Stephen King’s Dilemma

In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King wrestled with the fact that, of all the novels he had written, the overwhelming favorite was The Stand.  While he was glad his readers liked the post-apocalyptic tale, this was his second published novel.  He believed he had grown immensely as an author since he had crafted that early work, and by the time he wrote On Writing, had published an astounding number of novels.  He had invested all his stories with imagination, creativity, and passion, and believed some of his later novels represented his best efforts as a writer. Yet by an overwhelming majority, readers loved The Stand more than any of his later stories.

Over the last few months, a few of my posts have attracted more page views than the norm.  In my Pages section, you can find a link to my current Top Ten posts.  The first four, all about authors working today, have garnered an astounding number of page views.  Fans of those popular authors evidently liked what I had to say and recommended them to their friends.  Four of my seven-part series on Ritz Cinema also got a large number of hits.  I attribute the popularity of those posts less to the James Herriot connection (or my particularly beautiful prose), and more to the fact that Ritz Cinema is a very special place, and therefore, like Steven Brust, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, and David Malki, has a passionate following.  My original intention for my blog, to write about particular works of fiction, is represented by only one entry: “Envying Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber.”  I’m not sure if this is because people like what I had to say, or if they were searching for images of Luke’s lightsaber.  

Blogger has its foibles, some of which I’ve discovered since I started using the Pages function.  One inconsistency I noticed long ago, however, was that the number of page views listed in my Posts section was often different than the numbers represented in the Statistics section.  In many cases, the number of page views is higher on the Posts list than it is in the Statistics section.  One entry in particular, “As Time Goes By in Holland Park: Part 1,” has enough page views on the Posts list that it should reside in number eight on my Statistics section’s Top Ten page.  Yet it doesn’t appear there.  I suppose it doesn’t really belong in my Top Ten anyway, as parts Two and Three only have half as many page views, and “As Time Goes By Jean’s House” frequently appears under search terms that drew people to my site.  This may also explain the popularity of “Catching a Glimpse of Norman Clegg’s House.”  The latter post, which initially attracted average interest, has steadily risen in popularity in the months since I wrote it.  In reading it, I can see why fans of the TV show “Last of the Summer Wine” would like it.  But “Norman Clegg’s House” also shows up regularly under Searches that led people to my blog. 

I apologize to all you “As Time Goes By” fans: I don’t know the address the TV crew used for the exterior of Jean’s House.  (Nor do I know the exact address of Norman Clegg’s house, but I believe the second location the production used was a cottage behind The White Horse Inn, if that’s helpful).  Part one of my three-part entry is about exploring the residential and commercial area of London known as Holland Park, and parts two and three cover the actual park.  The Dutch Garden within the park was an important place for us to visit, as it is there that Lionel first pursues Jean, and realizes that he wants to get to know her better.  (Even if you’re not a fan of the TV show, it’s a beautiful garden, and the entire park is worth a visit).  At least I know that I’m not the only one who still loves a show that started twenty years ago, and aired its last reunion show seven years ago.

One entry that I particularly love, but hasn’t gotten many page views, is my entry “Leaning on Steven Brust.”  While it’s somewhat derivative of “Steven Brust: My Ultimate Weapon,” it not only relates to my struggles as an author, but to Grand Master Robert Silverberg’s own struggles during the 1970s.  I wrote it later in April for those who enjoyed "Ultimate Weapon."  Yet, as Stephen King found with his published novels, what resonates with readers often astonishes the writer.  I know my affection for Jupiter Project, If the Stars are Gods, and The Stars in Shroud surprised Gregory Benford.  His favorites tend to be novels like Timescape and Artifact, SF stories about working physicists such as himself. 

From a business side of things, it makes sense for an author to look backward, study what books have sold the most, and attempt to cater to those tastes.  From an artistic standpoint, it makes sense that a writer should ignore past successes, and follow his muse wherever it leads him.  I hope I never find myself in a place where publishers will only buy one particular type of story from me.  Stephen King’s dilemma (and every popular writer’s dilemma), is that the type of books he longs to write may not resonate with his readers as much as some of his other types of stories.  This phenomenon should not be ignored or discounted.  As readers, we should sympathize with those writers who can only sell one type of story.  But at the end of the day, it’s an author’s job to serve his or her readers, whatever stories they’ve come to love, and for whatever reason they treasure them most.  At this point, the fact that anyone out there loves anything I've written brings me joy.  It’ll be my job to remember that, should I win a publisher’s attention, and see my novels published.  

