NaNoWriMo And Remembering Anne McCaffrey
November is almost over. I’ve been writing continuously for the past 3 days, at least 75 manuscript pages. I ran through an entire fancy ballpoint pen gel ink
cartridge. My hand and arm are still tired today even though I’ve finished writing. This year’s National Novel Writing Month novel is done, a mix of handwritten, computer typed and typewritten pages (on the Hermes Rocket seafoam green typewriter.) It was pleasant to do nothing but write (with meal breaks) and it is good to get the story laid out.
cartridge. My hand and arm are still tired today even though I’ve finished writing. This year’s National Novel Writing Month novel is done, a mix of handwritten, computer typed and typewritten pages (on the Hermes Rocket seafoam green typewriter.) It was pleasant to do nothing but write (with meal breaks) and it is good to get the story laid out.This year’s novel started with the fairly dull task of filling in the story between the first 40 stories of the 74 stories project (read the first story in the 2-inch stack of short story manuscripts: write, read the second story: write). A secondary character who felt he had been slighted and misunderstood took the book over and the rest went much more smoothly.
I now have a month’s worth of rejection slips to go through (including one from a publisher who included part of someone else’s story ...) and the rest of the 74 stories project to write. I’m glad NaNoWriMo is over but for a year when I had little time to work with but the first and last week of the month I’m very glad I finished.
Anne McCaffrey died this past week. She was a tremendous influence on me and she was an early example I had of a successful and prolific female author who wrote science fiction and fantasy. (For a sense of her range read Get off the Unicorn.) The earliest book of hers I read was probably The Ship Who Sang
, although Dragonflight
and Dragonsong
followed soon after. I stopped reading her work shortly after Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
/Nerilka's Story
. I think the subconscious is essentially subversive (it likes to create contra-narratives and undermine its own earlier creations) but I think McCaffrey could have exercised a stronger hand to retain the quality and continuity of some of her long running serieses (especially Pern). It is adorable that certain medieval setting characters get to learn computer science or were present during the childhoods of other major characters: adorable but full of implications which need to be thought through before hundreds of pages are committed to the idea.
, although Dragonflight
and Dragonsong
followed soon after. I stopped reading her work shortly after Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern/Nerilka's Story. I think the subconscious is essentially subversive (it likes to create contra-narratives and undermine its own earlier creations) but I think McCaffrey could have exercised a stronger hand to retain the quality and continuity of some of her long running serieses (especially Pern). It is adorable that certain medieval setting characters get to learn computer science or were present during the childhoods of other major characters: adorable but full of implications which need to be thought through before hundreds of pages are committed to the idea.I both admire McCaffrey’s strong female characters and regret that her female villains were all cut from the same cloth. (I also wish that her female characters were not love interests quite so often and that they were not so often defined by the men they partnered with.) So often McCaffrey’s female characters were given a promise of great power only to lean that power could only be assumed along with a relationship to a man: as a young lesbian I kept thinking ‘great, so I have to put up with this guy?’
Generally women with great political stature or professional success can choose their mates and how much to let that person into their decisions: in McCaffrey’s scenarios these men undetachable accessories, they came with and shared the woman’s supreme status. I always like the earliest parts of her books best and I always thought there could be a much more interesting story around ‘wait, this position comes with this person (or these people) – and you have to share power and make decisions with them’.
I like that her earlier works included the possibility of same sex couples (but did not like that they seldom talked about them, outside of the episode in Dragonquest
), and I much prefer the possibility that Jaxom’s foster-father Lytol was gay (his dragon was a green in the earlier versions of the story and even as a teen I noticed the revision and its implications.) I wished her plots did not depend so much on romance and rescue (and I am annoyed when these themes show up in my own work), although I know McCaffrey wrote as a revolt against how female characters were treated in contemporary sf/f. I appreciate that she wrote palatable, unesoteric fiction with great heroines (and ideas that have aged gracefully: science has made it more, not less plausible that a severely disabled adult might pilot a spaceship or run a city.)
