The night after the night before
I probably shouldn’t do this. But I can’t help myself.
Mirkat writes:
. . . I was handed HERO when I was 10 [my first fantasy novel] and immediately became lost in that world. All of my early fiction (for class assignments, etc) oddly involves lost crowns, dragons, girls who fight like boys, or some combination thereof. It’s kind of embarrassing, really. . . . What I’m saying is, what Tolkien is to you, is what YOU are to me. . . .
I’m someone’s Tolkien??? Blither blither blither eep eep eep eep. Okay, my life is worth living, despite some days to the contrary.* I don’t recommend the ‘50s and ‘60s for growing up in—it was all Mom at home baking apple pie** followed by pretty much the same thing in tie-dye ***—and I love it that there’s now so many good fantasy stories out there†. But there is that thrill of only you (and possibly your best friend) know—which I (and my best friend) had about LOTR, and which kind of thing I don’t think is a possibility in today’s plugged in and tweeting and texting world. I don’t disappear over my head even into books I love any more, but I consider that a function of age: there’s too much of me and of my life grounding me here, whether I want to be grounded or not. But can a modern kid disappear into a story the way I could forty or fifty years ago? If my ex-shrink were here she would say ‘take the stroke, Robin’ but I’m busy telling myself that it’s different now—it was different even (almost) thirty years ago when HERO came out, or whenever since then that Mirkat read it.
EMoon
It is annoying when you spend a lot of time designing (with or without help–I have help) a website,
Oh, gods so do I have help! There is no way . . . although this is another rant. I remember when I was young—although some of this was the proving-you-are-competent feminist thing—we were all supposed to learn basic mechanics and change the oil in our own cars and things. I never did.†† Life is short and this is what experts were made for. When I was young I was embarrassed by my lack of total ability to do everything . . . and an equivalent lack of enthusiasm for trying. I could make bread and write a story—cut me some slack here. But slack-cutting came much later. Bless Blog/sitemom: if I had to do any of this myself I would still be using a typewriter—and bless all those other blog/site moms and dads and Computer Men/Angels out there. I would much rather those other writers and sculptors and inventors of cures for cancer who would rather knit and ring bells in their free time do so if that’s what they want to do.
writing the content, trying to answer the questions you know people ask…and then they don’t bother to go one step further than “Oh, here’s here website–with an email link–so I can ask…” those questions you answered.
I still do not understand how someone can NOT SEE the PEGASUS II COMING IN 2012!!!! banners everyfrellingwhere. Do people just like the idea of the author’s head exploding when another of these emails comes in? Ever so slightly counterproductive, you know, chaps, if you do want the sequel.†††
I had an email today from a fellow who plaintively said that DEED wasn’t available as an e-book and please would I see that it became one. . . . It is available as an e-book and its listing on the website clearly says so and gives the link to order it from its publisher. . . . In a fit of evil-cowishness,
The world would collapse in a little puddle of phlegm were it not for evil cows. We are necessary for the maintenance of social order. Mooooo.
I copy-pasted what I’d put on the website to the email reply. At least this reader came back sheepishly with “Guess I should have looked around the website more.” Yea, verily. I put stuff there for a reason. . . . Read the !**! site FIRST.
Yes. And reread any of the bits you didn’t quite understand first time. There will be a quiz later.
Then there’s “Why don’t you write more in X group?” or “When are you going to write more in X group?” sometimes with a plaintive “It doesn’t seem like that finishes…” or “It just ended too soon/suddenly…” Desire to scream. Yes, it blinkin’ well DOES finish, that’s the END, that’s ALL. “You could write more about [character] and [character] and they could…”
Yes. You could. You could also have a midlife career change and become an astrologer or a bank president. I’d rather you didn’t but I appreciate that the stresses of being an author with a web site and an email address are extreme.
STOP! Write your own !**! book. With your characters.
Special emphasis here, says She of the No Fanfic/fanart/fandangodoodah mandate, on the ‘your characters’.
What my characters do after the curtain call and they’re offstage is their (and my) business. I “could write more about” them if I treated them like paper dolls…but that’s now how our relationship goes.
Yes. YESYESYES. Characters are people too.‡‡ ARRRRGH.
Sometimes characters do come back and want me to tell another story about them. (Actually it’s usually their friends, relations, co-workers who come to me and nudge-nudge-wink-wink…”You don’t know what he/she was like, really. I know that’s what he/she told you, but there’s a far more interesting story–mine–and it will completely change your mind…”)
Sigh. Sometimes these people come and have a cup of tea with me but they never stay.
But anyway…people who don’t bother to look at the lovely buffet set out for them before asking if there’s any butter for the rolls, or stuffed mushrooms, when those are prominently displayed…annoy me. Lots.
Have I suggested yet that the Evil Cows should have a funny hat or a handshake or a Citation of Purpose?‡ We should be working on this.
