldn't just look like a tiny 1:1 replica of the adult iteration
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I am watching a movie called I Downloaded a Ghost. It's from 2004, and it follows a young girl who is obsessed with Halloween and accidentally downloads the ghost of a stand-up comedian that ends up helping her catch some robbers and win a haunted house contest. I don't know how she "downloads a ghost". But that is clearly the literal premise of the movie.
It's one of those early 2000s kids films where the lead girl is pressured into being more feminine. Her mom wants her to put aside the ghosts and goblins and focus more on slumber parties and nice dresses.
This conflict was remarkably normalized back then. But the precocious lead of I Download a Ghost is played by a young Elliot Page. And hearing the mom character plead for her "daughter" to be "more of a girl" is um. Man. There are new layers here now.
I think my favorite part of this movie so far is that it makes zero attempt to even slightly explain how the lead kid downloads a ghost. She goes to a website and clicks to download a ghost, and then the ghost is like physically manifested into her garage via polygonal mesh.
The guy is medium upset about being a ghost and has no additional issues with how his spirit was somehow transferred via dial-up modem.
Lessons I learned from watching I Downloaded a Ghost:
The only way to build the best haunted house possible is to embrace your true gender identity
Ghosts are downloadable via the web and apparently that's so mundane it can have next to no real significance in the movie. This guy didn't need to be downloaded. He could've just been a ghost. No one in this movie is at all surprised that a website captured his essence just after death. Maybe that's a more common thing in Canada.
If I had an 11 year old kid I would be wary to learn they were close friends with an adult ghost. I would have way more issues if that adult ghost was a stand-up comedian.
The stand-up ghost t-poses as he rises to what is either Heaven or a High Altitude Hell. This is not technically a lesson but it is something I have to tell someone.
