The Loneliness of Vision

(Alan Lee's Túrin Turambar surrounded by the outlaws who dwelt south of Brethil)

I am trying to read new Fantasy, Children's, YA, and Adult. I've noticed a trend I find very sad, a trend toward very gritty, quasi-horror kind of Fantasy, not vampire fantasy, but Medieval in the sense of gore, lice, torture, corruption, and a Conan type religious mask put over on a parody of the Middle Ages. This is not to say that the fiction does not work; some of it is masterful, as in George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series. But it is depressing, very. It's depressing because much of it has a very nihilistic, hopeless sense of life.

I think it is vital, when writing tragedy or about humans in extreme conditions, that the fiction "message" should be: that it is not human to accept the tragedy or the conditions; it is human to keep fighting. Tolkien's story of Túrin Turambar is an excellent example in that you can't get more Gothic, tragic, or oppressed than this story. And it is uplifting. Why? Because, although he is a tragic character, Túrin is heroic. Tolkien understood, first hand, from his experiences in the worst war ever fought (trenches of WWI) that HOW a man acts in the face of impossible tragedy decides everything. He becomes angelic if he refuses to let tragedy defeat his spirit. This was demonstrated over and over and over so many many times in history that the message should be clear, or so I think it should.

I've just finished "Firethorn" by Sarah Micklem. This book was lauded by everyone, and I mean everyone. Picked up by the top agent in the field, first time writer, etc., etc., etc. and the book is evil in a way I find almost impossible to describe. I spent two hours this morning trying to tell Sky why I found it so. It is written by a masterful storyteller, and I will not quibble about her details and how her society is untenable or any of my other petty complaints about world building. I won't go on about how if one does something "realistic" it had better damn work on the larger scale, not just the way the cloth is woven. I really, really, really wanted Micklem to save the book and save the character. Instead, she let me down. In shorthand, this book is an SP, Nomad, Gen X book that substitutes the lowest of human animal traits for anything noble or heroic. I will not mince words. Sarah Micklem has no reason to heed my comments; she's obviously wildly popular and successful. The book gave me nightmares.

(One of my favorite artists: Chmiel, who does quite a bit of Tolkien work.)

Okay. To go on. Entirely depressed by Micklem's book, unable to tear myself from it, I started having that terrible sinking feeling that my own work was lousy and that even if my intentions were good, I was going to fail and fail badly. Ad nauseum. I will not go on and whine about my own severity to myself that demands that I keep trying and trying and trying when it's obvious that I'm missing the gene that will get me published. It's not anything with my work; it's a kind of feeling that my work doesn't have.

But I pushed through the depression even though I am really sick today on top of being depressed, and was sorting through my art collection (some of which you see here) trying to think of a style that will work for my own book. I opened up the ms to go through the basic visual elements of each chapter and skimmed.

To my surprise, this book is light years beyond "Firethorn," for all Micklem's talent. It needs to be combed more and polished more, but the backbone is there. I have no confidence in it, no hope that anyone at all will see what I see, but that doesn't mean that it is not there. The book is shining. This has not happened to me before; I've always only seen the flaws, not the light of it, the shape of it, shining there, despite the flaws.

All during the work on this book, especially since joining Facebook, I've realized that this work that I have chosen to do completely isolates me. I have chosen a very, very hard road. I have chosen to speak from the heart and from my mind, no matter how subtle, no matter how complex, no matter how sublime. I have chosen, not to try to get published or to sell a book or to write something that people will read; I have chosen to give the best within me to the best out there. I suspect that if the series ever does sell that most people will like it for wrong reasons. But if only, if only, they will somehow sense what I am trying to set down on paper...

I feel cursed for this work, for this desire to do this work. Maybe not cursed, but cast out. I don't talk about it, fearing to bore people. I don't even like to allude to it or brag about it or complain about it. I'm completely obsessed with this work, so much so that I've almost destroyed my life over it, and I cannot even tell people, whisper to people, "do you understand?" I feel so completely isolated and cut off, more and more and more so as the series rises up out of "hopeful wannabe" to a sledgehammer of accomplishment, and I want more and more to hide it away, to keep it from people, to pretend that I am not doing anything. Part of me finds this shameful and so I'm trying to write this blog about it.

But I cannot possibly go to Facebook for what it is and say, "I am so filled with passion over this work that I am shaking as I sit here." How can one say that? It is like being a closet something--a friend of mine once said it was just like being an alcoholic. The most sublime thing in my life, the great Joy, is, to others, like being an alcoholic. Is it any wonder I cannot speak of it? I retreat into technical discussions to pretend I don't care.
(Tony Dezuniga, a magnificent comic artist)

And so, I've decided (as you might can deduce from these three drawings) that these are closest to what I want as the style of the artwork. Dezuniga's warrior here is stunning, not because he's a barbarian, but because Dezuniga has the ability to gesture. I do not want to do photo-real art or cartoon art or polished art, but to give the allusion of emergence out of the page like Lee's picture at the top of this entry. Chmiel does this with marvelous skill.

I want now to go on. I have the backbone, both in drawing and in writing. I want now to do to my art as these three pictures will indicate and to my writing the same way. I want to learn when to leave something white, unfinished, raveling off. Rand was hard and clean, Vermeer. I do not want the complexity of Dickens or George R. R. Martin--I want this emergence, this drawingness feeling.

I am in complete and utter pain, unable even to talk about the vision that I have. I am so completely and utterly in the grip of it, struck dumb with Joy, and I feel like a babbling idiot. I walk so softly now, so afraid that just as I am gripping it, I will slip up, mess up, somehow not be able to show the light. I feel that it is also so important to talk of the importance, to try to express the complete and utter pain and joy of the creation, of the making of the best within me.

And my question to Sarah Micklem is: how can such effort have been for this book you have written? To make the effort alone is so heroic, and to make it to show art that despises the Will, the Joy, the Beingness of this--how is it possible? Does she feel responsible? Does she even know? How can she live it it and know? Are her values so completely different, so utterly hopeless and nihilistic? Does anyone else see this or will I just sound like a fool? An old fuddy-duddy. Somehow concerned with heroism and morality in a world that scorns such things.

A hard day today. I am saved only by the Will within, my own pigheaded stubborn love of this vision, a desire to keep trying to bring back the fire of God.