I wonder how many critics are failed writers? It seems unfair they should have such an influence over writers' careers.

This is a really interesting thread. For me, self-indulgence is something that is included on the whim of a writer, rather than something which moves the story or the character forward. For what it's worth, I don't think it's always necessarily bad. It depends on the genre, and the context, of course.

I'm often guilty of it. For instance, I've got a disability, and will often have a disabled character wobble past in my short stories. This is spurious, and COMPLETELY self indulgent, I'd be the first to admit, but I usually do it in a light-hearted way, during a light-hearted scene, when it fits with the rhythm and tone of the piece. (My stories are usually very, very tongue in cheek as it is.) It's fun. I often read my stories aloud, and in that context everyone gets the joke, and usually there are a bunch of other jokes going on at the same time which aren't as self-important.

It's not just wobblers... I have a not unrelated obsession with high heels - can't wear 'em - so there will often be ludicrous stilletoes in my stories, just quick images. There are other obsessions which turn up occasionally.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this too well. It's just I see these images as my little Hitchcockian moment - stamping my identity on a story, kind of the same as an artist signing their name in the corner of a painting...

... I think it works given the tone of what I write most of the time, it's my little private game, a joke at my own expense. Hell, I'm just a wannabe postmodernist at heart...

ShinyK

So, is the sum total of this thread saying we have to sacrifice our 'selves' when we write? Do we have to move away from the 'self' to an objective 'I' which is removed from our own personality? Readers will not automatically find a writer's experiences interesting...ah I'm clutching at straws here, is this thread self-indulgent?

Do we have to move away from the 'self' to an objective 'I' which is removed from our own personality? Readers will not automatically find a writer's experiences interesting

'I' can never be removed from our personalities, but it can be a place to view our 'self' from with a raised eyebrow, and I think that's no bad thing when writing. When we write we are after all supposed to be thinking first and foremost of the reader ... for me self-indulgent writing is when the writer is not trying to communicate with a reader so much as impress them, which is to forget the reader's pleasure in favour of ours.

Andrea

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oops. Missed my quote box

It depends on what you are writing - and what you are reading. Last week I wrote a review for my Journalism class and the teacher said there wasn't enough personal stuff in it - it wasn't clear whether or not I liked the film, even though I'd used words like 'entertaining', 'variety of pace', 'humorous touches', etc. She tells us what sells newspapers is attitude and opinion. It's true you tend to get to know a reviewer's bias and judge accordingly.

I'm willing to wade through some really bad writing if it's on a subject I want to read about, though.


Sheila

I think ShinyK's kind of self-indulgent writing doesn't matter at all; readers either won't see it, or will be mildly amused.

for me self-indulgent writing ... is to forget the reader's pleasure in favour of ours.

I think Anj has hit the nail on the head, though I've edited it, because though I think 'trying to impress the reader' is one of the commonest self-indulgences, and there are others. Putting in chunks other languages and not translating them or making it clear what it means is one, putting sudden lumps of polemic or newpaper-column rant is another, and I get terribly bored with writers who try to shock the reader, just for the sake of being horrifying or disgusting. That always reminds me of a three year old shouting 'bum' at Granny, and then looking over their shoulder to see if you're going to tell them off!

Emma

Emma,

What's an aga saga? I've never heard of it before.

Ashlinn

I think Joanna Trollope is the doyenne, but Jilly Cooper's books are similar. They are stories about middle class women and their family/romantic problems,set in country towns and villages in England. The Aga, a big old-fashioned kitchen range which cooks things slowly, represents a kind of bygone idyll of settled country existence when country life was supposedly comfortable and the daily routine uneventful. A bit like The Archers on Radio 4 without all the carrot-pulling. Maeve Binchy does the Irish equivalent.

Oh dear, that dates me! Trollope is interesting and subtle about relationships, though her writing's no more than adequate for the job. She's moved away from Agas, too. Others on that patch were people like Titia Sutherland and Amanda Brookfield. Jilly Cooper I find just too silly bother with, but that's just me.

Emma

I find them all too silly to bother with but I gave a Jilly Cooper one a go as she used to write an amusing column for one of the Sunday papers.

Sorry, I should not have put my oar in at this point about the Aga, especially as the question wasn't even addressed to me.

Sheila

Putting an oar into an Aga sounds like a desparate measure. Personally, I hate the things; there was the time it went out slowly while cooking the Christmas turkey, and the time the wind got up in the night and in the morning all the tea-towels hanging on the rail were singed... And the constant whiff of oil now it's been converted in the interests of avoiding the aforementioned. They make sense in the country, where drying out lambs and wellingtons is as necessary as grilling lamb chops (which you can't - no grill), but I laugh when the latest local yummy mummy installs one at vast expense in the basement of her Clapham semi.

Emma

Thanks for explaining, Sheila and Emma. sorry to be short but I'm typing one-handed with a sick baby who won't let me go in the other arm.

Oh, Ashlinn, poor you, it's wearing when it gets like that. Good luck with him/her.

Emma

By happy coincidence there is a summary of JT's latest novel on the back page of the Guardian G2, to give you some idea of subject matter, as well as what the reviewer he thinks of it. It doesn't mention the Aga, - it's really, as I said, more of a symbolic item.

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'what the reviewer thinks of it' I don't even have the excuse of a baby.

Thanks, Cornelia, I'll have a look.

I think the current incarnation of the aga-saga strain is probably Posy Simmond's serial Tamara Drew in Saturday's Guardian, in the Review section.

Emma