A View From A Glass House

Two months ago I followed the masses and picked up the pop twerdy sensation of teenage vampire angst. I consumed the novel in a short amount of time, but was equally disgusted with myself for adoring such a shamefully poorly crafted novel. Formulaic and lame narration… and yet … there was clearly something to it as I was definitely intoxicated from the story. I finished the novel and started spewing my pseudo intellectual rants when I realized how freakin full of it I was to go on and on about literary craft… when… what the hell do I know? I read five dozen novels in the pursuit of a lit degree… and that somehow qualifies me to render more significant opinion of a good novel over and above the millions of people who can’t get enough of it? Is there not value in the fact that even with its poor structure that it gives so many women (I’m generalizing here, but no doubt) a few blissful hours of escape from the less than pleasant realities of today’s grim world?

I decided to write my own… to at least give myself some leverage in this argument. That at least I can say I’ve done the thing I have the audacity to say someone can’t do well… even though they’ve done it. I’m not saying I’ve done it well… but I can now say that after seven or so weeks, I’ve got 65,000ish words as a skeleton for a novel that may or may not someday be deconstructed by some other pretentious English major with a head for what makes or breaks a good piece of fiction.

But the point is, I did it. I didn’t just point my finger at someone else and say they did it poorly because I didn’t have the guts to do it on my own. As a result of doing the thing, I appreciate the effort… and LOVE that it takes to do such a thing. As a consequence, I am much more forgiving and happy with the thing my snobbery would shrivel a nose at. It makes things so much... easier.

There have been a number of conversations and speculations of late about what this great white hope of our new president is going to be able to do. It is an easy thing to criticize a leader without having to know the headaches of leading. If we are so determined to mandate what must be done to fix the problems… then why on earth aren’t we all going out to do the things that will make this world a better place?

But… isn’t that, too, a criticism? Or is it simply a gauntlet I throw on the ground to myself?