Thinking Backwards

At some point this weekend, I'm sure I had a grand idea. It's been known to happen from time to time. I don't do the best job of recording those ideas, though, so frequently when I sit in front of a computer or open a notebook, it's an exercise in attempting to put together whatever thoughts motivated me to say I should sit down later and write. Which really is a poor way of doing things. I've made various attempts scattered across e-mail accounts, post-its, and notebooks to be less like that, but the reality is I find it only impairs my poetry, as I rarely have a perfect line that needs preserving unless it's poetic. Since I haven't been writing poetry (though I have been thinking about it) I haven't been in one of those modes where I just have to catch every thought that spills out of my head. The net affect is that my sieve-like memory probably lets too many good things through. Oh well. I'm not particularly worried. I don't see myself quitting my day job anytime soon.

Something I have been doing a lot more recently is reading. A few months ago, I went on a kick, poured though almost all the Vlad books and The Viscount of Adrihlanka and that kick started me a bit. For an English major, I can go unconscionable periods of time without cracking open a book. This coming from the girl who has the complete poetry of Elizabeth Bishop as bathroom reading even (the poems are a good length). I hadn't made much headway on reading, and for whatever inexorable reason, the activities of reading and writing still do go together. I think it's a call and response sort of affair. I read, and I react. The best way that I react is by writing. This isn't everyone's response by any means, but it is mine. So I finished going through about 15 books that I'd already read (but can't really ever read too many times...just look at my poor copy of Jhereg that feel apart) and I decided it's time to get some new stuff. Or not new, but stuff that I haven't read. And while I've still being tearing through the back issues of my graphic novels (started with Fables, working on Preacher right now), I'm also working on other novels and stories.

I just finished Double Star by Robert Heinlein. It's a part of my personal reading directive of tackling every Hugo and Nebula award winner. The only other Heinlein I've ever read is Stranger In A Strange Land, so I didn't have a lot of expectations going in. And the first half of the book didn't exactly qualify as a page turner in my opinion. I kept wondering where it was going to go exactly as I'd already figured out where The Great Lorenzo was generally heading in his life. Somewhere around the middle, the book just turned and grabbed me. I went to Caribou today, and I couldn't stop reading it. I went from wondering how it won a Hugo to wondering why so many Hugo winners can't be so concise and make a point. Maybe I just like short books that do their job well. Then again, I just prefer short books and I particularly love a well put together novella. Just enough time to get in, paint a colorful landscape without revealing too much, and get out with your point.

It made me reflect on the co-winners of one Hugo, Dune and This Immortal. While This Immortal certainly had some flawed aspects (and established the beginnings of Zelazny's love of flawed, but incredibly powerful characters in other novels as far as I could tell), I thought that he did a great job of establishing his point and he didn't really need more space to do it. Lord Of Light is certainly a better read, and also a Hugo winner, but I can see why This Immortal was as well. Dune I was a bit more conflicted about. First off, strangers and friends told me I would love it, so I didn't go in with lower expectations like I have with other novels. Second, I thought it took a little too long to get somewhere sometimes. That's my opinion, and it's my preference, and I certainly love books that take too long and were paid by the word (The Three Musketeers). Apparently I just don't want that from my sci-fi.

The other thing that is funny about reading these books is how much it makes me realize things that I love and thought were original were just stolen. Music makes me reflect on this a lot as well. I remember how powerfully original Gang Of Four's Entertainment! sounded the first time I heard it. Here was a record that was made in 1979 that pretty much scripted the formula for bands for 25 years. Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party certainly listened to that album, or some other derivative of that. You might think you're hearing something new only to realize that these bands you love are just reaching twenty years into the past. We are all influenced by the past after all. But it is disorienting to realize sometimes that the things you thought of as groundbreaking are just good retellings of older tales, modern takes on older sounds. The Matrix might not be influenced by Neuromancer but it sure seems like it is.

Of course it's impossible to tell what really laid that groundwork. The mental hopscotch we all do of connecting dots is fine and well, but an artist may have never read, watched, or heard what it is that we think they are influenced by. It's a nice feeling when writing. I certainly know that I'm influenced by all the things I see, hear, and do on a daily basis, and I may well end up sounding like a synthesis of those things, but these thoughts are wholly mine. Maybe it's all been said, but I haven't said it, so I'm gonna take a crack at it. It's for everyone else to judge whether it's divine or drivel.