lenora_rose | Much of Nothing

That's what I've been doing lately.

Picked up the Wii; made myself a Mii and played some sports, badly. In the real world I'm definitely fitter than Colin, in the computer world I'm old and feeble. But tennis works a lot better if you take a fencing stance. :)

Finished Spirits in the Wires and promptly traded it in at a used bookstore. I already had credit there, which helped me snag a copy of Robert Charles Wilson's Spin in its place. Which I've been told is *The* SF book of 2005, if you read SF at all.

Spirits in the Wires wasn't as hideous as all my blathering made it sound, but it's also the only Charles de Lint I've traded in. The plot, once it arrives, is fairly standard fantasy stuff, made a little fresher for the computer-edged setting, but it's well done. We hit some blatant horrot tropes early, and some baltant modern fantasy ones, but they were never such bad ones that I wanted to throw the book the way I did with the "fat acned kid" bits or the "OH, look at all these sweet street people" moments.

His otherworlds and border worlds and magic are all showing the wear of having to account for too many prior stories about these same people and places; a little like what happens with Role Playing Games when you get the fifth Monster Manual sequel in a row. The new monsters aren't so new; you can see where, for all they look different, they serve almost the same role as something in the original, or the second manual.

The problem is mainly structural. There are places where I could clearly see what should have been changed, and not just in an "I wouldn't write it this way" manner. (There were plenty of "But I wouldn't have written it that way bits" as well, but that's one of the many reasons why I read other peoples' work; to see if and how choices I would never make would work, to read things I would never write that way, or I couldn't.)

These were deeper problems. The opening chapters, for instance, dragged such that Saskia's disappearance, the real catalyst of the plot, which should have happened in chapter 3 or 4, happened on page 100. The closing chapters also dragged on, to resolve *everyone*'s subplots. overdoing it, in short.

But the core was solid. Someone said that experienced writers can get away with things novices cannot, like a dragging long start with frustrating attitudes, because they've built up a great deal of trust over the years.

Nobody, so far as I know, has talked about what happens when someone starts to ask too much of that trust. We all talk about authors who've made us tired of them, who've "jumped the shark" or "begun repeating themselves" or "their philosophy was always doubtful but now they've gone off he deep end". Or endless permutations of the same. Nobody talks about what happens when this comes up. We can all name several authors who stopped doing it for us several books ago. Do their sales numbers actually drop as the criticism rises, or are there really enough new fans to make up for the loss of old ones? Do their editors notice the criticism? Do they try to talk about it? Is it really safer for an author to keep doing more of the same well past the point when the people who first gave them their reputation are tired?

Of course, part of the problem is that everyone points to a different place, a different trigger. And there are the active anti-fans, the people who buy the books even though they don't like them, so they can stare in horror then complain.

I try not to do that: I had a few twinges in The Onion Girl, but still enjoyed the book, and more misgivings in Tapping the Dream Tree and Waifs and Strays - misgivings enough not to buy or read several other recent books of his - but my misgivings didn't come together until this book, and before this those were the last things I read, the last ones I bought. Part of me still wants to read Widdershins, but from the library, and mostly in hopes of seeing if he gets out of the slump.
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I've been hit by a bad case of the "don' wannas". It took the deadline being right here right now to finish my kind of fun essay for Drama, and it's really hard right now even considering writing the essay due Monday; half the ideas I had seem to be leaking out my ears, too, which doesn't help.

Half most of my thoughts seem to be leaking out my ears.

I've done some writing on Soldier, in spite of myself; enthusiasm seemed at a low, which wasn't helped by the invasion of other story kernels. I felt this section was getting too boring, too much about the nitpick details without any actual happenings (A really weird thing to have happening considering the dealings with a freaked out teen and a strange undead compatriot, plus the set-up of the mystery around Captain Ander and his lieutenant). I finally figured out the concrete event I need to put in that will sum it all up nicely in one scene instead of rambling, but it's been taking me days to put together. I've just been feeling like... I don' wanna. Don' wanna do anything that takes thinking. Wanna read dumb stuff and play (or watch) video games.

At least the last means I'd get exercise.