Do you want to be a profound writer?

Profound to you may be utter rubbish to me. So no, I don't write a book hoping to leave any mark. Maybe explore some things and get people thinking, but I try not to voice my opinions on subjects just open the gate to make people think about something differently.

 

I don't think wanting to be a profound writer is so much about leaving a mark as it is contributing to the ongoing conversation in literature. Plenty of aspiring writers feel a need to leave there mark. And plenty of working writers the same. I mean I think everyone hopes to leave some sort of mark on the world in some way before we go. Writing... I want to do it in a way that means something and says something to be a part of something bigger. Maybe that doesn't make sense to everyone. I'm just saying I can separate wanting to be a profound writer from fame and at least on some level success. I mean you have to be published to get it out there, but that doesn't say much to the actual substance put down on the page.

I also don't connect being profound with being pretentious. There are pretentious people thought the writing world. And I don't see how striving to say something profound would result in someone being pretentious. I go through the highs and lows of being a writer just as in life. And truly understanding the highs and lows of the human condition is at least part of the recipe for being a profound writer. I strive to write things that need to be written. I'm surprised I'm in the minority on this topic. Just imagine if we were all trying to say something profound in our work. The words that could be...

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I even encourage it. I hope to achieve the same thing through my writing, Deadrats. The only way to do that is to try, naturally fail often, but eventually succeed.

It's not a guarantee and I think in the long-run you will do yourself a disservice by putting profound pressure on yourself (that's what happens to me, anyways). Certainly you should hold yourself to standards and challenge yourself, and at least be aware or conscious-of the big ideas and messages you want to convey... but past that it's kind of like a parent asking their child to "do that thing again" because they didn't have their phone out the first time when it happened spontaneously. It just won't be the same, and the child is going to feel weird as Hell.

Get out of your own way. If you have something to contribute, something of importance to say, then it will come across in the writing. And if it finds the right audience, it will resonate. A lot of that is unfortunately out of all of our control in my opinion. All we can do is write with integrity and write well. We can familiarize ourselves with as many writerly tools and arm ourselves with as much knowledge about the process as we can, we do our jobs, say what we have to say as effectively as possible, but there aren't really any guarantees beyond that to my understanding.

Nowadays the problem isn't so much of just finding a needle in a haystack. It's finding YOUR needle in the haystack full of a million needles. I know that's not comforting, but it's the reality we live in (although I do think each of us can do things to set our needle apart from the rest). Some of the most profound shit I've ever experienced, whether that be in writing or music or film, is a far-cry from the mainstream.

Nowadays your Platos, Mozarts, Picassos, Walt Disneys, Alexander Hamiltons, they've got side-hustles to make ends-meet and can probably be found on Soundcloud or something. Getting a ticket on one of the few-and-far-between rockets to the stratosphere involves a lot of luck and having the right connections.

The reality is that most people will only know and remember where the river is. Not the glaciers that formed it or the rocks that refused to give way. People herald Daniel Day-Lewis understandably, but not the extraordinarily talented cinematographer, boom-stick guy, and make-up artist that made his performance worth a damn.

If you force a fart, you might shit yourself.

Sometimes a silent-but-deadly or a crop-dusting is enough to make people never forget.

 

I stand with you. I almost didn't reply because I am new here and I haven't shared any work yet. I don't want anything I share in the future to be coloured by this thread (I don't consider my writing to be profound, but hope it will be one day).

But I couldn't leave you hanging thinking there wasn't another one out there because I struggle in the same way. You are not alone. I too have lain awake at night worrying that my writing will fade to nothing, touch no one and that I will have failed.

When I talk about profundity here, I mean deep (profound = deep), but not pretentious or difficult to read. I don't mean "I want a massive vocabulary that makes me seem clever". I mean, I want someone read to what I have one-day written and be moved. I want to write something that allows many people to recognise themselves in my story, and for that story to be held up as a good reflection of what it means to be human. I struggle with profundity because writing is the only thing I really care about it. It is my life's pursuit, I guess. So if my writing never progresses beyond lighthearted, does that mean my life has only ever been lighthearted?

What are you doing to improve? What is the gap between where you are now and where you want to be? I mean the actual gap - is it number of words written? Is the number of eyes on your work? Or is it the depth of meaning you can convey? I only ask this because if you could work out where the gap is, you could put some energy into closing it. It sounds like you're anxious about it which sucks . Would some strategic action help?

When the worry is getting to me I remember that as long as I'm trying, I am moving closer to maybe, one day, reaching that peak. I have come to accept that the day may never come, but if I'm not working on it, it will never ever come.

 

Ursula K. Le Guin was asked how she approaches writing about social and philosophical issues in her science fiction novels, and her response was, "I don't! I avoid them like the plague!" She said that as soon as she started thinking about what a story was about on a larger scale, the story died. Her approach was simply to make her characters as alive as possible, and allow them to make their own decisions. The results of this process, many would agree, was a pretty profound stack of work.

