Writing: Anvil and fan-fiction · 9:28pm Sep 30th, 2014
In 2008 Sacha Gervasi released Anvil!, a documentary about an early Canadian heavy-metal band that, according to Lars Ulrich of Metallica, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Slash of Guns 'n Roses, and other metal stars interviewed, was possibly the best early heavy metal band, but utterly failed to make it big, or even medium. Malcome Dome of Metal Hammer Magazine said, "If you had to choose one band, and one album, that really started the whole ball rolling, it would be Metal on Metal, and it would be Anvil."
They released their first 3 albums through the Canadian record label Attic Records, who (according to Anvil) refused to release or license them in the US. Other labels didn't want to release their 4th album until the first 3 were available in the States, so they didn't get an album released in the States until 1987--too late to be even a blip on the US heavy metal scene.
It's what happened--well, didn't happen--well, may not have happened--later that I want to talk about: They didn't get better.
Anvil released their first album in 1982, and their 15th in 2013. Metallica released their first album in 1983, and their 9th in 2008. I'm playing Anvil's 2011 album Juggernaut of Justice in the background as I write this...
...and while this would've been "metal" in 1984, the band hasn't stretched itself the way Metallica has over the years. (Except St. Anger. I'm pretending that didn't happen.)
I don't want to be Ezra Pound demanding everything always be new. But trying new things give bands more tools in their toolbox, letting them create more moving and interesting music. Think of Metallica, or the Beatles, or Beethoven, or Paul Simon, or David Bowie, or Kansas.
(...you don't know Kansas, do you? Or you know "Carry On My Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind". Sigh.)
What did the Beatles, Beethoven, Paul Simon, and Metallica all have in common?
They were all REALLY POPULAR.
Growth requires trying new things, and trying new things requires believing that you did more-or-less okay at the old things. My theory is that Anvil didn't move on to new things because they never felt comfortable that they'd gotten the old things right, because they didn't have fans telling them they'd gotten it right. You could even say they didn't get bored doing the same sort of music because they didn't have success. They never cleared the level. Whereas after the Beatles had all five of the top five songs on the radio, writing more of the same would have just been rubbing it in.
(...did you know Kansas wrote a 4-part fugue for "Miracles Out of Nowhere"? No? Of course you didn't.)
One of the remarkable results from my stylometrics experiments was that professional writers don't vary their style. The more adventurous ones might write a few stories in first person, but that's it. Professional writers don't get a lot of feedback from fans. Even if they're really successful, the most they'll get is the written equivalent of "MOAR!" Readers can't just copy-paste the parts they love or hate into a reply. And even if somebody--say, a reviewer--tries to tell a professional writer specifically what they liked or didn't like, successful professional writers, with few exceptions, try to avoid listening. It isn't part of the culture the way it is in fan-fiction.
(Even the notion that a writer can get better isn't very strong in print. Writers categorize each other as "in print" or "not in print". Print culture supposes that writers at some point pass some threshold of competence, after which they "break in" and can stop worrying about skill and start worrying about popularity. Which, I guess, makes sense from a business perspective.)
If I were writing print fiction, and relying on reviews or awards to let me know that I'd done okay, I wouldn't have had the nerve to write the strange stuff like "Pony Play" or "Old Friends". I probably wouldn't even have the nerve to write comedy. When I finished "The Saga of Dark Demon King etc.", I had no idea whether it was funny or not.
This is one of the ways that I think writing fan-fiction is better training than writing for publication.
Have some Kansas.
I would've been just fine listening to something like that Juggernaut of Justice album in the background, but I couldn't not pay attention to it because of your 1984 remark. And I guess it's ok? Meh.
I, for one, look forward to the literary future of mainstream fiction becoming more like today's fanfiction. I certainly think it's no coincidence that I more consistently find high-quality and highly entertaining fiction here than I do at libraries and bookstores. (What would Fimfiction look like if it was a physical library?)
Meh, Kansas is alright.
I swear, I have read more high quality stories on this site, than I have seen sitting on the bookshelves at a bookstore. There are plenty of good works out there, of course, but it's amazing how many "New York Times Bestsellers" there are that, if I saw that quality of writing on a story on this site, I would move on without a second thought. Not that they are bad, just...a lower quality than I have come to expect.
My ignorance is showing here... Professional authors, for the reasons that you mentioned, can't really publish extremely experimental stuff under their name, in the same freedom that fanfic authors can. They have publishers and expectations and deadlines, so from a capitalistic perspective, the Dan Browns and the Tom Clancys and the Josh Grishams are incentivized to find their formula and then milk the hell out of it.
But, are there any popular authors out there who still find a way to publish experimental stuff? Like, maybe they post short story scraps on a Tumblr? Or who have pennames for their wackier stuff?
I can't escape the feeling when reading published fiction[1] that someone on the site could do better and probably has. And I will admit I feel really stupid for thinking that. Everything I've ever been formally taught says that this is sheerest madness. But I can't shake it off. It is both comforting and disturbing to see the same impression in others.
[1] Not all of it. Some I read and go, "How the hell did you do that? Are you a wizard?" but this is mostly the stuff generally accepted as being classical literature. And not all of it, either.
Give Sails of Charon by the Scorpions a listen. It is my favorite song from that era. The vocal work is nothing short of amazing.
no, you have some Kansas.
I think I'm a bit flexible with my writing style, though I can't shake the feeling that I'm just apeing other authors I've read before. Particularly when I'm told that I sound like the lovechild of Robert Heinlein and Douglas Adams.
Alas. Real artists ship, and I've been lacking in that department lately, style be damned.
I'm proud to say I've seen Kansas live!