), and I much prefer the possibility that Jaxom’s foster-father Lytol was gay (his dragon was a green in the earlier versions of the story and even as a teen I noticed the revision and its implications.) I wished her plots did not depend so much on romance and rescue (and I am annoyed when these themes show up in my own work), although I know McCaffrey wrote as a revolt against how female characters were treated in contemporary sf/f. I appreciate that she wrote palatable, unesoteric fiction with great heroines (and ideas that have aged gracefully: science has made it more, not less plausible that a severely disabled adult might pilot a spaceship or run a city.)I also like how much of her fiction depends on sheer exultation, how she gives her characters moments of ‘how cool is this?’ as they rocket through space or step onto an alien world or fly on the back of a dragon. It is not an easy emotion to evoke and it is not easy to make an ordinary part of a narrator’s life the source for a passage about wonder.
At one point in my life I read everything Anne McCaffrey had written. Her books lead me to Jane Yolen’s Pit Dragon trilogy (starting with Dragon's Blood
) and to Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea (start with Wizard of Earthsea
.) I already knew about Tolkien’s Middle-earth from The Hobbit
but her work lead me to the Tolkien Reader
with poems and a story about a dragon to a slew of lousy, lazy children’s fantasy with dragons, and to Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain
(it had no dragons but helpful teachers and librarians handed them to me when I ran out of dragon books to read.)
) and to Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea (start with Wizard of Earthsea.) I already knew about Tolkien’s Middle-earth from The Hobbit but her work lead me to the Tolkien Reader with poems and a story about a dragon to a slew of lousy, lazy children’s fantasy with dragons, and to Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain (it had no dragons but helpful teachers and librarians handed them to me when I ran out of dragon books to read.)In other words I owe a lot of my sf/f fandom to Anne McCaffrey and it taught me the valuable principle – when I read the Harry Potter
books I see a lot of bad Latin, a magical system that needs a few screws tightened, and a lot of easy-to-recognize source materiel. I enjoyed them (and the movies) a great deal but as a long-time reader of fantasy I wrinkled my brow thinking about a whole generation of young readers ... then I remembered that I grew up on Anne McCaffrey and from Anne McCaffrey I ended up reading Beowulf
and the Mabinogion
(and about Sigurd
and the Arthurian legends
). Not bad.
books I see a lot of bad Latin, a magical system that needs a few screws tightened, and a lot of easy-to-recognize source materiel. I enjoyed them (and the movies) a great deal but as a long-time reader of fantasy I wrinkled my brow thinking about a whole generation of young readers ... then I remembered that I grew up on Anne McCaffrey and from Anne McCaffrey I ended up reading Beowulf and the Mabinogion (and about Sigurd and the Arthurian legends). Not bad.Fans of fantasy and science fiction love the innovative, the head-crackingly complex and difficult, the plot one can’t guess from a parsec off – but sf/f need books that aren’t that, that give new readers a place to start, that are comfort reading, that are wish fulfillment ('someday I will be discovered and swept off to a pre-eminent place in my society'). McCaffrey’s books fit the bill wonderfully and as I find myself honing my books to be every the more esoteric and clever (driven on by a writing group that is quick to point out the already-done) I hope a day will come when I can write even one thing that is as accessible and well-beloved as the books of Anne McCaffrey.
Recommended books:
Decision at Doona
, The Ship Who Sang, "Weyr Search"
, The Smallest Dragonboy", Dragonsong
(I want to include Dinosaur Planet
but I don’t remember enough about it.)
, The Ship Who Sang, "Weyr Search"
, The Smallest Dragonboy", Dragonsong
(I want to include Dinosaur Planet but I don’t remember enough about it.)Read "No Woman, No Plaything" in Kaleidotrope
Posted by Lisa Shapter at 12/1/2011 10:49 PM 
Categories: Jane Yolen, Anne McCaffrey, Lloyd Alexander, Harry Potter
Tags: Anne McCaffrey Dragons Pern NaNoWriMo
Categories: Jane Yolen, Anne McCaffrey, Lloyd Alexander, Harry Potter
Tags: Anne McCaffrey Dragons Pern NaNoWriMo
Anne McCaffrey will be missed, like you, Lisa I remember her works fondly from my early reading days.
Congratulation on finishing nanowrimo, I like you idea of converting your story series into a novel. Was that your plan all along?
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Yes, there is a novel before the stories (The 75th Story), a novel of the stories (probably 2 given their lengths -- even after interrupting novellas A Ming Marriage and Novella 37 are taken out), and a novel between the stories (this year's NaNoWriMo My Husband, The Stranger).
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I also like how much of her fiction depends on sheer exultation as they rocket through space or step onto an alien world or fly on the back of a dragon. Glad you share your thoughts about these stuff.
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