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

As Time Goes By in Holland Park: Part 1

Still Leaning on Steven Brust

How Clone Wars Helped Me Love the Star Wars Prequels

Proof that I once found the time to draw.

When "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" arrived in theaters, I was as excited as anyone who had fallen in love with the original trilogy.  Yet I left the theater disappointed.  The movie just didn’t affect me the same way the original "Star Wars" film (later retitled Episode 4: A New Hope) had.  With the second and third prequel movies, it was the same: I watched characters and stories (not to mention impressive action and special effects) that left me unmoved.  The prequels seemed more like condensed histories than the carefully crafted narratives of the original trilogy.  And the way the Jedi leapt about, and used their powers, made them seem more like superheroes than real people.  (I won’t even get into how the droid R2-D2 acquires spectacular new abilities, such as the power of flight).  Later, when the movies were released on DVD, I bought them, and watched them occasionally, but I seemed to walk away from each viewing shaking my head, and thinking of all that George Lucas had done wrong with the prequels, and what a terrible shame that was.

I didn’t even bother to see the animated film “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” in theaters.

Then a strange thing happened one December.  I saw the first season of the animated series "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" in the store.  Although I had not watched the series, I was curious how Lucas would craft Star Wars stories into thirty-minute TV shows.  So I put it on my wish list, along with the Clone Wars movie, and a dear family member gave them to me for Christmas.  The animated movie didn’t win me over, but over the course of watching the TV series, I grew to care about the characters.  I found I could understand Anakin Skywalker better, now that I saw him mentoring young Ahsoka Tano.  I also grew to respect him more, as Lucas filled in the years between Episodes Two and Three with more adventures, and I could see him regularly making all the right choices, as opposed to all the wrong ones (as in the movies).  I discovered that there were lots of Jedi Masters who I never noticed in the prequels, but had vibrant personalities, and their own stories to tell, in the series.  I even came to care about the faceless clones of "Episode 2: Attack of the Clones" and "Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith," as Lucas and company worked to individualize them, and explain clone society’s culture and worldview. 

The original "Star Wars" (Episode 4: A New Hope) has always been my favorite movie, and it probably always will be.  Several times each year, it’ll strike me that I need to see it again.  When I mention this impulse to my wife, she immediately agrees to watch it with me.  (The reverse is also true).  This will unleash, over the following days or weeks, an eventual viewing of the second and third movies of the original trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  Sometimes, we even followed this up by watching the prequels.  But since the release of all six films on Blu-ray, we've watched all six films twice.  Both times, we started with Episode 4, proceeded through the original trilogy, and then watched the prequels.  This time we’re working our way through in proper episode order, starting with the prequels.  We even threw in the Clone Wars movie for good measure.  We enjoyed the prequels far more this time than ever before.  This time, when I watched Episodes 2 and 3, I wasn’t a passive observer anymore, but an active participant.  I could be wrong (Okay, I’m occasionally mistaken), but I believe this transformation is mostly due to the Clone Wars TV show. 

In The Inklings, a book on the famous literary club in Oxford, Humphrey Carpenter credits C. S. Lewis as saying that anyone can read a book, but to be truly literary, one must reread.  I wonder what Lewis would say about someone who watches a particular movie, or series of movies, as frequently as I do.

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

The Power of Star Wars Part 1

Leaping Onto The Unseen Path

A year ago I emailed Jane Lindskold two questions about her novel Thirteen Orphans.  Along with her answers, she mentioned she was also an Agatha Christie fan, and referred me to one of her blog entries on the famous mystery author.  She told me the month and year she had posted it, so I was able to find the article in her archives.  I enjoyed it so much that I read all the others for that particular month.  But then life yanked me back to my normal duties, and I forgot my desire to explore her blog further.

Recently, I’ve been working to make my blog more interesting and easier to navigate.  I added a Blogroll (called Blogs I’m Following), and added her blog to the list.  Jane Lindskold seems to write two types of entries: 1) What’s happening in her life, and 2) A discussion with her friend Alan.  I’ve particularly enjoyed their recent comparison of the educational systems in the United States and England.  They’ve illuminated aspects mentioned in TV series like “Inspector Morse” and “Yes, Prime Minister” that I’ve always wondered about, but never got around to actually investigating.

