Fantasist's Scroll

This is cute!
While looking for water gardening resources, or an old t-shirt that I can only half remember, or something, I found a fifth grade class’ creative writing assignment called The Island Project. The project was for the kids to imagine themselves stranded on an island and to describe the island on which they found themselves. Many of them also drew maps of their island. The project is from 1995-96, but, somehow, is still up on the web. It’s fun, actually.
And, not a bad way to get some creative juices flowing for a story setting, either. I have often gotten ideas for things to write by drawing maps first. So do Orson Scott Card and Holly Lisle, both successful writers, so it’s not just a fluke or a gimmick. It’s also a bit of fun.
So, if you’re stuck for something to write about, why not draw a map? Or, heck, if you’re not too full of yourself, why not just do the same exercise that the fifth-graders did? You might just be surprised at the results!

Today is Ernest “Papa” Hemingway’s birthday.
He was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899. Hemingway snuck off to fight in World War I when he was just 17. He had bad eyesight, so he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy. Just about a month after he got to Italy, he was hit by shrapnel from an exploding shell. He spent weeks in the hospital and then came back home to his parents in Oak Park.
After his parents got tired of him hanging around, he started writing stories for Chicago newspapers and magazines, and then got a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star and went off to Paris with his wife Hadley. He became friends with a lot of writers who were in Paris at the time, including Fitzgerald and Joyce and Pound and Gertrude Stein. And he wrote every day, sometimes in his apartment, sometimes in cafés, but he wrote every day.

His first collection of short stories, In Our Time, came out in 1925 and the following year, his first big success, Sun Also Rises. Three years later, Farewell To Arms came out. By the 1930s, he was one of the best-known writers alive. He developed cancer and, in true “Hemingway hero” fashion, killed himself with a shotgun in 1961. But, by then, he was one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Here’s a little inspiration from The Writer’s Almanac.
Of course, most of us have heard about the release of the newest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the fact that J. K. Rowling made a huge amount of money the first day the book started selling. But, today that, in 1954, the first part of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn’t expect it to sell well. But, the Hobbit sold well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien’s publisher asked for a sequel.
Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. And, since he was a professor at Oxford, he had to write in his spare time, usually at night. His book became increasingly more complicated and, with the outbreak of World War II, he began to write in parallels to current events of the day. Middle-Earth’s enemies were in the East, just like England’s enemies during the War. Eventually, he complicated charts to keep track of everything and his son, Christopher, drew a very detailed map of Middle-Earth.
Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished his manuscript. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.
And, according to legend, it all started with stories to flesh out a people and history for some of the languages that Tolkien was developing. Rowling may be the latest “hot ticket”, but Tolkien’s been around for a long enough to withstand the test of time. She may or may not, only time will tell, but, either way, I thought the parallel success stories were interesting. I hope it provides inspiration to young writers out there debating about making the attempt. Not everyone succeeds the way these two authors did, but, if you work hard enough and dedicate yourself enough to your craft, you might just be next.

I finished Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov over the weekend.
It was an interesting book, though not quite what I expected. The story, as such, is told via an introduction and a series of comments on a poem. The commentor is, or believes he is, the deposed king of an Eastern European country called Zembla. He reviews and annotates a poem, called “Pale Fire”, written by his neighbor and friend in a little, college town named New Wye, where the former king now lives in exile and teaches Zemblan and Zemblan literature to students at the local college. Frankly, it’s a little hard to tell if we are expected to believe that the view-point character is, in fact, a deposed monarch or if he’s just quietly stark, raving mad. There is plenty of evidence for either argument, but, I believe he’s living out some kind of delusion that seemed harmless and charming to his poetic neighbor, who took pity on him and befriended him.
In any case, it was an interesting book and a literary departure for me. It was also not quite what I expected from the author of Lolita. It was far more accessable than I would have thought and, though sex and homosexuality was a minor theme, not as focused on abberant behavior as I feared it might be. The insanity or delusions of the main character were quite subtle and presented in that strange, calm, almost reasonable way that only the truly insane can present their view of the world.
One of the reasons I got this book was for that ficticious kingdom and language. I was a little dissapointed that there wasn’t more Zemblan represented in the book. The few words and phrases were really just there to spice and flavor the created kingdom of Zembla. Still, it does serve as an excellent example of how a little foregin flavor can go a long way. Again, I was impressed with the subtlty with which Nabokov presented his work. He paints his word-pictures with a very fine brush. The tiny details highlight the over-sweeping whole.
So, while it was not exactly “light” reading, Pale Fire was a very pleasant read, especially for a peice of “classic literature”. I heartily reccomend it.

