The Decline of Modern Fantasy

I added another chapter to "Clans" today (a short one - only 2500 words) because Eleah from my Crit Circel on Forward Motion pointed out something I was missing. She was absolutely right but it did give the lie to my previous claim of being done. Now I can safely say it again: I'm Done! (unless of course I missed something else and it gets pointed out to me, which is not unlikely at all!) I did a good chunk of editing on GS last night & I'll hopefully get some more in tonight. I have to keep kicking myself as I do this. I'm putting together a lot of notes but I'm not stopping to hand write the new stuff in my notebook as I edit. I'm going to try and fix that before I go any further. If all I have are notes and have to go back, it's not really One Pass Editing, now is it? The problem of course, is that I hate writing longhand. I much prefer to type on the computer as I go. I can get into a solid groove with the keyboard and crank out a few thousand words at a clip with no problem. When using the pen, my arm gets tired and I stop a lot, which kills my flow. Worse, when I do go to type in the hand wrtitten stuff, I always get depreseed because what took up thirty pages in the notebook works out to 8-10 pages in Word. That always depressing.

I just noticed something last night: I haven't read a book in over a month now! That's got to be a new record for me. I'm usually doing 2-3 per week. (Often more because I always have at least two going at once, in different rooms of the house so I can just pick one up and read wherever I happen to be) I've just been too busy writing to read very much. It feels strange! Not to worry though, I'll be picking up some books this weekend. I've been pretty diligent about reading outside my preferred genre lately too. I write Fantasy/SF mostly and I've been broadening my horizons with a lot of historical fiction, thrillers, and I even tried a romance novel. (Sorry, folks, I just could not finish it! Time travelling Scots with huge muscles and even bigger . . . well, you know . . . It just wasn't my cup of tea.) I read John Jakes "North and South" series last. It was fascinating stuff. The writing can be a little dry at times, but the historical detail and the way he writes about portions of the Civil War I barely knew happened was fascinating. I reccomend it to all. I also read some Grisham and Louis L'amour. I haven't been thrilled with what's being published lately in the Fantasy field. I think what David Eddings and Terry Brooks are doing is a crime. Reprinting the same story lines a hundred times and changing the character/place names (or in Eddings case, using the same story and just changing POV characters!) does nothing to help the industry. I enjoyed the hell out of both their early works, but it's just plain sad to see where they've gone. Who knows, maybe I'll be the next great voice of the Fantasy world and everyone will praise my name and line up outside Barnes and Noble to buy my next book!

(That's okay, I wasn't planning on holding my breath either!)

Later!