In her email, Jane Lindskold also mentioned her desire to organize her posts by specific topics.  Of course, a published author faces more deadlines and duties than an unpublished one, and such organizing would impinge on the time she had available for blogging.

Since I began blogging, I’ve wrestled with how to focus on writing one particular type of blog post.  But I seem utterly incapable of specializing.  My initial idea to write about the Science Fiction and Fantasy literature I loved evolved into a series on Star Trek, and then into nongenre TV shows and my trip to England.  Pretty soon I was writing about spirituality, the struggles I faced in writing my novel, James Herriot, and even the ordeal of installing my microwave.

Blogging on so many topics means that readers who visit my blog for one type of post have a hard time following what interests them most.  So for a long time, I’ve wanted to develop a series of pages that readers could use to pursue posts on the subjects that most interested them.  But I didn’t know how to set them up.  I read books on blogging, the instructions from Blogger, and anything I could find on the Internet.  Nowhere did I find the subject explained in terms I could understand.  The Blogger Layout section of my blog claimed that “Pages” had been enabled, but I couldn't see them.

I’ve always belonged to the camp of “Look before you leap.”  Unfortunately, sometimes I spend so much time looking that I don’t get around to leaping.  It’s easier to focus on the tasks I can see than to leap onto the unseen path.  But one day I decided to leap in and investigate the Pages section.  If it did something weird to my blog, I’d just repair the damage as best I could.

I started with the Authors Page, and used it to link to the entries I had written on Gregory Benford’s novel Jupiter Project.  When I pressed the Publish button, an area that differentiated between Home (where my posts show up) and the Authors Page showed up on the side of my blog.  This area was another element I could position anywhere I wished, just like the Blogroll, the About Me area, and the archives.  This useful tool had waited for me, but because I couldn’t perceive how it would look and interact with the rest of my blog, I had feared to use it.  Now that I can see how Pages works, I started organizing last year’s posts onto Pages such as TV shows, Movies, and Travel.  (If you want to read the post I wrote on Thirteen Orphans, you can find it on the Authors Page, under Jane Lindskold).

I just wish I had leapt onto the Pages feature sooner, even if I couldn’t see where I was leaping.  I wonder what discoveries await me, in other areas of my life, once I decide to leap onto them as well.

Dragon Dave

The Story of Herbert the Lamb

In Chapter Three of All Things Bright and Beautiful, James Herriot is delivering a lamb with an especially large head when a runt scampers past him and takes a drink from his patient’s udder.  “Oh, that’s Herbert,” the farmer, Rob Benson explained.  “Little youth’s mother won’t have ‘im at any price.  I was going to put him with the pet lambs but I saw he was fendin’ for himself.  He pops from one ewe to t’other and gets a quick drink whenever he gets a chance.  I’ve never seen owt like it.” 

Herriot keeps an eye on Herbert as he works on Rob Benson’s difficult cases.  Some mothers warn the runt off by shaking their heads.  When Herbert sneaks up on a particularly big ewe to steal a nip from her udder, she butts him with her head, sending the “little animal flying high in the air in a whirl of flailing legs.”  He landed on his back, and immediately sneaks under another mother at the feeding trough for a quick drink. 

 

“Lambing time is the most hectic period of the vets’ and farmers’ year,” James Herriot (Alf Wight) writes in James Herriot’s Yorkshire.  “Some of the farmers, like Rob Benson, do not go to bed for six weeks.”  Farmers have wrestled with all kinds of complications associated with pregnancy, and this culminates with the births, some so difficult that veterinarians like James Herriot must be called out.  Likewise, this time is draining for the vets, as “spring is the time when other livestock are at their lowest ebb, cows and beef cattle having been confined indoors through the long winter.”

On a later visit to Rob Benson’s farm, Herriot finds a ewe with a belly full of dead lambs.  “The lambs were putrid and distended with gas, and I had to use a scalpel to deliver the little bodies with the least discomfort to the mother.”  By the time he was through, the ewe was clearly ailing.  Without a lamb to revive her interest in life, he and Rob Benson feared that she would die.  “Just at that moment a familiar figure wandered into view.  It was Herbert, the unwanted lamb, easily recognizable as he prowled from sheep to sheep in search of nourishment.”  Herriot suggests a disguise for Herbert, and Benson skins one of the dead lambs and ties its skin over the persistent runt. 