Brenda Ueland has a fantastic quote: "I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another."

It's easy for us to look at writing that impacts us and believe that the authors sat in elegant robes on crystal thrones, pecking at the keyboard with pristine white gloves, spilling pearls of wisdom onto the page. But what we're actually seeing is raw material that was scribbled in blue ballpoint pen by someone sitting at their kitchen table eating microwaved ramen noodles in their underwear, or jotted onto the margin of a receipt by someone wedged in the back of a city bus on the way to work, or tapped onto a smartphone while sitting on the toilet. But the writing is effective because it was above all true to its subject. And most likely, that subject isn't "war" or "bigotry" or "famine"--the subject is a character or characters. Profundity comes from being true to a character's individual experience. Only after that can the story grow to also be about war, bigotry, famine, et cetera--as felt through the subjectivity of the characters.

The experience of profundity in fiction is realizing something about ourselves, others, and/or the world at large, as the result of seeing through someone else's eyes. Fiction is empathy, a change of perspective--that's what opens the door for profound moments to occur for the reader. Our job as writers is to ask ourselves "what if," and then be as honest as possible in providing an answer.

 

I think Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to be a profound writer. He wasn't very fond of Sherlock. He had aspirations. Because of that, he didn't capitalize on what was seen as a culturally significant literary character like he might have. Ironic, isn't it? Personally, in this day and age, if someone, anyone, reads my writing I'd be beyond flattered. Whether they think it is profound or not, I have very little to say about this. I'd rather they just be entertained. Many books last the test of time and become classics, not because they were profound but, because they were entertaining.

-SIN

 

I think that would be very nice, but I think so long as people enjoy reading what i write, that's well enough for me.

 

Being profound isn't my goal, although I hope I can put out some nice quoteable lines about life and the world.

What I really want is just to entertain and inspire a range of emotions in my readers, as well as explore my characters' emotions and struggles.

I write genre fiction for that reason.

 

I don't remember who it is, but someone's signature says something to the effect that "Great writers didn't set out to be great. They just write what they really love, or what they write really well, and the rest followed as a result." I might have completely mangled that, not sure, but I think it was something along those lines, and that sounds right to me. Now just substitute profound for great.

 

The only problem with that quote is that at least *some* great writers set out to be great.

(For varying definitions of 'great')

The first example that comes to mind is Ian Fleming, who sat down at Goldeneye one summer and told everybody he was going to write the first instalment in a blockbuster spy series. Two weeks later he was shopping around the manuscript for Casino Royale.

(like I said... for varying definitions of 'great')

 

meh

 

When I think of the books that actually influenced me, none of them were only trying to make some profound statement about the human condition--they might have done that in addition to telling an entertaining and engaging story, but I have little love for stories that are clearly first and foremost about Making A Big Point About the Human Condition.

Indeed, one of the things that will immediately turn me off a book is seeing the word "important" on the reviews or blurb.

 

The problem with wanting to be important, is that you don't get to chose if you are important or not. When I think of important writers, who have penned (or typed) words which have changed me, or words which I remember years after reading them, or words which have a left a lasting impression on literacy, I think of writers who happened to be saying the right things and telling the right stories with the right characters at the right time: words which bit the zeitgeist, and hung on to it, long after the moment they were written in has become "the past".

Here's a few which have had an impression on me, or wider society:

Brett Easton Ellis
Charles Dickens
Chuck Palahniuk
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Maxwell Maltz
Ted Hughes
J G Ballard

Perhaps with the exception of Ellis, I'm pretty most of those had pretty small egos. The time they were in influenced their writing, gave them the inspiration they needed to publish their story, their thoughts or their information.
I don't think any of the writers I remember were trying to be profound, they perhaps they knew there were, or would become so, but weren't trying.

Trying to be profound is a good way of becoming pompous and producing stuff that's contrived and vapid, I would imagine.

Just write for you, and write about what matters to you. I believe that writing should be a form of masturbation. Nobody can do it for you, better than you.

 

Interesting how many of these lists of "important" writers there are on this forum with no women on them. It's such a pity, given the desolate landscape literature would be without females keeping up their half of the work (which they do, and then some).

Also interesting that OP's post about profundity has been transmuted into importance. Sorry @Partridge that this sounds directed at you, it's not. It's just that this last post shows how far from the first post this discussion has swayed, in my opinion. And, how difficult it is to broach this topic – of wanting to actually reach the core of the human condition and do it well – without that desire being heard as a need to be "great", or worse "important."

