I had a thought last week while writing. It was sort of out of the blue and it brought my writing to a screeching halt. It's not a bad thing. I was at the end of a chapter and really happy with the progress I. I made. I still don't know exactly what this book is, but I'm very happy with it and I'm already thinking of ways to fix it in the next draft. It needs a heavy rewrite and is definitely not ready for eyes other than my own. It's very much a zero draft.
When I write, I usually multitask, so I had a couple of browser windows open and was moving back and forth between school stuff, my writing and some good old fashioned book browsing over on Goodreads, seeing if there was any good epic fantasies I was missing. I'm thinking a little bit ahead and have some ideas of what I want to write in the coming months. One of the things I want to do is go back to my roots and write a new spin on an old school epic fantasy. I want to sort of go back to school and study some of those kinds of books to see how I can spin them. As I was looking at some of the Goodreads lists and I was overcome with a sense of melancholy about some of the books I was seeing. Let me explain.
I cut my teeth on LORD OF THE RINGS, DRAGONLANCE and DRIZZT. That was my early education in fantasy. It's a pretty good list, nothing to shake a stick at. I learned a lot from them and they are formative parts of who I am as a person and a writer. But as I was looking at these lists that people made or added to, I was overcome with a degree of sadness at all the things that I missed as a young reader. I didn't read Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Tamora Pierce, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Robin McKinley, Guy Gavriel Kay, Diana Wynne Jones, David Gemmel or Melanie Rawn as a teen, and I can't help but feel like I missed out on something.
Now, don't get me wrong, I've read many of these authors and their work over the years, but I think there is something that I'm missing by reading them as an adult. And that something keeps getting more and more distant the older I get. When I read LOTR or DRAGONLANCE as a middle schooler, there was a sense of whimsy, of awe at the work I was reading. The characters. The world. The intricate plots. There was something to that feeling. There was some weight to it that has stuck with me all these years later. And as I've gotten older, that feeling isn't there as much anymore. And that struck me with a deep sense of sadness.
There are still books that move me, don't get me wrong. There are books that as soon as I start reading them put me in that right state of mind that is close to that feeling. A GAME OF THRONES did it when I first read it in December of 2000 in Oswego, That one changed my life. NY. SHIP BREAKER did it when I read it a few years back. Most recently MYSTIC RIVER really wowed me. But it's not the same as the sense of wonder and awe I got as I read about Boromir's death or the Battle of Helm's Deep or the Ride of the Rorhirrim. I know this is fact because I recently reread the DRAGONLANCE books and the Battle of the High Clerist's Tower fell flat. And that made me sad. The wonder was gone.
Was it me? Or was it the work? Or was it a combination?
Had I become so angry, so jaded that these things of wonder didn't register with me anymore? The HARRY POTTER books came close, but not nearly close to the memory of the way I felt reading LOTR or DRAGONLANCE.
Was it the romance of the experience? The days of bookstores is nearly over. I can remember vividly buying the DRAGONLANCE books at an independent bookstore in the local mall. I remember obsessing over them and devouring them. The entire experience was romantic, I suppose. I can remember the cold and snow as I bought them. I remember what they meant to a giant, awkward me in the halls of Soule Road Middle School. I remember being more comfortable with those worlds than my own.
And maybe that's enough. Maybe that memory is enough. But there's still an underlying sadness in that I'll never experience that again.
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