Eight years ago I thought I had an idea for a story - maybe even a novel. The idea I had back then never made it to the page. But I did start writing. I had been reading Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and all those pretty sentences got me fired up. Suddenly I didn't care where the story was going, I just wanted to write. In the process my idea took on a life of its own. Eventually the pages came together and turned into the manuscript for Miffland. An earlier draft, titled Mifflin, served as my Master's thesis. Since completing that draft, I've revised several times, a painfully joyfull process. I'm happier with the product each time I go through that; the story still feels like a living thing to me, but I've wanted to move on for some time.
I figured getting excited about a new story is what it would take. I've tried to start a project based on my time here in Budapest. I also wanted to write something based on working in New York from 1999-2002. I have started and re-started those projects several times, but each time I failed to get any forward momentum going. I think those ideas will eventually take on a life of their own, but I need that spark before I can really get behind something. I need to feel like the story will take me somewhere, rather than feeling like I'm taking the story somewhere.
The good news is recently I started writing about a fantasy world that has been rattling around my head for a few years now, and I think I've found that spark once again. This project is very different from Miffland, but I'm having the same kind of fun while I write. I grew up reading sci-fi/fantasy. The first fiction I wrote was a post-apocalypse mutant superhero story. While I love literary fiction, I do miss spice worms and swordplay.
Interestingly, the urge to push past the outlining stage and get ink on the page came as I was reading more Chabon. I finished Gentlemen of The Road last month, and once again those sentences of his got me back to the keyboard. It also didn't hurt to read a well respected author who can dip into genre without the critical commuinty biting his head off. That and The Road have confirmed my suspicions that serious readers can see past the label of genre.
So, I'm back at it, and hoping to share the challenges of writing fantasy fiction here. But my question to readers is this:
What are some examples of fantasy/sci-fi that rise above the stereotypes of genre fiction?
5 comments:
I'm currently reading "A Canticle for Leibowitz", post-apocalyptic sci-fi, my favorite kind. (Your illustration on this entry could have been the cover art for the book.) It's cliché, but to rise above the stereotypes, a piece must make me question my assumptions.
You can try creating a world that is the complete opposite of the present world. Everything that serves as right is this world is considered to be wrong in the world you create... If you succeed in creating a complex story on the basis of this, it would rock :)
Ray Bradbury - there will come soft rains & that story about the girl on Jupiter who never sees the sun
Battle FUcking star galactica (2003, claro)
Hudxley - sp?
i've watched way more sci-fi then read. foundation trilogy, i read that in highschool. i tried to read dune, tried and failed? tried and died. didn't make it past page 50, that book is way to thick. ryan, i wish i could be into BSG, it's just too soap opera for me. i think i hang my hat on blade runner. all this talk about you writing some sci-fi coupled with my lack of television has me thinking i need to visit my local library and find some sci-fi books to read.
Fahrenheit 451
The Handmaid's Tale
Slaughterhouse Five &
Gallapagos (and all the other Vonnegut work)
Nineteen Eighty-Four
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (a short story by Le Guin)
Dandelion Wine
The Road (McCarthy)
Pi (film)
Run Lola Run (film)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Neuromancer
Einstein's Dreams
Parable of the Sower
The Metamorphosis
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