LeGuinn, today might be characterized as a Fantasy writer as often as she is Fiction. But she herself casts her lot with the older, broader Science Fiction club. There are few books I read twice, and fewer thrice, but Earthsea is one of those few few.

(Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever used “few” in succession twice. Seems to work!)

The Earthsea’s world is organic, and magic comes at a cost, tho’ it might not be apparent. It isn’t frivolous, although entertainers employ it to their ultimate demise. (That cost thing.) I grant that now long in my 5th decade, the tale is nowhere near as sophisticated as Guy Kaye and George R. R. Martin put together, but it sure is an interesting yarn of high prose. And that becomes the attraction, in the end – not the magic, or its system: LeGuinn casts her own magic over the prose and its form. Almost languidly posed, there are paragraphs that for the first time in my reading experience, I found myself rereading, sometimes a couple of times. I never use post-it notes in books, being far too lazy to go find ‘em. But in Earthsea, yellow standards abound.

By comparison, Card’s Alvin Maker series is “standard form ‘Card’”, which is to say, a story, damn it. It seems to be Card’s way… There’s a certain presentational determination that his narratives often take, a third person in the room, directing the plot, the author unwilling to become an invisible co-conspirator in the plot. Whatever… Alvin Maker‘s world of magic is, like Ursula’s, tangible, a spirit path, with an alt-American superplot that becomes the central plot, after the “magic” in the first book is teased out and batted around like a cat “playing” with a mouse. It runs in families (not unusual, yes?), but most only have a knack, for a thing, or two. Like violet eyes, or that jaw-droppingly amazing natural red-gold hair that comes seemingly from nowhere (genetically), the real magic, the hard stuff … is rare.

I’m afraid that I can’t say that I’ll likely be compelled to re-read Card’s Alvin … but this does not make my fondness for it any less – Card is just a story teller, and doesn’t have the knack of weaving breathtaking prose. And saying “just a story-teller”, while it sounds like a put-down, also is not: Card is an excellent story-teller, but having specialized in reading every published piece he ever wrote, I’ve gotten over my awe for his fast-paced, exciting, all-loose-ends-tied style. He often cites his overflowing love and appreciation for the small handful of uberfriends that help him through each tale … and that “book by committee” shows. [Its probably what ensures all loose ends are wrapped up.]

Well, that’s about all. Thanks for the blog-article, and hopefully I’ve not inserted myself into an otherwise private conversation.

On the “Beat”/”Beatnik”/etc side, I can see where you’re going with this. In the early 90s we had Douglas Coupland (still one of my favorite authors) and others tapping into the Gen X/grunge/slacker ennui, and I think Coupland’s early work is a good parallel to the Ginsberg/Kerouac writer that wrote about people “off the grid” versus Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney writing about the “popular kids” steeped in drugs and the former-popular-kid-now-outsider trying to escape that scene. This is partly why I have trouble reading a lot of the lit fic out there today, as a lot of it is about the whinging and I just can’t connect.

As for being the writer: I’ve gone through a lot of this myself, trying to figure out exactly why I want to write what I’m writing. I don’t try to chase the Next Popular Genre. Still, my story has to be more than just “because it’s hip” and more importantly, at least for me, it needs to be more than just “because it sounds like a cool idea.” I need to connect with it on a personal level. Cool ideas can be fun, but I have to ask myself if they’ll still be cool after slaving over 100k words of it for a year or two.

Still…my biggest reasons for writing is because I LOVE worldbuilding. I LOVE the intricacies of intertwining characters and plot points. And storytelling is just a hell of a lot of fun. Sure, I’d like to be published and paid for it, but it’s not my sole aim.

The meme is probably especially strong now because of ebooks and Amazon and the possibilities of self-publishing.

Writers want to get paid for their work, but how much should they give in to the marketplace, whichever market one aims for?

I want to be a writer, not a salesperson, hence I decided not to write for the market, but for whatever story that appears for me.

It’s good and inspiring to know other writers who do the same thing.

Which is a shame, because I really like that last example I wrote, and now I want to have a go at someone JUST so I can use it.