Where do you get your ideas?
I did my first author visit to a high school the other week, and will be visiting another next Tuesday. This question came up then, and i'm sure it will come up again. It goes with the territory. The answer caught me out a little, as the truth is not that glamorous. The truth is, my Big Idea for the Dragon and the Crow came to me at a party when I was slightly drunk and very verbose. This is not a tale you can tell to a room full of 14 year olds.
Then in a moment of that all too rare synchronicity, my publisher asks me to write something about my idea gestation for an extended bio on their website.
It is time to get my story straight.
Here is what I sent to my editor, and here is what I'll tell from now on whenever I am asked that horrible question, Where do you get your ideas?
They say write what you know -- except Stephen King who says write whatever you damn well please. I like King, but I like Alfred Bester better, and he said ‘The Book is the Boss’ which really says it all.
I didn’t always think this. At university I suffered through a creative writing course with assessment tasks like ‘write a poem from the perspective of an inanimate object.’ Aside from being an inanimate object myself for most of the time back then, my real problem was that I had turned my back on genre fiction, trying instead to be a ‘serious’ writer -- whatever that means. My poem then was from the perspective of a pencil, as that was the first inanimate object at hand (pun intended) and it was about as bad as you can imagine. Tormented pencil personifies the torment of the tormented writer. You get the idea.
Step back in time. I was thirteen and had written a story heavily influenced by Wizard of Earthsea, The Dark is Rising, and Sword of Shanarra, called ‘The Broken Sword,’ full of monsters magic and mystery. Compared to the pencil story it was Shakespeare, right down to the alliteration and unpronounceable names. Everyone loved it. My english teacher told me I was going to be a writer. Something had gone wrong.
Flash forward and I was at party, long after graduation, with three years of teaching, but no writing under my belt. My friends and I were talking about Robin Hobb’s brilliant Farseer trilogy, but always the pessimist, I was the single voice of disappointment. Perhaps the bitterness at my own inability to have a good idea had turned me sour on the genre I loved, but I could not help but point out how stupid it seemed that so many fantasy books were set in a faux medieval society where people somehow accepted that a)magic is real b)it is to be feared and not embraced. It seemed to me that whether you were a starving peasant or a powerful king, if magic is proven to exist, you’d want to get your hands on as much as possible. The premise in so many books relied on magic being a feared and scarce commodity -- despite all the evidence to the contrary.
My rant at the party went on a lot longer than this, encompassing all the tropes from bullied orphans with untapped power to evil overlords who wanted to kill everyone with their power. If i’d grown up with magic power, I gesticulated, I don’t think worrying about my family or the local bullies would have been high on my agenda. And furthermore, in all of human history the true evil ruler always wants more power, not destruction of the land they rule. At the end my friend turned to me and said quietly and seriously, well why don’t you write one like that then.
It was the challenge I had both desired and feared since graduating. Somebody had finally called me out. There was really only one response that I could give. Okay then, I will (I like to think I ran away laughing maniacally after that, but the truth is I found a quiet corner and started to think).
Flash forward to now and I have learned how and idea can turn into a book, and how book can rule your life. It is the boss, not the other way around. At that party I had imagined a boy with no magic living in a world of magicians, and thought the rest would be easy. Both the boy and the world demanded I work a little harder than that. It was after all, the genre that I loved, and once you start writing what you love, you don’t stop ‘til you drop.
And that was where the idea for The Dragon and the Crow came from. Now i’m writing the sequel. Don’t get me started on those.
Then in a moment of that all too rare synchronicity, my publisher asks me to write something about my idea gestation for an extended bio on their website.
It is time to get my story straight.
They say write what you know -- except Stephen King who says write whatever you damn well please. I like King, but I like Alfred Bester better, and he said ‘The Book is the Boss’ which really says it all.
I didn’t always think this. At university I suffered through a creative writing course with assessment tasks like ‘write a poem from the perspective of an inanimate object.’ Aside from being an inanimate object myself for most of the time back then, my real problem was that I had turned my back on genre fiction, trying instead to be a ‘serious’ writer -- whatever that means. My poem then was from the perspective of a pencil, as that was the first inanimate object at hand (pun intended) and it was about as bad as you can imagine. Tormented pencil personifies the torment of the tormented writer. You get the idea.
Step back in time. I was thirteen and had written a story heavily influenced by Wizard of Earthsea, The Dark is Rising, and Sword of Shanarra, called ‘The Broken Sword,’ full of monsters magic and mystery. Compared to the pencil story it was Shakespeare, right down to the alliteration and unpronounceable names. Everyone loved it. My english teacher told me I was going to be a writer. Something had gone wrong.
Flash forward and I was at party, long after graduation, with three years of teaching, but no writing under my belt. My friends and I were talking about Robin Hobb’s brilliant Farseer trilogy, but always the pessimist, I was the single voice of disappointment. Perhaps the bitterness at my own inability to have a good idea had turned me sour on the genre I loved, but I could not help but point out how stupid it seemed that so many fantasy books were set in a faux medieval society where people somehow accepted that a)magic is real b)it is to be feared and not embraced. It seemed to me that whether you were a starving peasant or a powerful king, if magic is proven to exist, you’d want to get your hands on as much as possible. The premise in so many books relied on magic being a feared and scarce commodity -- despite all the evidence to the contrary.
My rant at the party went on a lot longer than this, encompassing all the tropes from bullied orphans with untapped power to evil overlords who wanted to kill everyone with their power. If i’d grown up with magic power, I gesticulated, I don’t think worrying about my family or the local bullies would have been high on my agenda. And furthermore, in all of human history the true evil ruler always wants more power, not destruction of the land they rule. At the end my friend turned to me and said quietly and seriously, well why don’t you write one like that then.
It was the challenge I had both desired and feared since graduating. Somebody had finally called me out. There was really only one response that I could give. Okay then, I will (I like to think I ran away laughing maniacally after that, but the truth is I found a quiet corner and started to think).
Flash forward to now and I have learned how and idea can turn into a book, and how book can rule your life. It is the boss, not the other way around. At that party I had imagined a boy with no magic living in a world of magicians, and thought the rest would be easy. Both the boy and the world demanded I work a little harder than that. It was after all, the genre that I loved, and once you start writing what you love, you don’t stop ‘til you drop.
And that was where the idea for The Dragon and the Crow came from. Now i’m writing the sequel. Don’t get me started on those.
Ref: It was the challenge I had both desired and feared since graduating. Somebody had finally called me out. There was really only one response that I could give. Okay then, I will (I like to think I ran away laughing maniacally after that, but the truth is I found a quiet corner and started to think).
ReplyDeleteTherein is the brilliance and insanity of being a writer. It is something we do, a challenge to rise to, a fear to overcome - and overcome you did :-)
Thanks so much for your comments Angela. I think we never truly overcome that fear. If anything, I think it just grows, in new and interesting ways. I dont think any writer ever gets over the simple and terrifying thought, that perhaps our work is not as good as we hoped.
ReplyDeleteNice post again Trav. Peter Carey once said (yes, I do have a bit of a man crush) once he has written a novel all he has learned is how to write that novel. The next one starts the process all over again.
ReplyDeleteNice post again Trav. Peter Carey once said (yes, I do have a bit of a man crush) once he has written a novel all he has learned is how to write that novel. The next one starts the process all over again.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good quote Jeremy, and perfectly sums up my current thinking. I had hoped book two would flow effortlessly, but alas, it is a completely different beast that is not yet in my control. Not that a novel is ever completely in your control (or music or painting or any kind of art for that matter) but I had hoped it would be at least inside the gates and not running free across the countryside.
ReplyDelete