On Arrogance

Matthew ELeave a comment

Most of what I read about writing tells me that you have to pay your dues. You have to keep at it for a long time before you can expect to have any success. Even if you’re lucky enough to get something published early on, that doesn’t mean that anything you do will actually be worth reading for ten years or so.

I’ve had a couple of things published, but I certainly can’t say that I’ve put in a long apprenticeship. I’ve written all kinds of things, but it’s mostly been unsupervised online writing that didn’t put any pressure on me to get better or more polished. So where do I get off thinking I can write?

And yet I’m writing Ded & Sac, and I’m gonna publish it independently, and expect people to buy it. That’s pretty arrogant of me. Right?

Well, maybe it is. I’ve been called arrogant before. I’m arrogant enough to know that I’ve got a good idea*. I’m arrogant enough to know that I can, at least, write engagingly over short distances. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I don’t need editing. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can afford to slack off on any aspect of this story. I’m going to do this because I want to do it and I don’t want to be dependent on the judgments or procedures of the publishing industry. And if Ded & Sac isn’t good, it’s going to be in spite of everything I can think of to make it good.

So, okay, I’m arrogant. But at least I know it. And I’ve been reliably informed that knowing is half the battle.

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*I know I haven’t said what the idea is yet. I’m saving that for when I’m closer to being finished.

Read: Silverwing, Sunwing, Firewing

Matthew ELeave a comment

It’s a fantasy series by Canadian author Kenneth Oppel. It’s about bats. It would probably not be completely out of line to say that this series is to bats as Watership Down is to rabbits. Except that Watership Down is an all-time classic, and this series is generally decent.

Maybe my problem was that I had a hard time identifying with the bat characters, because after all bats are pretty unlike humans in a lot of ways. But then at the same time Oppel tries to write them as close to human as he reasonably can, and that also takes me out of the story, because I just don’t buy it that they’re like that. It’s tricky. He’s achieved a legitimately good adventure story, which I have to give extra points to because of how unconventional it is… but I had a hard time getting it down anyway.

Oppel has written other stuff I’ve liked better, like his steampunkish adventure series about young aviator Matt Cruse and young scientist/heiress Kate de Vries (consisting of Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber); recommended. And then he did some books for much younger readers, including Peg and the Yeti, which I got a kick out of when I read it to the kids. So Oppel is okay by me, but the bat trilogy isn’t my favourite. There’s a prequel, Darkwing, that I think I will not hunt down; enough is enough.

Characters: the Hellboy family

Matthew ELeave a comment

I’ve been reading a lot of Hellboy comics recently; the library has the first ten trades and I’ve been working my way through them. I like the character of Hellboy himself, and it struck me that there are a few guys kinda like him in comics: big, strong and tough; stoic and lonely; inhuman enough to be physically unattractive; stable and down-to-earth in personality; street-slangy in speech. Here’s the list as I thought of it:

Hellboy
Robotman (Cliff Steele)
The Thing
Kilowog

Any others?

I don’t mean to accuse anybody of unoriginality in making this list. I just think it’s a powerful kind of character and no wonder it’s been made to work so often.

Read: The Ghost of Dibble Hollow

Matthew E8 Comments

Patience is important. That’s what I really want to say. Patience is important.

See, there’s this book, The Ghost of Dibble Hollow (by May Nickerson Wallace, whom I know exactly nothing about). It’s a kids’ adventure book from 1965, about a boy who spends the summer in the country, in a house that’s long abandoned but has been in his family for a long time. He meets the ghost of his great-uncle, who died as a boy way back when. Not a great book, but enjoyable and readable. I had a copy when I was young but I don’t know what happened to it.

I decided a few years ago to try to track down another copy, partly because I liked the book and partly to use for inspiration for this one project I’ve had on the back burner for a while. And it turned out to be really hard to find. When I checked on abebooks.com and alibris.com, all I could find were copies for like $50, $80 bucks. Which, forget that.

So I bided my time and kept my eyes open. And earlier this month I was at a used book sale where I plucked a copy of The Ghost of Dibble Hollow off one of the kids’ tables for a buck.

Math: $50 cost + patience = $1 cost.