Neil Gaiman has just won this year’s Hugo award for best novel, for The Graveyard Book – and I can’t be the only one who isn’t surprised by the news. I knew Gaiman was more than just a great writer when I read the comic mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living in 1993. I’d already been blown away by The Sandman, but in the spin-off series featuring Dream’s older sister, Death, I found something more.
Read more on the Guardian book blog
The World Science Fiction convention is well underway in Montreal by now. Up until a few weeks ago I was sure I would be attending, but when it came down to it I just could not justify it for this year. I’m doubly sad as many Clarion friends are there and I would love to see each and every one of them again, and our Clarion instructor Neil Gaiman is the guest of honour (I still find it hard to parse the reality that I spent six weeks being taught by Neil, Kelly, Jim, Geoff, Nalo and Mary-Ann just a year ago) and really wanted to see him take the Hugo (which I am certain he will).
But I refuse to be sad. Instead this weekend I am having a WorldCon of my own. My own micro-convention, to which I am inviting all my favourite authors (in their paper and print incarnations) and you. If you to are missing the party, then feel free to join me on Twitter @damiengwalter or #notworldcon and we can form our very own virtual con.
A few random links:
I say a bit about the Hugo’s for SF Signal
I argue for Neuromancer as the book that should have won the 1984 Booker prize. Others disagree. (perhaps more on this subject to come)
The leader of my tribe on the Colbert Report. I’m so happy.
I just stumbled into an excellent critique of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’, here at Grand Hotel Abyss. My soft spot for teh Sandman stories is pretty well catalogued, but I found a whole bundle of insights i this essay that I now thinking through with fascination.
What makes it a superb work of literature is the fact that the ethical quandary expresses itself at the formal level, for generically Sandman is a taut Shakespearean tragedy attenuated within a cantering, leisurely magic-realist novel, as if Macbeth were pieced out like breadcrumbs through a Rushdie tale.
Its been ages since I updated my progress working through the infinite pile of books beside my bed, so here goes a brief round-up of the last three months.
Firstly, I read something like 120 short stories in various states of completition at Clarion. They were the greatest leaning resource for me as a writer I’ve ever had access to. Reading work in prgress, from seventeen writers who all had the potential to make an impact in speculative fiction, was much like being exposed to cutting edge scientific research.
So today I graduated Clarion.
WWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!
It has been a long, hard six weeks. So long. So hard.
They don’t tell you how much hard work Claron is going to be when they let you in. I heard the words ‘Bootcamp for writers’ and thought..pfaff…all day every day to just read and write stories. Eeezy peezy. OMFG was I wrong. For any prospective Clarionites reading this and thinking about applying, be aware of what you are getting yourself into.
And then get into it.
Clarion has been, without a doubt, among the most intense experiences of my life. It has stretched me on every level – intellectualy, psychologicaly, artisticaly and not least nutritionaly. I’m going to make some detailed posts reflecting on the experience over the next few weeks when I have some distance to view it objectively. Until then then I just want to say a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to the eighteen graduating students and an even BIGGER THANKS to Kelly, Jim, Mary-Anne, Neil, Geoff and Nalo who guided us through.
And who are you?
Yesterday the Clarion group sat in a semi-circle around Neil Gaiman and listened to him talk about story. The light was shining so brightly everone was glowing. I have photos, I may share them.
Neil talked about want, specificaly what characters want and using knowledge of that to make a story tick (this became something of a theme for the day). He also talked about caring about characters, and meaning the things you put your characters through. We also got a good picture of the Gaiman working process, which goes a little something like this – find a premise (a journey to hell, for instance), think the premise through until you find an opening, write through the story with everything you’ve got, read back and find out what the story is about, redraft to polish that theme. Easy as!
The wants theme came up again when Scott McCloud, the man behind Understanding Comics and also a specialist narrative theoritician, gave us the inside track on his latest thoughts about story. The McCloud doctrine is all about desire. Every element of story relates back to the fundamental desires of characters. Some _very_ interesting ideas, especialy when Mr McCloud talked about his suspicion of act structure. I really felt I was listening to the cutting edge of thinking about story, and that was fascinating.
Even more fascinating were Scott’s theory of the four tribes of creative type people. This is an addictive version of Myers Briggs for artists. I’ve classified myself as an Animist with edges of the Iconoclast, but two people now have told me they think I’m primarily an Iconoclast. Thats a bit worrying as it feels like marking yourself out as first against the wall when the revolution comes. Or even before the revolution comes.
