2020-04-02 08:40
I just finished up the first draft of my second story, and did a little revising on the first one. More revising and editing is in the future, then maybe I'll let some folks read it and see if anyone has any comments. I need to start thinking up what's next, though, so I don't lose momentum.
Making pretty quick work through A Short History of Fantasy. It's a rather broad overview often too focused on high level plot synopses. That's helpful in some sense, but doesn't really give any feel for the books under discussion. I don't think the summaries of some of my favorite fantasy works would have made me interested in them or given me any real idea of how unusual and unconventional those books are in comparison with most fantasy (thinking here of Delany's Neveryon or Wolfe's Latro books). The book's authors also, for the most part, avoid being very evaluative, though in some sense the inclusion of a book in the history is already a judgment of some kind. I have taken note of a couple books to look further into, though a lot of the works are ones in subgenres that I'm not so interested in, especially children's book, fairy tales (and various plays on same), and books that are ilke "real life" but with fantasy or where the character travels from the real world to a fantasy world. Those all seem very prevalent, and just not in general to my interest.
It's three weeks since we first got a lighter form of the "stay at home" directive that now seems much more universal (at first it was just a few counties in the state). I weirdly feel like I've been more productive since then. I've written some stories, I've played a lot less video games (not any for... at least 2 weeks I think), I've played more D&D.