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My progress on the redraft has been slow going as of late, in part due to a writer's blockish road hazard that required the scrapping and rewriting of the last scene of chapter 5, and in larger part due to a deadline for a prof's research assignment. It ended up taking far more time that I would have liked, but I managed to get it done by the deadline I'd promised, though it screwed up my neck something fierce to be planted in front of the computer for hours at a time. (Despite the magic of BICHOK--butt in chair, hands on keyboard--as advocated by the crew at Writing Excuses, my neck problems demand that I take periodic breaks from that position. Not taking those breaks inevitably ends with me flat on my back, as I rediscovered yesterday.) I still have another active project for the other prof, but I'm going to try to work in more redrafting time, at least a couple of hours each day.
October 31st won't wait forever, after all.
*
Visiting OSC's Hatrack website today, I noticed a banner that announced the November release of Ender in Exile, the long-awaited direct sequel to Ender's Game (i.e. the one that I wanted to read back in the ninth grade, but had to settle for the Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind triumvirate--which weren't bad, per se, but certainly a far cry from what I'd been longing for). I hope that OSC has successfully chanelled at least a spark of the old 80s-era Card magic, as I've grown increasingly convinced that he reached the apex of his writerly prowess before the turn of the 21st century. (One only need compare his earlier work--Hart's Hope, Songmaster, Ender's Game, etc.--with his most recent--Magic Street, Empire--to realize that his style has shifted noticably over the years, and not entirely for the better.)
Inevitably, however, returning to the Enderverse after three years (or, if one discounts the Enderless Shadow books, almost ten) will prove somewhat painful to me, I fear. Back when I first read Ender's Game, it was the gold standard against which all other fiction had to be measured, and found lacking. I really couldn't find anything to critique about it, even if I tried. I still occasionally go back to it, as a portrait artist might refer to the Mona Lisa, to give me insight into the way that a novel should be paced, how a story should flow from point to point.
As of late, however, I've begun to see certain flaws in the story--not so much a reflection of the writing or craft OSC employed, but a reflection, I think, of the potential flaws in the propensities of the author himself. Card has established a career on crafting intelligent, often times genius-level characters, and while he generally succeeds in humanizing them to the point of drawing a reader's empathy, some of the character traits he infuses them with I suspect are ones that he himself shares; and they are traits that serve, as far as I can tell, to alienate them from the reader. Perhaps that could be justified in Game; the whole plot turns on Ender's isolation from his peers, his loved ones, his superiors, and even, to a certain extent, the enemies he is destined to fight. That isolation closely parallels the estrangement many pubescents experience from the world and others around them, a link that may have in no small part contributed to the popularity of the novel, and its retroactive label as a "young adult" work. But I see strains of that alienation--something deep inside of me suspects its roots are in some nascent sense of elitism--pervade practically every character that Card has created since the new millennium. In this respect, there is a danger in borrowing too much from my first writerly shisho when modeling my own fiction.
Fortunately, I've come to know many more shisho in my time, all of whom bring with them their own distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses, both of which have helped me to respectively foster and compensate for my own. Flewelling--her consumate insights into human relationships and immersive world buidling. Sanderson--his immaculate plotting and astounding depth of his milieus. Jordan--perhaps one of the greatest milieu-smiths since Tolkien himself. And now George R.R. Martin--whose strength of prose I noted within the first page of the Prologue to A Game of Thrones, and whose character craft and turns of phrase I'm happily savoring at the moment. There are many more I've yet to look into: Vernor Vinge, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, James Maxey, to name just a few. The gifts I've received are legion; yet the gifts I still stand to gain outnumber them. I only hope I learn enough to produce works that might serve the same purpose for another in the future that theirs has served for me.
Inevitably, however, returning to the Enderverse after three years (or, if one discounts the Enderless Shadow books, almost ten) will prove somewhat painful to me, I fear. Back when I first read Ender's Game, it was the gold standard against which all other fiction had to be measured, and found lacking. I really couldn't find anything to critique about it, even if I tried. I still occasionally go back to it, as a portrait artist might refer to the Mona Lisa, to give me insight into the way that a novel should be paced, how a story should flow from point to point.
As of late, however, I've begun to see certain flaws in the story--not so much a reflection of the writing or craft OSC employed, but a reflection, I think, of the potential flaws in the propensities of the author himself. Card has established a career on crafting intelligent, often times genius-level characters, and while he generally succeeds in humanizing them to the point of drawing a reader's empathy, some of the character traits he infuses them with I suspect are ones that he himself shares; and they are traits that serve, as far as I can tell, to alienate them from the reader. Perhaps that could be justified in Game; the whole plot turns on Ender's isolation from his peers, his loved ones, his superiors, and even, to a certain extent, the enemies he is destined to fight. That isolation closely parallels the estrangement many pubescents experience from the world and others around them, a link that may have in no small part contributed to the popularity of the novel, and its retroactive label as a "young adult" work. But I see strains of that alienation--something deep inside of me suspects its roots are in some nascent sense of elitism--pervade practically every character that Card has created since the new millennium. In this respect, there is a danger in borrowing too much from my first writerly shisho when modeling my own fiction.
Fortunately, I've come to know many more shisho in my time, all of whom bring with them their own distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses, both of which have helped me to respectively foster and compensate for my own. Flewelling--her consumate insights into human relationships and immersive world buidling. Sanderson--his immaculate plotting and astounding depth of his milieus. Jordan--perhaps one of the greatest milieu-smiths since Tolkien himself. And now George R.R. Martin--whose strength of prose I noted within the first page of the Prologue to A Game of Thrones, and whose character craft and turns of phrase I'm happily savoring at the moment. There are many more I've yet to look into: Vernor Vinge, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, James Maxey, to name just a few. The gifts I've received are legion; yet the gifts I still stand to gain outnumber them. I only hope I learn enough to produce works that might serve the same purpose for another in the future that theirs has served for me.
*
On the subject of Brandon Sanderson, his online novel project Warbreaker provides fans and would-be writers alike a unique opportunity for insight into his editing processes, one that I hope may aid my own. He's graciously made available the first complete draft of the novel, along with each subsequent redraft all the way up to the current one--version 6.1. The novel will go through a few more rounds of edits that won't make it to the electronic page, and then be released in final form around the same time that A Memory of Light hits bookstores--sometime in the first quarter of 2009. Sanderson's hope is that if people like what they see on their computer screens, they won't hesistate to purchase the print volume when it becomes available.
I haven't read enough of the online drafts to be 100% sure, but given the lessons his drafts are likely to teach me about my own, I'd say I'll be one of those who gladly picks up the novel from the bookstore when it finally arrives.
I haven't read enough of the online drafts to be 100% sure, but given the lessons his drafts are likely to teach me about my own, I'd say I'll be one of those who gladly picks up the novel from the bookstore when it finally arrives.
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