Quickie Note Re Guest Post

[lenora_rose]

I have a guest post up at Civilian Reader. It started as a riff on worldbuilding based on Roach's remarks on Illusion of Steel, but turned into something else thanks to Ursula Vernon (I quote the most relevant passage within the guest post, but you may want to follow through to her whole entry.)

Anyhow, here's the guest post.

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

My usual workaround is to write mostly in the same world. Not the same country or culture, necessarily, not even the same time period, but a consistent world.
Me too! I discovered this technique in the past few years. I had a number of story skeletons in my head. Then I decided that they all take place in the same world, vast differences between them notwithstanding. Connecting the dots and trying to figure out how they might all be consistent with one another is what's putting flesh on the bones. It's making not just world-building but plotting infinitely easier.

But while there are writers of whom I wish, deeply, that they had told more stories, finished works in their lifetime rather than leaving their heir to scramble through boxes and decades of revisions
Most authors I wouldn't bother reading their revisions, but I have to admit, this approach worked for me when it came from Tolkien. I rather think I prefer having fragments, multiforms, and textual commentary for Beleriand to having several complete stories. (Though of course I'm glad we have LOTR in toto*.) The state in which we have Tolkien's manuscripts reminds me a great deal of the state in which we have the recensions of Gilgamesh. I've often commented that I like the fact that there is no hard-and-fast canon for Gilgamesh the way there is for Homer.

Like you said, "I don’t say this choice was right for others, but it was right for me."

* When I was in college, my instructor in a Tolkien course said it's a miracle he finished LOTR, and that someone must have been standing over him with a whip.

[lenora_rose]

I have speculated whether the Silmarillion would be more ringing and less dry if Tolkien had managed to finish it instead of Christopher putting it together, or whether that was itself the result of Tolkien getting too far into his own head and world.

Personally, I could have gone with a couple more finished pieces overall, too. I obviously don't say everything, but one or two more isn't too much to ask. Of course, I'd also like Leonardo's Last Supper to have survived in better shape, and a couple more actual paintings would be amazing.

But I also tend to think these are the works that happen only in Heaven; should such a thing exist, it would have to be a place where the creator can fiddle as long as they wish and fen can still see the results NOW -- ALL the different plausible results. (My reasoning is that the only way heaven can possibly be eternal is if time is not linear in that state.)Something about these geniuses who'd rather fiddle than finish....