Week Four Clarion almost done. Two more to go.
Neil Gaiman arrived yesterday to take the reins as our instructor for week four of the Clarion workshop. The whole group went to see The Dark Knight and Neil came along as well. Pretty exciting. The general consensus seemed to be that without Heath Ledger it would have been a bad film. With him it was a work of genius. Personally I think its the only Batman movie we (as in the human race) need. No sequel required, and all previous Batman movies should be deleted from the hard-disk of history.
There is a theory gathering momentum that each of our instructors is bringing a new totem animal into the symbolic landscape of the UCSD campus. Kelly is represented by the many rabbits leaping around campus. Jim remains in the hoardes of jet black Crows and Mary Anne was accompanied by an influx of humingbirds. On Neils first night, a pair of owls (not common in SoCal) took up residence on campus. It remains to be seen what Geoff and Nalo bring with them.
OK, so I’m learning things here. Lots of things. I’m internalising a store of knowledge on fiction writing that I can’t imagine any more effective way of gathering. In the last week I’ve been challenged to think particularly about developing character and deep theme in my writing. There is an ongoing debate about political content in stories – how to tackle it, or when to avoid it. The genre / literary divide is being consistently challenged on every level. Its a fake divide, we all know it. And yet there it is none the less. Storytelling vs. wordsmithing. Balancing character, plot, ideas and concepts. And all thses issues seem to swirl around the basic question – what makes story work? Every story has a unique answer. Leaning how to find that answer afresh for every story written is what Clarion is all about.
I’m starting to find the answer to the big question I lugged over from England in my hand luggage – what do I want to write? I had a file full of ideas on my computer when I arrived. Now I can look through those ideas and strike at least a third off as stories I’m not passionate about to do justice to, and another third that just don’t engage with the themes that I’m really interested. I’m starting to see very fundametal commonalities in the stories I do want to tell, something I’ve always struggled with before.
None of this has been easily gained. Clarion life happens at very high velocity. Workshoping, critiquing, reading, writing, talking, debating, arguing, eating and sleeping. Its a little like being in a war, all experience is immidiate with no time for consideration or refelection. We even have the god awful food at Canyon Vista to reinforce the feeling of army life.
Thats all for now.
The locals call Aberystwyth, the almost capital of Wales, simply Aber. It makes sense, its a mouthfull of constanants.
Its an odd almost capital. Twelve thousands residents, seven thousands students. Some tourists and caravan parks. More than a few hippies and a sprinkling of writers, if you can seperate the two. I like it. I want to move.
My second trip to Aber and I wanted to get some reading done. Its a town that suits fantasy. High cliffs. Long grey beaches. Sea gulls the size of labradors. I took some books with me but was also lured in by the Waterstones 3 for 2. A mistake.
The Merlin Codex is one of those sophisticated fantasy novels I’ve been meaning to read. I keep picking it up off the book shelf the putting it back. I’ve read the prologue six or seven times so this week I read the rest. Its very evocative. Intense prose. Packed with dark imigiary. But where are the characters? Merlin, Jason, Medea and other figures from the Greek / Celtic mythic melange author Robert Holdstock mixes are there, but in name only. Perhaps its the fantasy iotself that overweighs the chracters, but facinating as the book was I couldn’t really get absorbed into it. Maybe it was just me.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss wasn’t me. This book seems to fulfill all the worst accusations levelled at fantasy blockbusters. Perhaps that isn’t entirely fair. Rothfuss is trying to write the kid of gritty, low fantasy that George R R Martin has popularised. Writers like Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch and many more have followed down this path, none very successfully IMHO. These books are very, very ambitious. Dozens of lead characters with hundreds more in support. Numerous intertwining plotlines. Massive themes unfolding accross a vast imagined world. It takes a massive amounts of skill and craft to write this kind of books, and with the exception of Martin, few of the writers attempting it are good enough. The Name of the Wind typifies this for me. It has grand ambition but the basics of good storytelling and character bulding are’t there.Thats a great disappointment because I really want a book to get lost in, but The Name of the Winde surely is not it.
My Clarion reading continued with Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman and Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link. Interesting to read these two short story collections intertwined with each other. there are a lot of commonalities. Gaiman’s writing is more diverse, whilst links has the edge in intensity. I could sit and read the Gaiman collection straight through, but Link’s is more a thing to read over time. I also read through some more James Patrick Kelly, which reminded me that I wat to catch up with some more hard-SF. Its two weeks to Clarion now. I’m excited in ways I can’t express.
