Robin McKinley's Web Site .:. Robin McKinley's Blog

Robin McKinley

Official Web Forum

Members

Help

Home

Home » Discussion Forums » Discussion of KES » More KES forum

Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator

More KES forum [message #50536]

Fri, 29 June 2012 20:28

Robin
Messages: 6000
Registered: September 2008
Location: England

Senior Member
[Hellgoddess]

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2012/06/29/more-kes-forum/

I don't know, should this go here or should it go in the standard blog thread category?

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50537 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Fri, 29 June 2012 20:37

anne_d
Messages: 208
Registered: October 2008
Location: Orange County, California

Senior Member

For what it's worth, this struck me as needing my well-known foot-in-mouth reply:

^ Top Three Reasons for Never Reading Another Robin McKinley Book: (1) Aerin and Luthe (2) nonstandard Sleeping Beauty ending of SPINDLE (3) language (and sexual details!!!!) in SUNSHINE.+

Wait, what?

1) Makes me sniffly every time I reread the book. Aerin's dual nature and loves are just right, and mythic, and lovely, and perfect. I especially loved the last sentence of the book, although I'm at the other end of the house and too lazy to go look it up, but it really worked for me.

2) Spindle is one of my all-time favorites of yours, and the non-standard ending is just one of the many reasons. Besides of which, Beauty wasn't exactly the standard version, not to mention Rose Daughter. Sheesh, some people. Anybody can retell a classic; it takes an author with real vision to make something new and fresh from it.

3) Sunshine is an adult novel, or at least it is according to my copies. The protagonist is a grown-up. Maybe it needs a screaming BIG RED ADULT CONTENT label? Come to think of it, that might sell a few more copies...

"The creative urge can come out in any form: in embroidery, in... cooking, in painting, drawing and sculpture, in composing music, as well as in writing books and stories... the artist's inner satisfaction was probably much the same." ~ Agatha Christie

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50539 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Sat, 30 June 2012 00:08

Diane in MN
Messages: 2729
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA

Senior Member

I am strongly of the belief that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER FOR YOUR ART. Okay, so I don’t know if greeeeeeaaaaaaat artists have to suffer or not—although I’ll hazard an impertinent guess and say they don’t either—but the codswallop that is sometimes shovelled around about the Agony of Creation, oh, bollocks.

I think you're quite right. Just to use writers as an example, I believe first-rate writers will produce good work despite suffering; I believe great ones can turn an experience of suffering into great art; but there are many examples of people who wrote wonderful books even when handicapped by normal or indeed even happy lives. Holding forth about how miserable one is made by his or her Muse is putting on airs to be interesting, in my book.

_{"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich}

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50540 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Sat, 30 June 2012 01:30

AnguaLupin
Messages: 11
Registered: May 2011

Junior Member

...Wait a minute, why do people object to Aerin and Luthe? Is it because she spends part of her life with someone who's not Tor? *is confused*

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50541 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Sat, 30 June 2012 02:25

Stardancer
Messages: 182
Registered: April 2011
Location: Florida, USA

Senior Member

I agree that the "non-standard" ending of SPINDLE is kind of what makes it. Which is, I suppose, why someone who only likes standard fairy tales mightn't like it...but I've discovered that the more I read a familiar story, the more I appreciate variations. For the variation, but also for the immense creativity, which SPINDLE has in spades.

I also agree that artists needn't suffer. I think that great suffering--as well as great happiness--can be wonderful creative fodder. And artists are probably better at channeling that, so perhaps it appears that artists suffer disproportionately.

I read an article in which Lady Gaga said that her music comes from a failed past relationship, and she never wants to get over it because she's afraid she won't be able to produce anymore. (Granted, that article came out over a year ago.) It took me aback to see an artist who so thoroughly believes that.

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50544 is a reply to message #50541 ]

Sat, 30 June 2012 13:22

Re Williams
Messages: 49
Registered: October 2010
Location: Norway

Member

Quote:

What is it with the High Moral Plane? Is it just me, or is it the standard approach for telling an author you’re drop kicking them into oblivion?

Having been drop kicked before I have made a short study of this and come to this conclusion: The Hight Moral Plane (HMP) people have a standard approach for drop kicks. They use it on everyone, authors, teachers, co-workers - anyone who violates their Personal Version of Morality. (PVM)

The PVM is subject to variation from person to person depending on their up-bringing, view and perhaps state of mind.