Black Bear
| [Quoting EMoon] (Actually it’s usually their friends, relations, co-workers who come to me and nudge-nudge-wink-wink…”You don’t know what he/she was like, really. I know that’s what he/she told you, but there’s a far more interesting story–mine–and it will completely change your mind…”) |
I love this. I have to admit that when my brain occasionally spins off ideas about further stories in other peoples’ worlds, it almost NEVER involves the main characters. I latch onto someone who I feel got short shrift on paper, and think gosh, what would a story about them be like? Hmmmm….
I would have said there were at least two categories of this: the characters who got short shrift because that’s the way this story goes, and the characters who got short shrift because the author screwed up. In one case you want to invite them over for dinner, in the other case you want to get them into intensive care fast.
But, for all my sins, at least I’ve never tried to tell an author what they should or shouldn’t write.
After three years as Robin McKinley’s blog mod you should be at least wise enough not to admit it even if you might have done in a weak distracted moment at the end of forty-eight hours with no sleep at a SF&F con with 24-hour programming‡‡ and you’re hallucinating dinosaurs and there was that great story about pterodactyls in Philadelphia and suddenly there’s the author at the next table at the café where you’ve gone for a major caffeine transfusion, tucking in to a cinnamon roll as big as her head and . . .
About reading directions–people don’t. They just don’t.
Sigh.
As I’ve probably said 4000 times here–part of the angst of my job is knowing that the stuff I pour my heart and soul into writing isn’t actually read by 90% of my target audience.
::Tiptoeing quietly away now::
Doesn’t mean I didn’t do a good job of wordsmithing, just means in certain situations people aren’t predisposed to read information they’re not looking for. (Or sometimes even information they ARE looking for. One of my zoo stories involves working as a gardener in the tiger enclosure. The tiger had had cubs so she was off exhibit all summer. We had a label on the safety rail. We had a label on a vertical panel next to the rail. And we had a video screen showing the inside of the tiger den with the mom and her cubs. All said in some form “OUR TIGER IS OFF DISPLAY, YOU CAN SEE HER ON THE MONITOR.” And Every Single Damn Day we were working in there, we’d get people coming up, leaning directly ON the rail with the label to shout at us, “Where’s the tiger? Hey, is the tiger in there with you? Oh my god! Where’s the tiger?” EFF.)
::Gone away . . . I didn’t hear any of that . . . see you tomorrow. . . ::
* * *
* Not today, actually, except for the frelling shortness of it, when I was going to get 1,000,000 more things done than I have.^ I tweeted this earlier: one of Monday’s useless errands to Mauncester got a rematch today. I took hellhounds along and decided to have an adventure on the way . . . which turned out to be a much bigger adventure than planned when I found an entire frelling nature reserve which I had no idea existed behind an innocent-looking hedgerow on the old Roman road into Mauncester. This is a bit like going into a wardrobe to rub your face on the fur coats and finding a faun, a lamppost and a lot of snow. Have I mentioned that I’ve lived here twenty years? Gah. Local knowledge FAIL. Of course my first thought was, I wonder how prone to aggressive off lead dogs it is? And my second thought was, ooh, it’s all open upland/downland/moor/heath, it should be reasonably difficult to get lost in. Not that I won’t have an involuntary try the next time we go there. Of course we’ll go there again. Columbus, Cortez, Amundsen, Armstrong and McKinley.
^ I have this insufficiently examined theory that every night I’m not bell ringing is ten hours long. Um. But I really need to get on with the second row of my knitting before you all lose faith in me. Well, I’ve had some difficulty finding videos that aren’t even more confusing than the books. The books never show you which is the short end and which is the working end of your yarn.
** And while I was/am not a Kennedy fan and the whole Camelot thing makes me want to throw up, look who came after. Okay, not a Johnson fan either, but we ended the 60s with Nixon, which is enough to blight anyone’s young adulthood.^
^ All you guys blighted by various shrubberies . . . sympathy.
*** Well no, I don’t think I exaggerate all that much. The sexual revolution was basically the freedom to get called frigid if you didn’t put out. And you were still doing all the cooking. Bad attitude? Me? I’ve always been better at books than people.
† Even if it is under pressure from great galloping raftloads of awful.
†† As far as I got was the taking of the spark plug out of the dead motorcycle, waving it around in a mystic gesture while murmuring an anagogic chant . . . putting the frelling plug back in the frelling bike, and hoping it frelling starts this time. Which it very often did.
††† And if you don’t . . . go jump in the lake. Haven’t heard that imprecation in years. Last night’s blog also produced a pleasing little flurry of supportive emails. One woman suggests lake-jumping: ‘In particular, at the annual St. Paul winter carnival in Minnesota, a hole is cut through the ice and several individuals indeed jump in.’ Do they scream? It’s better if they scream.
‡ To Whack the Holy Frell Out of Anyone Who Deserves It. The application form for deservingness can be downloaded from this site. See last night’s post on the presence of the word ‘sequel’ in any communication with this author.
‡‡ Or dragons, mages, pegasi, hellhounds, etc
‡‡‡ Ask me how I know about the dangers of 24-hour con programming.
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