Pet peeve time.
Sometimes I run into a writer expressing a sentiment which I will paraphrase as follows: I know that the way I write isn't for everyone, and I don't expect everyone to like it. I have my own voice to follow and my own path to walk.
Most every time I hear some variety of this exact sentiment — and I have heard it many times from many parties, myself included — such words are used more often than not as a pre-emptive way of defending bad writing from simple technical criticism. It's a dodge. You just don't get what I'm trying to dooo, maaan.
By bad writing I do not mean writing that deals with "weird" things or "reads funny" or any of those no-brow know-nothing arguments. I mean lazy writing, sloppy writing, inaccurate and shiftless and blowsy writing — in short, writing with no craft, writing that makes other writers with similar ambitions look bad by proxy. To use the above argument is to imply that craft simply isn't important, that anyone who gets worked up about such things is a stick in the mud.
Sorry, no. There's a big difference between taking pride in your work and being unintentionally contemptuous of your audience by not fulfilling your end of the bargain, and by using the cloak of "individuality" or "creativity" as a way to not have to do the work done by every other writer worth his salt. If you want them to enjoy what you create, deliver it gracefully into their hands. Don't drop it on their feet and walk out.
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No no, see, dood, you don't get it, man, see, 17 commas over 6 lines of text without a period, semicolon, or other breaks in sight, that art, man, that shows that I'm not limited by your outmoded conceptions of language and grammar, that I have thrown off the shackles of conventional limitation with regard to the written word, I have thrown off the yoke of Webster's oppressive insistence on conformity and soul-destroying groupthink, and shown that I am a true artists, man, a free spirit, a magnificent phoenix about to rise from the ashes of your moribund 'American Standard English' and take flight!
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... blues.
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Do you think there are times when that general sentiment **isn't** being used as a dodge? (Are there any times when it's justified?)
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I'd say it's when someone has established that they can break the rules and get away with it -- when it's clear they know what the rules are, how to follow them if need be, and how they can be broken and to what effect. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule, I think?
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