(no subject)

Today's memory is from 2007:

7th July, 2007. 4:33 pm.

Winter has days that are full of dreaming. When the weather isn't quite so sharp and the rain is gentle (rain! we have rain!) and there is a big cup of mocha harar with cream right in front of me, I just want to drift off into a series of imaginary worlds.

Today, though, I'm thinking about how we depict world transitions in speculative fiction. The technical side of drifting into dreams. I'm thinking of one writer in particular who creates movement between worlds that reads exactly like waking up from sleep. You know the moment where you realise that the beautiful story you thought you dreamed was nothing more than a series of rough transitions for which the story provided justification? I do not admire this writer's work. It's lazy and the laziness leaves a bad taste. Coffee with creamer rather than coffee with cream.

Charles de Lint leaves a warm and soft taste. His milk is rich and full and fresh and his coffee has just been ground. I've been reading one of his anthologies (yay for Sydney bookshops!) and was struck by how sweetly his tales move from a normal state to a state of heightened reality. When Sophie visits Mabon the move is almost prosaic. She goes to sleep and she is there. Likewise, other characters do what they need to do and are there. Simple. Logical. The stuff of fairytales. The pragmatism of his approach makes the different worlds more real. They're part of the natural order. It's easy to forget that fairy tales often have the simple and the logical at their heart.

All this makes me wonder if I like CS Lewis because I love the idea of walking past the lamp-post into the woods, or wandering past ponds and thinking of where they might lead. I don't like what he does to Susan and I pretend I don't understand the religious imagery, yet I still return and return to his books. Whatever else he did right or wrong, the sense of movement from one world to the next is near-perfect in the Narnia series.

Gates and bridges and holes in hedges are all common ways of moving the reader from one world to another. There are so many wondrous options that it's a crying shame when transitions are badly designed or badly written. It makes me think that some writers just don't undertand the relationships between their worlds and how people live within them.

We have rather good cultural models for transitions, too. Think of the gaping jaws of hell in the Gospel of Nicodemus. Think of Thomas the Rhymer.

Thomas is my personal favourite. Walking a path and ending up somewhere strange is very close to my heart. The track tells me as much about the world as it does about the links of one world to another. I'm not going to explain that. I'm going to leave you with a quote, instead:

'O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.

'And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.

'And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the Road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.'

Blogversary Open Question Time

I thought it might be fun to have a question post to last you until next Wednesday night. I thought it might also be fun to revive the rules from question posts as they existed five to six years ago. I had quite forgotten I once had such rules! This means I've plagiarised myself, to give you the exact rules and the (updated) potted biography.

For the next week you can ask me whatever question you want. If your question takes more than a quick answer or touches on matters too private then I will apologise nicely. Otherwise, anything goes. If a question's offensive I might get sarcastic. Or I might not. Both the size of my feet and the length of a piece of string have already been demanded, so if you want to stir, you'll have to explore new ground. I'll be round on and off, so there may be some delays in me answering.

I used to get historicalish questions. They were from writers who were worldbuilding and gamers who wanted to run checks (or who were worldbuilding). I don't any more. I miss them!

If no-one asks questions then I won't do the open post again. I say this every time, but the last two times people mainly asked questions to make sure I did a post again, so this time I'm more serious about it.

In case you don't know me well and have no idea what sort of questions you might want to ask me:
I am Jewish;
I am Australian;
I am an historian;
I was ten years in the public service;
I was twenty years in the women's movement;
I'm happily middle-aged (fifty-one, in case it worries you not to know);
I'm a published writer (both fiction and non-fiction - my most recent book is all about food history and SF fans) though rather unimportant in the leagues of published writers;
My first PhD was in matters historiographical and is very obscure (as PhDs are except the one I'm currently doing, which is terribly important and of GREAT WORLD SIGNIFICANCE since it includes time travel);
Most of my history is Medieval (but not all) and most of it is social and cultural rather than political;
I consult with writers about how to transfer history to fiction (not as easy as it sounds) and stuff. Lots of stuff.

I'm sure there's more to me than that, but that's all I can ever think of.

(no subject)

One last entry and then I'm going to do real work. I now understand short stories much better, but still only write them on occasion. The invitation below remains open. My library is a lending library, and happily so (books like to be read, it calms their spirits).

15th January, 2007. 11:04 pm.

These last few days I have been thinking about eternal presents in the minds of critics and writers. Not the giving kind*, the existential kind. And not really an eternal present. And now I'm getting myself confused before I even begin.

Let me start again.

I used to read short stories about as much as I read novels. I have recently returned to short stories, largely because I started writing them again and I can't write something I don't read lots of. Even if I only write one short story a year, I have to learn what other people do and how they do it. So I not only read, but I read about what other people read. Lots of lists and descriptions and analyses. Reading the thoughts of others on their reading as a bit depressing. Of the short story readers and writers, only a very few people seem to read older stories and be developing a deeper context for their writing than the past ten years. And *that's* what I meant by 'eternal present'. We live in a small pond and think our ripples have vast impact because our contexts are so very limited.

In my dream world writers and critics don't develop just an understanding of how short stories are written now, or an understanding of one genre, but a deep understanding of short stories over time.

As usual, I have a code to remind me about this. My code for the need to read older short stories is "Ring Lardner" because a short story of his introduced me to point of view. Henry James made me realise the importance of the unreliable narrator. By 'introduced' and 'realised' I mean that they made me stop and think and reconsider what writing can achieve.

Shorter pieces can be magic learning grounds for technique. Not just any short story, though. Ones that once shocked. Ones that endure. They open writers' eyes to what is possible. I feel like quoting Robert Browning on the need for a man's reach to exceed his grasp - it's much easier to reach out when you've see what *can* be done.

Anyhow, this week I decided to fight a personal war against the eternal present. I've added to my short story collection. I bought speculative fiction anthologies and collections of stories from the 1940s to the 1980s. And I already have volumes by Maupassant and Joyce and a bunch of others. Anyone in Canberra who wants to borrow them is welcome. I can give you coffee when you return them if you want to share the joy of reading stories with different cultural contexts.

If you want to know what this sort of wide-ranging reading can give to your prose, just read Lucy Sussex's latest anthology. One reason her writing is full of shade and colour is her reading. I love seeing where she has taken something into herself - it comes out as something that is purely hers and is an important aspect of her particular writing voice. You don't have to know where her thinking has come from - the stories are better stories because she is well-read and thinks things through.

Time to climb off soapbox, perhaps. And my reading today included Sophie Masson and Terry Pratchett, which is not relevant to anything except me enjoying life.

* though if anyone feels the need to give writers and critics presents eternally, few of us would object.