In conversation with a colleague today I stumbled upon a new way of looking at a problem I’ve been pondering for a while now: the hierarchy we ascribe to different genres. It’s not a constant hierarchy, but it’s a pernicious one in my opinion, since I write one of the less respected ones. I’m sure it’s a very arguable hierarchy, but the specifics are less important than the overall shape. I’m finding myself more and more of the opinion that the way we read is what separates “difficult” from “easy” work. It goes back to my earlier thoughts on metacognition: whether we read aurally or visually is surely a factor. Where’s the attraction of genre fiction if you’re just hearing a story in your head, told blandly, one word at a time? On the other hand, if you’re right there with Reacher as he crushes someone’s windpipe with his bare hands or something, it’s a bit of a thrill–but you can do this much more easily when your brain is gulping down entire sentences or paragraphs and converting them into experience. Where I find the greatest fulfilment, of course, is in speculative writing that also lives up to a high […]
Decemberists, and sleepwalking
The Decemberists are my obsession du jour, and fortunately one that my husband does not find unspeakably annoying (unlike, say, Joanna Newsom). I’ve been inhabiting their world for several months now; as I often do with musical obsessions, buying as many albums at once as I can find, and putting them all on random rotation. Why mention it? Because, like Kate Bush and Tori Amos, the Decemberists have become essential to this particular phase of my work, in some inarticulate way. I must have them. I think they’re eminently suitable music for any fantasy writer, in fact. I’m not likely to forget it, but I note it here because I like to chart these things; at some time in the future I’ll look back on this period and want to recapture a mood or a thought, and I’ll have the musical key ready. And now for the sleepwalking portion of the post; it is related to writing only tangentially, because when I woke up, I found myself at my computer. Fortunately, I had not actually messed with anything much; I’d apparently read an email from the Viable Paradise group, and that was all. I am now going to back up […]