I’m an aspiring writer. I still hold down a day job while scribbling
of other worlds in my spare time. One of
the fastest ways I know to kill a conversation dead at a gathering of writers is
to admit exactly what that day job is.
No, I don’t work in a morgue, I’m a teacher. Most people assume that because I write fantasy
and occasionally poetry, I’m an English teacher. However, nothing could be
further from the truth. I teach
mathematics – algebra, calculus, statistics – all the really scary stuff. I’ve taught in
Every so often a bemused student will
uncover my literary secret and will decide to assuage his or her curiosity
about the burning question: is it possible for someone who can explain the
inner mysteries of differential calculus to string together enough sentences to
make a satisfying story?
Now, as everyone knows – or should at
least suspect – while it is not especially cool to voluntarily read a teacher’s
fiction, it is unspeakably ‘uncool’ to enjoy the
experience. In addition, it is to invite
untold ridicule to actually admit it.
So, while I have some lovely praise from
adult readers of my fantasy fiction, my favourite
critical comments come from those teenage students of mine who found themselves
stuck on the horns of a truly diabolical dilemma: how to tell their teacher they
liked her story without incurring the complete contempt of their peers.
Your
book’s been stolen from the library, miss.
I can’t believe it. I didn’t
think any of the thieves in this school had any taste.
-
Miss, I don’t want to be critical but your
story has a serious problem.
-
If you’re worried about the puppy, don’t
be. He comes back in the sequel.
-
The sequel? There’s a sequel? Well, that might solve the problem,
miss. Still you might make a mistake, a
continuity error, like in the movies. Do
you have someone checking for that?
-
Are you volunteering, by any chance?
-
Yes, miss. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do
it. When do you think I could start?
The Battle of
the Trees is a young Young Adult series. When
Merlin’s Wood was published, I invited
dozens of kids to the book launch. A
librarian at the occasion was astonished: she’d been to a great many children’s
book launches, but never before seen kids invited before. I was in turn astonished. The plain fact is that if you’re writing for
a teenage audience, that’s the mind and heart you should know. Some critics
think the teenagers in my stories seem to squabble like much younger kids –
falling, it seems, for the literary illusion that the average teenage reader is
concerned about suicide and drugs. My
experience over many years is that teenage angst is mostly about independence
and identity – and in those terms, I don’t see that reading fantasy is escapist
or a way of avoiding reality. Good
fantasy, in my view, is the ultimate confrontation with reality. If you’re
interested in pursuing that provocative statement, you can check out my
thoughts in Ideas and Inspiration.
A word of warning: Merlin’s Wood doesn’t actually feature Merlin. It’s about a wood – thirteen trees to be
exact. It has nothing to do with sorcerers
and magic spells, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table or the comings
and goings at Camelot. Kids don’t have
the expectation of many adults that it will be about wizards and warriors – they
like it for what’s there – a story of how easy it is to make the mistake of excusing
someone’s fault instead of forgiving them.
If I’ve concentrated on kid’s comments to
the exclusion of the adults’, understand that I’m new enough to this to still
feel uncomfortable with the world of publishers’ blurbs where every other
fantasy work is hailed as the next Harry
Potter or The Lord of The Rings. Instead I treasure the remark of the boy who
said, “I hated your book. I really hated
it. I got to the end of chapter one and
I said to myself, ‘this is going to end far too
soon’. The best books are never long
enough.”
Anne Hamilton
Author – Merlin’s Wood
Tumbl’tower
Contact
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Ideas and Inspiration
