I'm no critic, so here's just my honest opinion from what I just read in your post. You seem to try too hard. I'm a rap fan so I'll put it in those terms. There are things called punchlines in rap. You have verses and choruses, but then there are the lines that every has memorized, the line that a verse either built up to or that went perfectly with a change in the beat, the one that was so masterfully rhymed or was such a great metaphor that you remember it. I think most great writers do this too. Words, words, words, punch. words, words, words, words, words, punch. Game of Thrones has chapters boring as shit, they lead up to the punch. Hemingway didn't make everything a metaphor or deep, he did so every little while and to great effect. Read the great speeches by Winston Churchill, Hitler, MLK, Gandhi, even Obama. Those lines with "punch" are used sparingly and very effectively. Churchill went on for like 10 minutes with a speech that would usually put an audience to sleep (but didn't, mostly because it was about the state of the war that just reached their doorstep) before the famous "We will fight them on the beeches..." part. But reading what you just wrote, it seems like you've made the same mistake I've seen in many other aspiring writers work. Every line and paragraph is over-dramatic. You try to go too deep with everything, you try to make every word pack a punch. You do that and none pack anything, my mind just stops processing what your intended "deepness" was and becomes very aware of you trying to be deep. "I fear that when I write, I uselessly speak to mute ashes" What? This would pack some sort of punch if you talked of fire, flame, burning or anything before. Made some sort of leadup to it, some sort of culmination. Instead what you may have thought would be a profound line says absolutely nothing more profound than if you had simply said "I'm afraid I'm wasting my time". I know I've said a lot based on little more than one thing you wrote, and not even one that was a poem or story, but it says a lot about your writing style
I'm not saying I agree with everything you said, but this is still another in a long line of excellent posts in this thread. Wonderful stuff, hubski at its best -- no link, no article to discuss, just a reflection that turned into something wonderful in the comments.
I understand that today most writers like words, words, words, punch. But if you notice the writers I listed as admiring, they all use the technique of weaving words so that each idea connects not with the next but with the one after. This is why you're getting such a smooth feeling and missing the punch. The point is the weave of it. was woven with above it, which was woven with Above that, which weaves into If read in the order of the original post, the interweavings gives not a punch but a dawning realization. You've actually reiterated my frustration that people prefer to be punched than to sit and contemplate the dawn.I fear that when I write, I uselessly speak to mute ashes.
And so I may uselessly speak to mute ashes....
I arrive here, brother, at this miserable funeral,
It matters none that I bleed, and read the blood profussed so wondrously by these writers long dead.
I understand your frustration with "people prefer to be punched than to sit and contemplate the dawn." But those are few. They may be the few that OP has said has purchased her works. But if you want to make your work appeal to the many there are ways to do it, in my opinion. If you want to sell and appeal to the masses then you need to study the way that those who have done this, do this. I never read a book once. Or watch a movie I know is deep once. I watch it and then go back knowing I missed something, not just in the plot but in the way the director portrayed something. I watched "New Jack City" again two nights ago, and noticed the link between how Ice T stopped that shaking, desperate crackhead from smoking and succumbing to his addiction again and they way the other cop stopped shaking, desperate Ice T from killing the drug don who also killed his mother. But I understand that I'm among the minority to attempt to notice this, among the minority to bother watching a movie again to interpret its meaning rather than just to see it again. I understand your frustration and I have to assure you that you need to swallow it and understand why it exists. I watched the movie with my cousin, he's got a LOT of problems going on right now, he doesn't have the liberty to analyse this movie, he's got other shit going on. Job problems, work problems, kid problems, wife problems. I can't expect him to "be punched than to sit and contemplate the dawn.". He's not able to. Consider yourself blessed to be able to sit an analyse these things, to infer deeper meaning rather than to read as an escape from your life or as a distraction. If you want to sell, if you want to really make an impact in those who have too much on their plates, you need to condense and get your point across clearly and concisely. You need to "punch". ... I'm pretty drunk at the moment so I apologize if If my post rambled or was incoherent at all
Baahaha that last part tickled me. Damn I want a beer now. Yeah I see what you're saying. But there's something that's being left out: To stop writing the way I want to write, and to write for the masses is the same as wanting to be a stint driver and becoming a cabby instead. It's like wanting to sculpt marble but deciding that screwing together TVs instead is better because it's easier and pays more. I'm sure you see my point. Know Max Brooks? World War Z? Zombie Survival Guide? I had the pleasure of shaking the man's hand and asking him a similar question. He told me, and I shall forever cherish these words, "Write how you think it should be written. Then you'll always have at least one fan." I'd rather die unread, holding true to that and to my hero, Bill Watterson, than to die on a bed of thousand dollar bills hating my own work. (Also I'd like to not that this isn't a gender issue as was suggested by another commenter above.)
This sort of thing extends to music as well. Look at all the great composers of the past, and the great composers of today. Every single one of them has the tension release thing down. It's that punch that you're talking about with writing. You don't try to make everything crazy deep and intense, you build up the tension and release it, and that is an element common among all great music.