"Let people enjoy things", "It's not that deep", "Stop being a hater", No.
You are capable of criticizing something and still enjoying it. Criticism should add to your enjoyment of the thing. Contextualizing and analyzing media is the only true sign that you enjoy it instead of just consume it. Stop selling the straggling iotas of your final brain cell to a fascio-capitalist system that wants to gorge you til you burst. Not consuming anything is better than blindly inhaling whatever is put in front of you without discretion.
Be an intellectual and have respect for yourself so you can have some sugary Wattpad fanfic and a Netflix reality TV show for dessert.
"The privilege of having a love, of finding meaning in life through caring, the same trust promotes the development of the same love and the same feelings and makes you look like who you really are."
I took a contemporary creative writing class last semester, and one of my prof’s favourite things to say was “Make meaning, not sense.” What she meant by that is that by just putting two elements next to each other, they form meaning, even if they don’t necessarily make ‘sense’ next to each other.
We spent the entire semester making meaning without making sense. She encouraged us to not ‘over-explain’ ourselves—to let the readers interpret the meaning of our work in their own way.
While I would argue clarity is an important thing to consider when writing for others, this idea of allowing the readers interpretation can be a freeing exercise, and open up some unique creative decisions!
I rewrote the same piece twice—the first time trying to give context to the things I was talking about, and then the second time, letting those things just sit without trying to smother them. The first one was a good story, but it was my story—and may be forgettable for someone just passing by. The second allowed the readers their own interpretation—in a way, making the piece as much theirs as it was mine. I let up control in order to create meaning for the individuals who would read it.
All this is to say that while clarity and ‘sense’ is important in a story, there is a point where you may be smothering your meaning by attempting to make too much sense. Try experimenting by letting up the reins a bit and allowing your readers to take the work in their own unique direction. You can sacrifice a bit of sense to make a lot of meaning.
Whale Fall, Elizabeth O'Connor – I was sent an advance review copy by picador, it comes out later this month. A powerful short novel with themes of environment, relationships with nature, colonisation, fascism, community, loss, grief, the impact of biased documentation and archiving, and the role of gender in society.
I really liked this, it hones in on a young girl coming of age on an unnamed island off the coast of wales, in the weeks leading up to war being declared in england.
What struck me was how precise and unflinching the language is in this text where images of island life are shrouded in a blanket of dramatic irony. Whales as literary allegory could feel overdone but not here, where the urgent message against fascism, against humans selfishly taking and appropriating for their own gain – whether from nature or other humans – is frank but not overwritten.
Just got an email from Junk: Literary & Arts Journal saying my submission was accepted!
This is my first time ever submitting my work and I am absolutely thrilled. Thank you all my angels for your likes and reblogs, for the support and all the kind words. This is a shared victory! And thank you, @leechs :)
so i decided to start something in my chronic unemployment in the hopes of becoming more employable: i made a newsletter!
a friend got me onto substack and i’ll be posting newsletters on there, on an ad hoc basis, discussing the Gothic, contemporary literary theories, and culture. there’ll be articles, book reviews and more, it’ll be developed as it grows. if there is anything you would like to see explored, please let me know!
so if you’re interested in contemporary literature and theory, please go and have a look at The Wandering Scholar on substack, and click subscribe if you want to be notified when i post!
I'm looking for ARC readers for my upcoming book, Mental Warfare. This collection dives deep into the complexities of mental health, exploring themes like anxiety, PTSD, depression, and the search for light amidst the darkness. If you enjoy genres like Poetry, Mental Health, Self-Help, Inspirational, Emotional, and Psychological Thriller/Fiction, this book is for you!
Sign up to become apart of my ARC team today! 🔗https://forms.gle/BExUSzbR8fnbPFtE9