Coming up as a writer, I recall countless times a jocular, financially successful older writer would repeat the maxim: “Fiction (or screenwriting, playwriting, etc.) is telling lies for fun and profit.” Sometimes they’d just say “profit” or “money.”
This is the title of a famous book by Lawrence Block, a mystery writer and author of many writing advice books, now in his 80s. I heard these statements made back at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1984, so Block’s advice may have started the phrasing or concept, or he may just have capitalized on the zeitgeist of what passed for creativity in fiction in the 1980s.
I now view creativity as far more than the restrictive pronouncements of every writing seminar I ever came anywhere near.
I view what I am doing now, every day, as highly creative. In 2013 when I was Alumna in Residence at my disowned undergraduate institution of higher learning, the title of my week was Life as Art.
I think I got this concept first by osmosis and reading everything Oscar Wilde seems to have written, including unpublished manuscripts faxed to me by his grandson, to aid my graduate study at the school I still affiliate with: Chapman University in Orange, CA. Oscar believed in things like this. He had a huge heart and a brilliant mind.
His society rewarded him by making him a pariah for his homosexuality, dividing him from his family and throwing him in Reading Gaol because he loved weak and terrible Bosie, ultimately leading to his untimely death at age 46 in Paris, having fought and lost a life-or-death battle with the hotel wallpaper.
Oscar was bougie, not crusty. Crusty Bosie, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry (Queensberry Rules — boxing) could be gay and suffer as few problems as Harry K. Thaw did for violently abusing Evelyn Nesbit and murdering architect Stanford White (who also abused Nesbit).
I guess I qualify as bougie. I’ve had working class experiences much of my life, but I am bougie. I have had plenty of money worries and for a time, was frightened I’d become homeless because of the things our society tells us.
Too old to have “value.” Too old to “be attractive and get a man.” Too old for anyone to listen to me. Besides, I was a girl! Nobody listens to women anyway.
But I have some advantages Oscar didn’t have. Times have changed. Back in the days of Wilde and White, my option for moving ahead or out of my “station” in life would have been either marriage (preferable) or mistresshood — to the richer or more powerful, the better.
Because I know what I am, I’m pretty sure I could have done quite well as a courtesan. There were many famous ones in addition to Evelyn Nesbit. Some even wrote memoirs, and maybe even a few of the things they wrote in those volumes contained a grain of truth.
I’m remaking my body and my mind. It’s working.
I write — every day — for profit, as Block states. Sometimes it is even fun. I like learning so anything I do that involves learning about anything — is fun.
So, apparently, people are generating fiction using programs like ChatGPT and submitting it to paying publications. Some publications have already closed their submission process because of the backlog and administrative problems created by this influx of useless, poor-quality material.
My instinct tells me that a very strange phenomenon might be at work. In response to a social media commenter who was very concerned about AI language programs taking the jobs of working writers, I said, “Much of the publicity you hear is designed to drive investment in these programs.” In other words: pump and dump.
I didn’t have a lot of time to talk with her because I could tell she was low-information and also fearful (she referenced Jordan Peterson and didn’t understand when I said, “Men like this get money from frightening others.”) She wasn’t an online idiot who deserved an insult, but she also wasn’t someone who was ever going to understand that 90% of what any of us see/hear is designed to extract money from our pockets and siphon it upward to any/all billionaires.
This is the same as old-timey fiction writer advice that is repeated ad-nauseum —
If you think that “fiction writing is telling lies for fun and profit” and that is the only motive for either writing or reading, then you are right in there with our choice of 25 versions of Spiderman, 18 Batman, endless Marvel sequels and prequels, the most minute variations of romance couples imaginable — the “twist” in the mystery is that the killer was a cross-dresser (Robert Durst! So convincing!) — there are 1,000,000 channels and nothing to watch, 1000000,0000000,000000 books and nothing to read —
You may make fun of those who read fantasy stories, yet believe that your child is at horrific risk at school because a transgender person might come and read a book to their class …
One out of every five girls and one out of every 20 boys will be sexually molested or raped by the time they turn 21.
That’s a fact that has not changed since records have been kept about these things. You should be afraid that someone could hurt your child. Chances are, it will be a teacher, coach, youth pastor, or scout leader. A few decades ago, parents had realistic and understandable fears that a child molester might harm them and also that someone might offer them drugs. A combination of the two? That’s what happened to my bougie little brother. He died of AIDS in a prison halfway house. Not from a drag queen reading him a story at his school. In Hollywood.
Lies for fun and profit distract us from life. From our own lives, and from the real lives of others.
There is some fear that the Hollywood and other “entertainment” industries cause harm to children. In combination with our terrible Frankenfood system, Frankentainment for children is harmful. It does stunt the imagination. First person shooter games played for hours on end aren’t good for mental or physical health. Even though there is a lot of good children’s literature out there, chances are, a kid isn’t going to gravitate toward the “better” books and authors, but instead, brightly-colored “media” tie-ins. I had a long conversation with a VP from one of the biggest children’s book publishers. One of the proudest things in his life was his dog-eared copy of a book he had written himself (using his connections with another publisher to get the work) … it was a Power Puff Girl picture book.
I have a pretty good grasp of what’s wrong with the US healthcare/pharma/food systems (cash is king, addiction and fear are the ways they get it).
Now, as a healing adult with a high level of writing skill in all areas I’ve ever worked in, I think —
I never really did waste that much time following this poor writing guidance (“Writing is just telling lies for fun and profit”). I’ve never written a single piece of fiction that did not have as much truth in it as I could muster.
This isn’t a “virtue.” It’s just my nature. I’ve tried to write bulls**t for cash (formulaic fiction). I can’t do it. I get a certain number of words in and it either turns “real” and truthful, or I can’t continue. I can’t take it seriously.
I don’t think people realize how much these ways of life and thought processes have cost us. Every time a new media or opportunity rises up:
Silent Films
Talking pictures
Radio
Television
Internet
eBooks
Digital art
Cable TV
Streaming services …
A few original creative artists rise up who somehow make it through the gantlet of bs and exploitation. But soon, and the curve can probably easily be graphed, the ripoff artists, bulls**t artists, the scammers and the pigheaded screamers — show up.
That’s what has happened here, during my lifetime.
I’m awfully glad, and you should be, too, that this phase is coming to and end and a window of opportunity feels like it is opening.
It feels like we may get some opportunity now to really be creative — whether it is in some form of writing or in our personal lives, building the lives that we want, need, and deserve.
My thoughts, anyway. I don’t think the AI language or art programs are ready for “prime time” and may never be. The only people using them are the ones who think like Lawrence Block, who was basically lying to people and documenting his own derivative, ripoff nature.
I don’t think he, today, is anything like a “bestselling author.”
They use ’em. And dispose of ‘em.
We are all worth more than that.