Make the Light Last

 A question lots of people seem to want an answer to is, "What makes a great book?"

 Well, it has to fascinate the reader, draw him in, so he reads pages without noticing the clock ticking away. He has to finish the book and wish there was more, while also feeling fulfilled by the end of the story arc. There are lots of things, and they're different for each of us, aren't they? One man's meat is another man's poison. I know many people loved "The da Vinci Code", but I thought it was dull and predictable.

 So the question is meaningless, really. But it can have relevance for an individual.

 Myself, I like "The Lions of al-Rassan", by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a story set against hatred and coming war, but deals with people who find friendship and love across those dividing lines. It's simultaneously filled with hope and terrible sadness, a grief I felt physically when I re-read the book (for the fifth or sixth time) last week. Kay's novel "Tigana" is excellent too, but not as layered, I think.

 Sheri S Tepper has produced several books that I go back to again and again. "Grass" and "Sideshow" are two of them. The one I iike best though is "The Awakeners", which is about a world of humans and a flying species called the Thraish, living in an uneasy peace after a war long ago. Neither side likes the peace and some people are working to end it, on both sides. There are monstrous secrets, too; the novel is largely a shouted warning against religious extremism. Again it's sad and hopeful at the same time, but here the hope is stronger.

 "It", by Stephen King, is the most brilliant evocation of childhood I've ever read. The recent film is very good, but the book is a hundred times better, full of the aches and uncertainties of the time just before puberty. I've read it ten times or more and it still has the power to unsettle. When we're speaking of great books, isn't that key? The ability to cause an emotional reaction years after it was first read is priceless. Wish I had a tenth of that ability.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but three is enough for now. The books are different but share some themes, notably sadness and joy running side by side. In all of them people have to learn how to make the light last through their dark times. It's a struggle I've had in the past, which is probably why I react to these novels the way I do. Like I said, it's different for each of us, isn't it?

 Writing changes lives. It changes you and me, and it can change a whole culture, on occasion. Or create one, as Tolkien did. Me, I'm just telling stories, and that's enough.

 Pip pip.

You'd Have to be Hemingway

 Hi all.

 Yesterday I got involved (unwisely) in a Facebook thread about how quickly indie writers produce books. The fastest publish one every five or six weeks, meaning some ten a year. It reminds me a bit of NaNoWriMo, when some people reach the 50,000 words target on the first day. In honesty, I don't think anyone can write that fast and keep the quality. I could do 50,000 words a day, but most of it would be bleh bleh bleh, complete rubbish.

 So what about 20,000 words per day (wpd)? Not really possible either, to my mind. And down we go, until we reach a point where we start to think it can be done. Now, I realise that the world is full of wonders, and everyone writes in their own way, but still... 20,000 wpd? No. No, I don't think so, not with any quality.

 I said this in the FB thread, and promptly got shot to bits by lots of irate authors. Told you I was unwise

 But the thing is, I've never heard of a traditionally published author who writes ten publication-ready novels in a year. Never. OK, publishers don't want more than two a year anyway, and the process takes time as well, but even so it's a hell of a leap from two to ten. Are we really saying that just by being indie, authors can suddenly write five times faster than anyone else, and still keep their quality?

 I don't think we are. I suspect what usually happens is that authors dash off a book as fast as their fingers can go, publish it, then move on. Very little editing or rewrites, not much concern for standards. Just bang the book out and follow it with a few adverts, then start the next novel. So lots of words, but poor quality. I've read some of this stuff. It's not great.

 Of course, the key word is "usually". I'm sure there are one or two authors who can pull this off - ten books a year and still quality. But you'd have to be Hemingway or Stephen King to do it. If these authors can, then kudos to them. For myself, I know I'm no Hemingway, and I'll stick to the old-fashioned way. Write, revise, revise, edit, edit, and then (for the first time) ask myself if the work is finished. Or does it need another edit?

 Boring, eh? Too true. But it needs to be done.

 Pip pip.

More of our Time

 I wonder what my writing says about me, and how I think.

 Look at Stephen King. We all know his work, right? King himself says a lot of it is driven by his belief in good and evil, in forms that we encounter every day. He believes that in the end we all have to take a stand with light against the dark. (I think he's right. If you hear overt sexism on the bus, or you see racist bullying in a bar or nightclub, don't walk by. Not unless you want to live in a world where such things are accepted.)

 But King's work was coloured heavily after his accident. For a while it was full of crippled characters - in Dreamcatcher and Duma Key, for example. King's own pain seeped into his work. So some of it is conscious and some sneaks through without us poor writers noticing it. How then can we tell how much of us is in our work?

 Well, I try not to repeat ideas or memes, but I've noticed that I have. Alar in Risen King and Calesh in Songs of Sorrow are both reluctant warriors, drawn into battle as young men and now returning to fight again. There are big differences between them too, but that lies at the heart of both their characters. More broadly, several of my books are about the struggle to be free. Risen King and Sorrow feature here too, as well as Black Lord of Eagles. The situations are very different, and the stories change - those are three very different tales. But I can't deny there are similarities. So it seems I've returned to a theme without even realising it. I must be as dumb as a horse going to the same old watering hole, sometimes.

 Maybe I have an itch about the question of freedom. I admit, I've never been especially persuaded by the way we define freedom in the Western world. It seems to boil down to being free to vote once every four or five years, while also being free to be exploited by the wealthy, to be denied health care, and free to be cold in winter because we can't afford to turn the heating up. The gap between the richest people and the rest of us is wider than at any time in hundreds of years, and it's getting wider. We can't eat freedom. What good is it when it's just a word?

 Bizarrely, in some ancient societies even slaves were more free than we are today. A debtor in ancient Greece could work off what he owed, as a slave, but then regain his liberty. Serfs in England might work as little as one day a week for their landowner, and have the rest of their time to spend on their own crops. All right, these were grindingly hard lives, I know that. Still, on the road between then and now we've managed to give away more and more of our time, often for less compensation, and we call this freedom.

 Yes, I have a bee in my bonnet about this. It can only continue for as long as we let it. So in these days when Greeks are scavenging food from bins in Athens, when British people are fined for going to the dentist, and when Americans are being stripped of health insurance they paid for, why do we let it go on?

 In all my research into ancient cultures, I've learned one important thing. People build the culture they want. But then it changes, the society stops serving its people and the people begin to serve it instead, so the system (whatever it is) can be perpetuated. It's why change is so hard.

 But boy, do we need change.

Great Books

 Like Eric Klingenberg, by coincidence, I've just started to re-read the Harry Potter books. I do, every now and then, just as I re-read other favourites, The Awakeners, by Sheri S Tepper; The Player of Games by Iain M Banks, It, by Stephen King; and so on.

 But I don't always do this. There was a time when Guy Kay's Tigana was on the list of constant re-reads, but no more. I tired of it, I suppose. Lord of the Rings fell away a long time ago, after a dozen reads. Some stories stay with me and I'll get the itch to experience them again, while others are lost, or stay for a time and then fade.  All of which brings me to a question I remember from my sadly far-off school days - what makes a great book?

 My answer then, as now, is that a great book is one you revisit time and again. One in which you always seem to find something new, or an event to see in a new light. I know it's an incomplete answer, maybe a poor one, but it's as close as I can get. And it means that for each reader, the list of 'great books' will be different.

 Isn't that refreshing?