You Write What You Read by Adnan Mahmutovic
The most typical advice new writers get is, "Write what you like to read," which should really be, "Write what you like spending your green on." When I first heard this, I thought, My God, I’m lost. What genre, subgenre, or maybe anti-genre should I choose? The road before me keeps forking, and I haven’t even started to walk. You see, I’m a culture-vulture. I consume almost anything. I use the cautious "almost" because I do encounter books and films that I don’t want to digest. Gosh, once I even put in some effort to see Highlander V, but it was so stupid. Don’t chide me. I already did it myself.
I’m omnivorous. I love hard-boiled short stories with my breakfast and on the way to work. I’m a doctoral student, so during the day, I might digest anything from Beowulf to Jeannette Winterson, and literary criticism on both. I spice up my ride back home with good episodes of your friendly neighborhood superhero, Spidey, or a good graphic novel. Before I crash for the evening, I can watch two movies: an ultra-drama and the latest Stiller/Sandler seen-it-before screwball comedy.
I guess I lied. I can stand piles of clichés from time to time.
The trouble comes when I try to write what I read because I have read/seen/done too much. I belong everywhere and nowhere. Read my first collection of stories, Refugee, and you’ll see what I mean. It was influenced by everything from American pop-culture to highbrow literary theory. I love it, but once I published it, the problem of finding its proper audience was a nightmare. Who is it for?—people would ask. Anyone, I said. But to them, anyone really meant no one. I never dreamt people on the other side of the Atlantic (I live in Sweden) would embrace me and tell me they liked my work.
If you’re supposed to write what you read, then the assumption is you are what you read. But as writers, we sometimes fail to bring in new experiences and convey them through our fiction. Instead, we keep regurgitating the same old stories. Of course, there’s nothing terribly wrong in that. Although my book deals with my experiences as a refugee and the rape in my family, the way in which I presented those intimate moments was very much shaped by what I was reading at the time. Over the years, my reading list has included crime novels; Nobel Prize winners such as Hemingway; Booker Prize winners such as Ondaatje, Okri, Byatt, and Rushdie; old spinsters like my early crush, Jane Austen; various secret-conspiracy novels/movies; theorists of the existential disaster like Baudrillard and Heidegger; Frank Miller’s Sin City and The Dark Night Returns; Alan Moore’s Watchmen; Scorsese and Tarantino’s movies. Trying to narrate like any or all of these writers would make me schizophrenic. You see my predicament, and I guess I’m not alone.
I’m more commercially conscious nowadays, but I still write on instinct. Inspiration can be sparked by a feeling or an image, or a single word I see carved in the door of a public toilet. And I love good ole plot, too. In the beginning was a word, and then there was a plot. In Refugee, I dwell on fractured feelings. Yet, as a judge from Writer’s Digest wrote to me, the book still follows a certain structure.
If I were to pick out a single fictional relic as my inspiration, it would be Michael Ondaatje, on whose work I am writing my PhD thesis. I never tried to copy his style, though. He doesn’t really have one, or rather his style lies in the way he is intimate with the subject. His Billy the Kid and The English Patient are so different, yet both are just as poetic and raw. This is why I suggested him as a candidate for the Nobel Prize at a local PEN meeting in Stockholm. I’ll admit something personal now. I even tried to contact him when I was shaping my book. I asked him for help to develop my skill and find my place. I thought—What the hell. What’s the worst that can happen?
I made all kinds of mistakes in my approach: the third draft of the book I sent him was bad, unprofessionally printed and presented. I was clumsy and desperate in my personal letter, as well. He never responded, of course. In any case, my point is I cannot replace Ondaatje. He’s the most beloved Canadian poet/novelist today. His books are both poems and prose, and more. The English Patient is a crime novel without a linear plot. It’s a period piece, a poem, a bunch of random feelings and musings about existence. I wonder who his target audience was and what the hearts that embraced him look like. If I figure that out, I guess I’ll have an easier time finding my own place, too.
Adnan Mahmutovic is a Bosnian Swede, a homely exile who teaches English literature at Stockholm University. He is the author of prize-winning Thinner than a Hair, Illegitimate, [Refuge]e, and a short film, Washing. Visit him at adnanmahmutovic.
Adnan, this is a wonderful post. I think many writers encounter the same dilemma and will take solace in this piece. And the desperation for feedback from an author you admire, your honesty about it is so sweet. We are desperate creatures--desperate to improve our craft, to be read, to convey something as lucid as an instinct on paper with ink. You do it so well.
Reply to this
This is such a wonderful exploration of my own reading interests and writing process. I too have a wide range of reading and writing interests. If it can be written about, I want to write about it. Of course, marketing the writing is another matter altogether. There, I have to figure out how to narrow my focus to identify a suitable market segment. That always seems like much less fun. And yet that is the reality of the marketing world.
Reply to this