(And, yes, this also appeared, yesterday, on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek. So sue me!)

No, this is not a bad acid trip.
Actually, it’s a pretty interesting web comic set in the not too distant future. What’s even more interesting is that it takes place in an Islamic-centric desert country torn by war and terrorism. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought it might. And, trust me, this is a very different look at how that dynamic works. Very thought provoking.
So, check out The Spiders and get ready to be blown away.

Have a fun freaky Friday!

Well, I finished Airtight Willie & Me this weekend. It was actually a fairly good book. Though, as I got further into it, I was a little surprised to see that it was actually a series of not really related stories. The book takes its title from the first story, which is about a scam artist getting out of jail and being scammed himself by his partner. The O. Henry-like irony is actually quite sophisticated. Well, considering the source. Seriously, it’s a little strange considering my normal reading, but that’s why I chose that book. It’s a look at life from a perspective that I will, hopefully, never see or truly understand. It’s different. It’s a change. And, obviously, based on the length of time it took me to read it, not a very long book, either. I got interested in this book thanks to IceT and an interview he did on MTV. He talked about Iceberg Slim, the author, and how reading his books had inspired Ice to rap. It sounded cool, so… Anyway, it was an interesting change of pace and one I can reccomend, as long as you keep in mind what it is you’re reading.
Currently, I’m reading Plot for about the third or fourth time. I go back to this book, and others in this series, when I have trouble writing. So, I read it every few years when I try to start writing again after a long hiatus. That’s where I’m at right now, ergo, I’m re-reading selected writing books to try and get jump-started back into a writer’s mind. We’ll see how we do in the coming months. Writing books are actually one of the few things that I’m likely to read more than once. I have so much to read that it’s very unusual for me to go back and re-read anything at all these days.
After that, though, I’ll be reading Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. The description interests me because a fictional language is at the heart of the story and I’ve long had a fascination for invented languages. The story centers on a man who has written an “epic poem” about a kingdom that doesn’t seem to exist, but that he’s created in such detail that he has a language for it. It’s a little strange, and not at all how I think of Nabokov, so, I’m looking forward to it.

Another Christopher Moore novel down.
I really like his work, in general, and this one was no different. Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings is about, well, whales. Of course, in typical Christopher Moore fashion, it’s also about a whole lot more. And, it’s pretty complicates, a little convoluted, and more than a little funny. But, it’s a dry funny. The basic plot follows a whale researcher, his research assistant, a photographer, his girlfriend, his ex-wife, their moderately rich benefactor, and a Rasta-surfer gopher as they try to discover the meaning behind the whale’s songs and who might want to stop them from finding it. Moore hits all the big themes here. Everything from whale conservation to loyalty to sex and the meaning of life. It’s all in there, just like almost every one of his books.
It was a good book, but, not quite as good as I remember Practical Demonkeeping or Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal or even Bloodsucking Fiends, but it was still good. I like his style. Dry wit and a slightly skeptical view of the world that just seem to fit together well when telling a story of such strangeness that even the characters have a hard time suspending disbelief. But, he does always manage to pull it off, somehow. And, any of his work is a great, light read that’s perfect for the beach.

My favorite fantasy author is experimenting.
Specifically, Lawrence Watt-Evans is serializing an Ethshar novel called The Spriggan Mirror. Apparently, the fans are clamoring for more Ethshar, but not loudly enough to be heard in the halls of the ivory towers of publishing. So, dedicated author that he is, Lawrence has begun serializing the novel on his website. Every week that he has recieved $100, or more, in donations, he will post a chapter, until the entire book is “exposed”. Of course, if he hasn’t recieved the required donations, he doesn’t post anything that week. So, all you rich kids who like Lawrence Watt-Evans, go spend your allowance on this project, so I can read this fine novel for free.

Oh, you know I’m going to contribute, but it’s Friday, so I thought I’d have a little fun. Now, go read as much of The Spriggan Mirror as you can before the boss catches you!