Note: If the HMP people would not inform one about the drop kicking, it would be often be pointless. Then the non-moral person would not know. (exception: see co-workers)

o.k. strange mood today. That's meant to be funny and I hope it is tomorrow when I'm not short on sleep.

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50553 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Sun, 01 July 2012 00:47

danceswithpahis
Messages: 380
Registered: October 2008

Senior Member

I'm surprised Deerskin didn't make the top 3 list. I know you've mentioned that Deerskin was heavily protested in the past; maybe people moved on?

I too am curious about the Aerin/Luthe protest. ??!

"Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw!"

-- Lilo ("Lilo and Stitch")

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50554 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Sun, 01 July 2012 01:02

equus_peduus
Messages: 437
Registered: September 2009
Location: France

Senior Member

Quote:

I always told myself stories, too. . . . the storytelling went on . . . day and night, in school and out. Told them, drew them, wrote them, got caught writing them instead of homework, learned to hide them better, hold them in my head until later…all that.

I think I’ve said on this blog more than once that the great shock to my system was when I found out not everyone was like this. I also needed to escape from my childhood and stories were obviously the ticket out. But it wasn’t like ‘oh, okay, let’s go live in a story I like better than my life.’ It was just there. Like walking or breathing. It was the way things were.

This is so fascinating to me - that there are people like you two. As a child (up through maybe about 6th or 7th grade), I wanted to be an author. I tried to come up with stories, and tried to imagine things the way imagining had been described to me... and never really managed to get beyond describing my main character(s). I had a brief attempt at writing stories again in about 10th grade... and soon realized that all my ideas were at best copied from one or more of my favorite books - all my stories, no matter where they started, always ended up following the plot of something I'd read. I pretty much gave it up after that.

Something that a character in an Emoon book I just reread said really describes me - (paraphrasing here) I can execute instructions and put together ideas that other people have come up with, but I don't tend to innovate, and I don't tend to come up with new concepts. I can knit a sock, but I don't feel a need to create a sock pattern, and I definitely couldn't come up with a new sock technique. I can play viola with some competence, but I'll never be able to come up with a new tune, or even be a brilliant performer. I can diagnose and treat a sick dog with a fair bit of success, but I'd never be the one to come up with a new drug, treatment, develop a new vaccine, or come up with a new application of an existing treatment/drug. It would seem to me that people who create new things (authors, composers, artists, inventors, research scientists, clinical researchers, among others) are people who are always telling themselves stories of one kind or another. But not being a creator myself, I don't know if that's even vaguely true...

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50564 is a reply to message #50554 ]

Sun, 01 July 2012 22:57

EMoon
Messages: 664
Registered: March 2009

Senior Member

I think so, about "telling stories to oneself" being part of the creative urge, though the "story" may be music instead of fiction, or a new vaccine or a better widgit.

I can't begin to understand it, or guess how it works...it's always been in my head doing whatever it does. Many of my early stories were very derivative, but they were derivative on the surface...inside the surface, which was certainly nicked from the various books I read, was something that had to be told. Sometimes it wasn't fiction either (the great Tinker-Toy water-wheel error wasn't, alas, fiction) and many of the "Oh, I'll bet this will work" turned out not to. Some worked...interestingly (the chicken house story is too long to tell here, but my mother said "You're the only people I've ever seen build a chicken house from the top down and then have to jack it up to put the foundation under it." She was not saying that in admiration.)

The "I wonder what if...," the ability to visualize things not yet in existence, seems to have run in the family, to some extent, and in my mother came out as design and engineering. She was good with tools--saws, drills, routers, anything like that--and both designed things others built and built some herself. She designed and made clothes, designed and knitted elaborate sweaters, designed and built cabinets for her tools.

In me it was more words, with only some pictures and some music and the occasional wacky approach to building things (which nearly always caused her obvious pain when she saw them, like my sewing.

Report message to a moderator

Re: More KES forum [message #50565 is a reply to message #50536 ]

Mon, 02 July 2012 00:48

danceswithpahis
Messages: 380
Registered: October 2008

Senior Member

I've never been as good at innovation either, although once someone comes up with the basic idea I can do a lot to expand it in creative ways. I was bemused after this conversation to have a sudden creative streak surface yesterday, however, when I found myself inventing a story to tell my niece to help lull her to sleep, a story with her as the protagonist. It was much more creative than my usual on-the-spot stories; still full of fantasy cliches, but as she was only 3 days old I decided this was acceptable. Maybe they will keep coming? I hope for much more time in the near future with said young lady.

"Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw!"

-- Lilo ("Lilo and Stitch")

Report message to a moderator