Why is that? It's fascinating to me that we are all here to write good stories, but from the sounds of it everyone thinks that being deep is something that happens by accident or, worse, is undesirable. (I'm back to deep/profound now, not great/important). I can't imagine that anyone who wrote a book that touched its readers profoundly started out with the mindset "I hope this book isn't deep, that would be a real pity."

Is it because no one wants to seem like they are pretentious, because no one likes a pretentious so-and-so?

Is it self-preservation? Like, if we talk about being deep and then we're not, we'll feel stupid?

 

It all depends on what the term profound actually means, to us, as individuals. For me, a profound piece of writing is something which follows you throughout your life - a work which is "important" at least to you.
If your work is important to many people, we call it "influential".

Depth is something very different, I feel. A daft comedy can be deep (think of Mrs Doubtfire) and so can a serious book which weighs more than a brick. There's nothing wrong in wanting a work to have depth, it adds layers of authenticity. My book is a pretty deep novel, really. It explores toxic masculinity and genrational warfare - will people see that part of it? Will they think that deeply about quite a flippant book, which at the end of the day, is there to entertain, nothing more? Probably not. But those deeper themes are there should a reader feel compelled to look that deep. I don't care. Just enjoy the book how you want.

These depths grew organically to my book, over the four drafts I went through, that's all there is to it. But I didn't try to dumb it down.

I don't think very many people want to be seen to be being pretentious, because pretentious is seen as un-authentic, and we live in an era where authenticity is the new polished and processed.

But, it goes back to the question of who actually applies these labels. Who decides if you are pretentious or not?

 

And RE women, I did nearly add George Elliot to that list, actually (George was really called Marion).

Female writers just tend not to be very prominent in the genres I read the most of (transgressive fiction).

But we're skirting around a can of worms which deserves a thread of its own.

 

Well, quite. No one wants to be pretentious. But some people may want to be deep, and I suppose my interest in the way this post has unfolded is how that seems to be an unpopular idea. As if wanting to be deep is somehow linked to being pretentious.

Safe in the belief that the two are distinct, I am not too shy to that I want my writing to be deep, and if I am honest, I would like my writing to be profound. That doesn't mean to say that I think it is. But I would be lying if I said I didn't care about it because to me that is a fundamental element of the craft – writing an accessible story that has depth of meaning.

Most other posters seem not to care at all. I'm just really surprised.

 

Over to you

 

It would be nice if people used the word "profound." I think I insert the occasional revelatory thought, but that's not a primary goal with most of what I right. I would prefer "inventive," "clever," "creative," that sort of thing. I'm more proud when I come up with a unique concept or story than a deep thought.

 

Pffffffft, I am the least well qualified person on the planet to chair any serious discussions, cyber space or otherwise.

 

The thing for me is, it's a lot easier to sound deep than it is to be deep. It's hard to filter out the latter from the former.

 

Sometimes I feel like the very act of intentionally aiming to be profound redacts from the authenticity of what I want to write. Some nagging feeling that this profoundness should spring up naturally in your writing. This is of course bullshit on several planes, but the feeling still clings to me like the acrid burn after a good throwing up. I've told myself many times that I never aim to be profound, that I just want to write a good story, but then I look at my writing and think: "This is starting to become something I'd read. It's good enough soon, I guess. Good enough? Is that anything to aim for? What feelings do I convey? This is a convoluted mess, and if anyone would scratch the surface even a little bit, they'd see the pretensious foundation for what it is."

I'm not interested in conveying a message, or to cram my faulty beliefs down anyone's throat. At the same time, I'm constanly thinking my writing says nothing. It can be a good story, with hilarious dialogue, but what does it say?

I guess humans are conflicted, and I'm no exception. What I'm sure of is that I'm a highly pretentious man, desperately trying to pretend otherwise. Sometimes I embrace it, and other times, not so much.

 

I don't think I'm pretentious or that my writing is. I don't think that being pretentious and being profound have anything to do with each other when it comes to writing. I'm quite humbled by the success I've had. And I know saying the "human condition" sounds really cliche, but isn't all writing about the human condition in some way? I also think even quiet stories can be profound. It isn't about shoving any sort of message down readers throats. It's about sharing experiences, even fiction experiences, with readers in a way that has some sort of impact. And sometimes it's the quieter stories that do this best.

Aiming to tell a good story is fine, but I want those good stories to have meat on the bones. I've been writing a long time and have worked very hard. I don't think it's wrong to want my work to mean something other than sales. Yes, I want to be a profound writer. Is that really so wrong?

 

That's exactly my point. What I'm getting at is the conflict of what I think is the truth (That there's nothing inherently pretentious about wanting your writing to be more than just a good story), and what I feel when I look at what I write. I have some kind of deep rooted "fear" of coming off as this "trying to be wise and world weary" type. I want my stuff to be something that keeps you thinking long after you put down the book, but I just feel like a fraud, I guess. This varies from day to day, but it's something I struggle with.