A week later, Herriot again returned to Rob Benson’s farm, where the farmer pointed out, “There’s that awd ewe with Herbert.”  The mother has taken to Herbert, who now, far from being a runt, looks rather obese, as he’s getting all the ewe’s milk.  “I reckon he saved the ewe’s life,” Rob Benson says.  “She’d have pegged out all right, but she never looked back once he came along.”

It’s amazing to look at these seemingly helpless creatures, and think of them as possessing such determination.  But often those among us who seem most frail, broken, and helpless are the ones who push past their fear and insecurities to accomplish great things.  Many times, those of us who seemingly possess greater strength and abilities give up instead of persevering toward our goals.  The story of Herbert underlines that when we give up, not only do we lose, but so do those whom our efforts would benefit most.

In summing up Herbert, James Herriot wrote, “There was no doubt about it—that lamb had guts.”  So I press on, fixing my eyes on my desired destination, in the hope that as much can be said of me.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links

Read “Lambing Scenes” in James Herriot’s Yorkshire

Read Herriot’s story of Herbert in All Things Bright and Beautiful

A short reflection on James Herriot by a Missouri farmer during lambing season

St. Oswald’s in Askrigg

The present structure dates back to 1446,
forty-six years before Columbus discovered America.

On this year’s vacation in England, we hadn’t planned a return visit to Askrigg.  We simply realized, during our week based outside Lancaster, that we had to return.  It wasn’t just the village of Askrigg that called us back, but the Yorkshire Dales as well.  So on the return visit, we enjoyed a relaxing drive through the gently rolling farmland, taking in a few stops along the way.  We arrived in Askrigg around noon, and after a picnic lunch, began our afternoon exploration by visiting its church.

We drove our chair into the church,
and secured it to a heater.
Then we left to explore Askrigg further.

What surprised me most, given the size of the village, was the church’s sheer size.  Size- and age-wise, St. Oswald’s in Askrigg compares favorably with St. Mary’s in Thirsk.  While St. Mary’s boasts a more elegant interior, Thirsk grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The money that accompanied growth and expansion funded St. Mary’s lavish interior.  That same money funded the additions to the smaller St. Oswald’s in adjacent Sowerby, as well as the building of its parochial hall.   By comparison, the farms around Askrigg, and the village itself, still harken back to an earlier era, which was one reason the production crew for “All Creatures Great and Small” decided to film there.  Lacking similar community growth and modernization, additions to the village church have been more modest.

According to the church website,
Nikolaus Pevsner,
an architectural historian,
proclaimed the nave ceiling
the finest in North Riding.

I enjoyed walking though the sanctuary.  With every step, I sensed a comfortable, down-home feeling. The worshippers clearly loved their church, just the way it was.  Posters displayed pencil sketches of how the church looked, inside and out, a hundred years ago.  Plaques on the wall weren’t the expensive affairs of more prosperous towns and cities, but they held their own allure.  I especially liked the tiles behind the altar that displayed The Lord’s Prayer, The Ten Commandments, and the Nicene Creed.  Of course, I also perused their collection of used paperback, and donated money for the two science fiction novels I left with.

Words to live by.

The affection and passion Askrigg holds for its church are evident on its website.  Despite all the changes time has wrought on England, St. Oswald’s seems to remain at the heart of the community.  Their pages celebrate numerous aspects of village life, including trumpeting new businesses, advertising opportunities to learn a different language, informing residents of other religious options, and celebrating notable locals, from an artist whose work has been exhibited in the National Gallery, to their beloved postman.  Thus, St. Oswald’s in Askrigg exemplifies a nation in which Church and State are one.  I cannot help but think that, if we someday return to Askrigg for an extended stay, we would attend St. Oswald’s regularly, and contribute to the vibrant life of this Yorkshire village.  

A pencil sketch of the interior circa 1890.  

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

St. Oswald’s in Sowerby

James Herriot’s Controversial Church

Where Church and State are One: Part 1

Related Internet Links

St. Oswald’s in Askrigg