Hi Doug

On 20/2/05 3:31 AM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> But this leads back to how much you trust an audience, or what kind of
> writing (& its audience) you find yourself exploring. Alison has a very
> different audience for her fantasy trilogy than for her poetry,
> although in a few cases, me for instance, they overlap. And I suspect
> she approaches the concept of audience & what kind of writing she
> attempts for each in different ways as she takes up one or the other
> (n0ot necessarily consciously).

Quite consciously: I'm very aware that the fantasy series is _for_ an
audience, and that I want that audience to be wide.  This is (I realised
with a certain surprise when I started writing this series) the first time
the idea this has entered my thoughts in this way.  I haven't found it
diminishing; the reverse, rather, since it throws my other work into sharp
relief.  Its primary effect (and I expect this sounds ridiculously banal) is
to make me increasingly aware of getting my grammar right, so whatever I
write is absolutely clear.  Getting pronouns/nouns invisibly unambiguous
when, for example, I had three male characters in the same scene, nearly
drove me mad in the last book. Also, there are places - extreme sexual
violence, say - where I will not go.

This kind of links up with what Richard was saying, about what it means to
write for an audience.  I spent a couple of hours with Josh the other night
going through a short story he had written (my kids are very demanding in
employing us as a on-site creative writing teachers).  I only ever ask
questions about what he meant, and talk about the grammar: if he gets the
grammar right, other people will be able to read and understand it, which is
what he wants.  The process of getting him to understand that, to be precise
and to read every word, since people don't usually have ESP, is actually
quite interesting. The rest is up to him.

On the other hand, my audience is always myself, even with the fantasy
series, when it's me at around 17; I write the kinds of things, I suspect
without exception, that I like to read.  I write poetry (when I do) for
reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, and I can't imagine concretely who
might read it, apart from a few friends; the best metaphor I know for that
is Celan's "message in a bottle".  Most of the time I don't think about
audience at all, since it's impossible to know what it is.

I remember working on an experimental theatre piece with a performer when
the director raised the question and my collaborator looked up with a very
dark expression and said, Fuck the audience.  In many circumstances, that
attitude is the only way to respect the audience.  I have always been
troubled by the pandering to an audience, to the idea that an audience means
that work ought to be shaped in certain standardised ways.  You get that in
extreme ways in the film industry. These are actually formal questions,
although they're usually disguised as "market" expectations, and usually
they're pretty fatal to any art.

Best

A

Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com