One of the nicest beatings ever

So, yeah, Wynette read my draft of the first two acts of Affairs. Her take:

"This would be a really good book from anybody but you. You can do better."

Uh, thanks? Uh, uhm...really. How am I supposed to feel?

Let's be clear: she's right. The things she bitched about were things that have been troubling me as I've been writing: some serious flaws in Deaclan's motivation which--were I to address them--would derail my trip towards that plot point this novel had to hit; the way plot had to keep giving way to the weight of backstory and worldbuilding this novel was trying to carry. There's other stuff I would like to improve, too, but those are the things that can't be addressed within the current framework. The bottom-line problem is that I am a character-driven writer and I've been trying to write to a plot point. Which is to say that I've been writing a plot-driven novel. Of course I can do better than that.

So, where do we go from here? The headline: this book won't go to press this year. Oh, it *could*: I'm the publisher, after all. And it wouldn't be an embarrassment in the scheme of things...but it wouldn't be my best art. And that would be sorta pointless. Instead I will dig back in and attack this story (which, as those of you who've been playing along know, will have numerous volumes by the time it's done, mostly because the idea is Too Freakin Big) from the other possible angle of entry. Which will obviate (no, who am I kidding? alleviate) the worldbuilding problem I've been fighting. I'd actually had a hard time deciding which of these two points of entry to use, and now I have sufficient data to be certain which is the way to go. It's going to be easier, and probably better, this way.

Why, then, the perpiscacious reader asks, if trying it the other way will be easier and better, didn't you just damn well do it that way in the first place?

That would be because I had made the mistake of attempting to think like a publisher.

Oh, sure, I've got to think like a publisher. But when thinking like a publisher gets in the way of thinking like an artist, I will succeed as neither. I'd chosen Affairs as the starting point for the series because it's got a better hook. It will probably be easier to sell. All things being equal, that's better, obviously. The problem is that all things aren't equal. The other approach, beginning with The Shadow of the Sun, is more art and less hook. Hamlet meets the Tain Bo Cuilagne meets Paradise Lost. How the hell do you soundbyte that? Who besides Irish mythology geeks has even *heard* of the Tain Bo?

Don't glaze over. It will be a good ride, nay a great one. It just doesn't have that nice *hook*.

Back to the study for me, right after the launch.

For ancient religion geeks

Wynette and I were discussing recently how difficult it is to write works that touch on ancient Celtic culture, particularly Celtic religion. There Be Dragons there: that area of study is a battleground among academics, and those of us who have other flavors of attachment to that tradition tend to have a difficult time separating what truths we can glean of that tradition from the fantasy-movies that popular culture has overlaid them with. I have found a better flavor of understanding, not to mention some emotional peace on the topic, from digging into academic source materials. In the course of preparing for this series I went so far as to spend months (really, months!) reading academic works on Irish archaeology and actually dragged Mark all the way across The Pond to walk those sites myself.

Turned out to be a religious experience, ironically enough. But I digress, as usual.

Presently, I am reading a book loaned to me by Ron: The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality & the Origins of Culture by William Irwin Thompson (ISBN 0-312-80512-8) which essentially picks up where Frazier left off with The Golden Bough – with stunning results. I am going to buy this book; it is one I will find necessary to re-read fairly often.

In the section I am reading now, Thompson engages in a lengthy footnote on the topic of the original One World Religion (of the Great Mother, of course) and where Sumer, with its ultimately masculine tradition that became the backbone of the Etruscan, Roman, and Greek religions diverged from the continuing Mother Goddess trad of Western Europe, and recommends these books, which I am also going to hunt down, as context on that divergence:

Time Stands Still: New Light on Megalithic Science by Keith Chritchlow (London, Gordon Fraser, 1979)

-and-

The Silbury Treasure by Michael Dames (London, Thames & Hudson, 1976)

The Avebury Cycle by the same guy & publisher, 1977

It was this week, as I was reading Thompson’s book, eating my lunch, absorbing his discussion of the Great Mother as both womb and tomb and how that perception is reflected in Neolithic tomb-sites e.g. Newgrange (though he doesn’t mention Newgrange but rather Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales, and shows that picture)—when, because I’ve been following Thompson’s argument and have passed through the narrow tunnel into the inner sanctum of Newgrange myself, I suddenly saw what would have been obvious to anyone who breathed that religion: the entrances to those barrow-tombs are models of the vagina of the Great Mother, which in that way of thinking is a two-way street. But this is only one of many insights I’ve had into the profoundly male-female, always-about-fertility-and-yet-always-about-something-more, nature of that religion. So if ancient Celtic culture and religion are on your radar, do yourself a favor: pick up those books.