86: An Artist In Need of an Audience
6/17/2014
I moved to Aberdeen, arriving here six weeks ago. Which means, in addition to losing the solitude of my writing studio, I also have a roommate and a TV now. You can imagine how little work is getting done. Though I’ve worked some on The Song of Mugasha fable, completing Part One with Tapu meeting Damu crossing the bridge to the western forest. Not much, but at least it’s something. As predicted, it’s extremely hard to work while in the midst of a new relationship, but I think the TV is an even bigger handicap than the roommate. I love movies, and have been doing a lot of catching up.
I watched the movie Avatar last night for the first time. It was good, but not as naturalistic as I’d have wanted. It was too obviously computer generated, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where cartoons were mixed with live action.
I really liked the culture-building and characterizations of the natives though. The lush forest settings with the massive trees and waterfalls were inspiring for me. The “I see you” is a typical African aboriginal greeting. Their hair and music have blatant African influences, too, while their dress, vocalizations, and uses of “horses” are more in keeping with Native Americans.
The story was okay, though I was disappointed by the use of the exploitive white colonist cliche for the bad guys. It’s telling that the movie only bogged down for me when the scenes were human scenes rather than the native ones. I’d have preferred it if the entire movie was native with no humans and a different nonhuman centered storyline.
On the whole it was good, but aside from the lush visuals it wasn’t the cinematic masterpiece it’s touted as being. It was obviously targeted for mass-market appeal, moving too fast without enough substance to balance the eye-candy, for me to call it great.
As for its comparison to my Batu books: the tribe’s plaited hair, their music, and the lush forest that’s larger than life are the only things I see that they have in common. Thank god.
I got Rob Dogget’s three pages of notes, along with the 150 pages of my manuscript, returned to me two weeks ago. His comments were disappointing though. He admits up front to being prejudiced against my genre of writing (then why’d he want to see it? Didn’t Paul mention it?), and that he won’t be wanting to read more. He even said he had discouraged his students in the past from writing in my genre, and if they must, to at least keep it brief.
What kind of teacher is this? You don’t teach them what, you teach them how. What kind of teacher uses his/her authority to inhibit creative expression by pushing their own genre tastes? Way too many do, no doubt.
Rob was polite about it, but he lost me along with my respect for his opinion in his opening paragraph. All his comments after that were pretty much wasted on me. It didn’t help any that he didn’t even understand that the flashbacks in the prologue were flashbacks, though my two other readers (with no training in literature) both understood the flashback transitions. He wasn’t harsh or overly critical in his comments, however, just obtuse. He even praised my writing in general terms. My only problem with him, and all so-called authorities like him in the arts, is the obvious snobbery and prejudices he has and allowing them to influence his instruction to would-be writers. I experienced enough in art school to know that a good art teacher has no right to push their personal aesthetics in terms of content or genre.
Present-Day Reflection
8/19/2026
I remember how difficult it was to write that journal entry twelve years ago. It seems like a another lifetime, a LOT of water under the bridge, but the profound resentment I felt from Dogget’s response remains quite clear in my memory. I had to wait two weeks to cool off before journaling about it, and even then it was very difficult because I didn’t want to rant or come off as being defensive or imbittered. I held a lot back, with more emotional restraint than is likely evident.
He didn’t discourage my ambition or creative interests in the slightest, however. He only discouraged my sense of what my readership might look like. Made me wonder if maybe my audience might not be as expansive as I’d hoped. I always thought of my work as being genre-breaking and timeless, and that it would appeal to anybody who likes fiction in general.
Naïve optimism.
To be honest, I’ve never really had a good picture in my head of who my audience is – other than myself. Indeed, even today, I can’t imagine an “ideal reader” as being anything other than a carbon copy of me – someone who loves immersive fantasy, rich cultural mythos, and complex family sagas.
I’ve had my Uncle Paul read hundreds of pages of an earlier draft of Wings of Providence – all the way through to the end of Part Two: Twa Yal-Jukun. I respect him as an avid reader (though having no experience with genre fiction), and as a highly intelligent and insightful thinker. My work fell flat with him as well, and his written notes on what he read that he mailed to me indicated he hadn’t really been able to follow the basic plotting, let alone appreciate any of the finer nuances of symbolism and metaphor.
Paul thought the death of Bakar’s brothers signified the story was becoming a murder mystery. He hadn’t picked up what I thought was obvious – that their father had beaten them to death. Which is why I never bothered mentioning their deaths again in the story, because I saw it as a closed case. Not a mystery.
And I’ve had friends who are avid readers of genre fiction who haven’t enough interest to even try reading my work, let alone appreciating or providing me feedback on it. I’ve only had one friend who has read my work, understood my work, and truly appreciated it. We used to go for long walks in the rain, snow, or scorching heat, talking about Diallo and his struggles. This friend wouldn’t give me a critique though, because he was afraid of influencing me in any way. He always worried that I’d ruin it every time I talked about rewriting things.
But he’s the only one I’ve ever met I could think of as “my audience.”
My deadline for building the print on demand infrastructure for my book launch is the end of this month. Starting in September and leading on up to the October 1st launch, I will be focusing entirely on finding my online audience and trying to reach out to them. Which will be anybody who might actually be reading what I’m writing right now.
So, wish me luck. If history is any guide, I’m going to need it.
