How circular can we get?
March 4th, 2016
As someone who likes to think of himself as a writer, I loathe the notion of 'writing what you know'. Don't get me wrong, I know that this saves a body valuable time doing research on whatever a body wants to write about, or at least encourages even more research in order to show off, but this lends itself to a particularly odious trend that just vexes me to no end.
The ultimate in creative masturbation, in my eyes, is someone writing a book about someone writing a book, or someone making a television show about someone making a television show, or someone making a movie about someone making a movie. And so on. If you can't come up with a compelling story, writing about an author who has writer's block (or whatever) isn't a solution.
This redundant circle jerk just lends itself to pretentiousness, and the main characters are invariably Mary Sues. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe there are really good novels about novelists, or comic books about comic bookists, or whatever. Is bookist a word? If it isn't, it should be. But I have yet to encounter any such work of thinly veiled fiction that passes the smell test.
Maybe I should throw my hat into this ring, though. Maybe I should write a book about a man writing a television show about a man writing a song about a man writing a movie about a man writing a comic book about a man building a computer game about a novelist who is seeking the inspiration for his next book. Is that recursive enough, you think? If not, we can add in a few steps somewhere.
And what's the point of all this, you ask?
It just bugs me. That's all.