We're not writers we're dictating monkeys!

I'm feeling in a feisty mood today. I'm ready to pick a fight with anyone that does not smell like coffee. However, I will take a deep breath and pick on the publishing industry instead.

Is it just me or do many of the books on the shelves today read alike? Formulaic Fiction! I blame the publishers. They want a specific standard (hell, they come out with a book  - The Chicago Manual of Style - only a mile thick and updated every year) and so many authors are forced to conform to a mold and somehow the voice gets squashed in the process.

As writers we're told: Write simply. Use small words. Use small sentences. Keep your paragraphs short. Writer's keep your comments to yourself. Does everyone's voice sound like that?

What happened to art? 

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, Moby Dick by Herman Melville are being studied for their literary value and complexities in universities around the world. What books are going to come from our generation or from generations to come that challenge us, challenge our minds?

What happened to books like these?

After a short struggle, however, Charles Hayter seemed to quit the field.
Three days had passed without his coming once to Uppercross;
a most decided change.  He had even refused one regular invitation to dinner;
and having been found on the occasion by Mr Musgrove with some large books
before him, Mr and Mrs Musgrove were sure all could not be right,
and talked, with grave faces, of his studying himself to death.
It was Mary's hope and belief that he had received a positive dismissal
from Henrietta, and her husband lived under the constant dependence
of seeing him to-morrow.  Anne could only feel that Charles Hayter
was wise. - Persuasion by Jane Austen

Jane Austen switches POV multiple times in this paragraph and, as author, she interjects with her own commentary. She would probably be rejected by publishing companies and yet we love her.

So Sarah Bletchley said with her baby in her arms, tipping her foot up and down as though she were by her own fender in Pimlico, but keeping her eyes on the Mall, while Emily Coates ranged over the Palace windows and thought of the housemaids, the innumerable housemaids, the bedrooms, the innumerable bedrooms. Joined by an elderly gentleman with an Aberdeen terrier, by men without occupation, the crowd increased. Little Mr. Bowley, who had rooms in the Albany and was sealed with wax over the deeper sources of life but could be unsealed suddenly, inappropriately, sentimentally, by this sort of thing — poor women waiting to see the Queen go past — poor women, nice little children, orphans, widows, the War — tut-tut — actually had tears in his eyes. A breeze flaunting ever so warmly down the Mall through the thin trees, past the bronze heroes, lifted some flag flying in the British breast of Mr. Bowley and he raised his hat as the car turned into the Mall and held it high as the car approached; and let the poor mothers of Pimlico press close to him, and stood very upright. The car came on. - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

 This relatively unknown author - Virginia Woolf (just joking) - uses long and really long paragraphs, switches POV on a dime, and won't be understood without a big brain. If this manuscript was sent to the publishers of today, they'd have probably thrown it in the garbage. Yet, it's classic literature.

With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in its way, that he was still patronising Little Dorrit in doing what had no reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the corner of Mr Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare with the intention of running at one heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville Hill; but which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. There is no such place in that part now; but it remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at the wilderness patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled with eruptive summerhouses, that it had meant to run over in no time. - Little Dorrit by Charles Dicken

CD used his books to preach to his readers - address problems of his day. In Little Dorrit he complained about the debtor's prison and The Circumlocution Office. He fills his books with far too many characters and plot lines. But how can we live without him?

Some day I'm going to take all the wisdom I've learned through the years and write a book THE WAY I WANT IT. It will never be published the conventional way, so I'll probably just make it available to people for free. I want it to have a powerful message and gosh darn it, if I want to preach my wisdom in it and yell at all the atrocities of life, I will! And if universities chose my book to study and try to decipher, I'd be honored.

That's all I have to say about that. Now, back to being a dictating monkey!Oh, and if you disagree with what I've said above, I want to hear from you. In fact, even if you agree with what I've said, I still want you to disagree. It's funner that way.

Picture Source: Addletters and here