This situation you describe really reminds me of the similar struggle Death went through trying to break into the punk scene in the seventies. They also had a documentary made about them, called A Band Called Death
2497077 But isn't John Grisham one of the biggest exceptions?
After The Annual John Grisham Novel (wherein a young Southern lawyer takes on the system) got milked out, he went on to write... really good books. A Painted House remains one of the best professional novels I've read that isn't Twain or satire.
Although it plays back to Bad Horse's point (he theoretically couldn't write about carnival hookers until he satisfied the lawyer-hungry public), it could also just be the rich actor's ploy: make big-budget movie for boatloads of cash so that you can personally fund that Shakespeare play/ local film festival you always wanted to do.
If there's a difference, it comes down to the effect of money: in fanfiction, since there's no money involved, readers are more willing to try new things (no cost if the story doesn't work) and more ready to turn away. With book you actually buy, you tend not to stop reading until it's done (can't waste $8!) but that also makes you cautious about what you're willing to invest in.
It just makes financial sense for a published author to do the same thing several times in a row. Why get one money when you could get eight?
Being Canadian, I have a special place in my heart for Anvil. Even if I didn't know who they were until I saw that documentary some two or three years ago.
Patriotism is funny. Maybe even a little silly.
Kansas rocks!
That is all.
I was like "I know Kansas!"
And then you made fun of me for the first song I thought of being Carry On Wayward Son.
Jerk.
It is very true that a lot of folks don't really experiment; they "get good" and then stop. I have some suspicions that there may be some other phenomena involved as well.
One is that some of the folks who succeed do so because they hit the top end of their competence curve, and can't replicate it because they don't know what they DID; they can't write/perform that well consistently, and thus they kind of get trapped because they know that they're capable of producing something good but they don't know how they did it. People who are organically good, rather than just lucky, have more ability to wander because they actually know what they're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, though, you may try out other stuff, find that it just isn't as good, and cling to what you know, what you CAN do.
I suspect another factor is that once you actually get good, you stop getting a lot of the useful feedback you got earlier on in your career. George Lucas is a great example of this; he produced Star Wars, and then produced Indiana Jones alongside Speilberg, who could say no to him.
What else has he done which mattered? Nothing. But he has done a variety of things; while Star Wars and Indiana Jones are both action/adventure, they're very different entries in the genre. He has since produced everything from Howard the Duck to Red Tails, and none of it was even nearly as good as either of the above. And the new Star Wars movies, while pretty, were inferior in other regards - particularly in the dialogue, but also in other regards as well.
All the Kansas I've heard is the "Best of Kansas" album, so... guilty as charged, pretty much.
... that's all I got. Sorry.
The lack of variety is one of the things I find oddest about modern authors, and it's one thing I've never (so far) been trapped by. I have vague dreams of one day being a published author, and one of the reasons I write fanfic (besides just that I like to write, and here I have a willing audience) is to practice the craft.
I can only practice if I move outside the familiar box. So I've written stories in first, second, and third person. I wrote one story in present tense, because that seemed right for the story. (I had to do a lot of editing fixes on that one). As an experiment, I wrote a first-person story where no other character's voice was ever heard. And now, with One-Shot-Ober approaching, I'm going to make a point of moving further out of my comfort zone, and doing some dark fics and some sad fics.
Maybe the commercial publishing world is scared of rocking the boat, and won't let authors move out of their comfort zones for fear of offending readers . . . if that's so, I'm not sure I want to be a commercial success.
And I would miss the detailed feedback, too. I live for comments.
2497732 One-Shot-Ober?
2497740
You write a one-shot a day for the entire month of October (so that's 31 of the little buggers). It's kind of a pre-
NovelemberNaNoWriMo, or for people who don't want to commit to a long story, but want to experiment with a bunch of short story ideas.So I'm not the only one who actually know Kansas for more than just those two songs.
2497754
That actually sounds pretty interesting. Are there rules or prompts, or is it just anything goes?
2498110
It's anything goes. There's a group that collates all the fics (there is another group for last year).
Besides the fun of the competition [and there are no prizes], I'm using it as an excuse to flex my literary muscles, and do things I wouldn't otherwise.
But but but but Bad Horse, how can this be? Everyone knows that new music is terrible! Nothing that current artists make will ever be as good as in the '60s, '70s or '80s! I don't know why these bands are even trying! Anvil clearly made the right move in sticking with the best decade we'll ever know!
In all seriousness, most of the Metallica fans I know refuse every album after the black one, not just St. Anger. I'm surprised you didn't go quite that far.
2498124
My first experience with hearing about One-Shot-Ober or whatever it is was RainbowBob's savage criticism of it on his blog. His point, in short, is that everybody burnt themselves out on it and the site was flooded with an ocean of shit as a result.
I will not be participating, because I've already got my own projects to take care of.
2498124 2500549 I'd consider one-shot-ober if we could write at any length. I might be able to write one 300-word story per day. Maybe.
2500552
Pretty sure you have to do at least one thousand. I'd be curious to know what these thirty-one completely unrelated stories of that short a length would be, though.
2500552
While that obviously won't fit with the site rules, you could do them all as anthologies, and that would be okay.
Heck, you could publish one a week. Several collections of totally unrelated stories.
2500549
That's a reasonable complaint, and if the feature box (or the site in general) were filled with nothing but well-thought-out insightful stories, I'd feel guilty.
But--since I do take at least a little pride in my work, I'm not just going to dump a bunch of crap for the dubious claim of publishing 31 fics in as many days. What I am going to do is move myself out of my comfort zone and work on some themes and genres I'd never consider otherwise.
I've listened to several of their albums, and have a Kansas station on Pandora.
...but I like Carry On My Wayward Son the best.