“I love when the ‘literary establishment’ ‘discovers’ fantasy” tweeted @DelReySpectra, the American genre publishers, yesterday, linking to an article in the New Yorker.

The article in question, The Dragon’s Egg – high fantasy for young adults was a very well-written piece, articulate and full of gentle humour, so I can see why Adam Gopnik has won the National Magazine Award for his essays, but by the time I got to the end of it I was left with a somewhat bitter aftertaste: a distinct impression that he thinks *all* fantasy is for young adults.

The books with which he chose to illustrate his piece were Lord of the Rings, the Twilight saga, and the Inheritance Cycle. You could almost see the labels “enduring classic”, “for girls” and “for boys” floating over them, saying look at me, look at how balanced I’m being.

I can understand his choices: Lord of the Rings is pretty much guaranteed to be a recognisable name. It’s high fantasy, but I wouldn’t classify it as YA, which was the thrust of his essay. LOTR is too big, too dense, too meandering for today’s average young adult reader: too little happens for far too much of the time, and not even the most rabid Tolkien fan could characterise it as pacy. I admit, I was a young adult when I first read it, but by then I’d already read (by choice!) Beowulf, The Iliad and The Odyssey, so I was not your typical 11 year old.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle are undoubtedly aimed at teens (the latter having been written by one, to boot – it’s also the only one that really fits a definition of YA high fantasy) and Gopnik’s analysis of at least part of their appeal is pretty much spot on:

This is how the Bellas of the world actually experience their lives, torn between the cool, sensitive boy from the strange, affluent family and the dishy athletic boy from across the tracks. It’s “My So-Called Life,” with fangs and fur.

he said of Twilight, although I think he’s stretching it to call a PG paranormal romance “high fantasy”. Of Paolini he says:

Adolescent boys, of the kind who take up books in the first place these days, already experience their lives as a series of ordeals: tests, in every sense. . . which aim only at preparing him for the next series of ordeals: this is the story of their life.

Gopnik clearly recognises the publishing phenomena that Twilight and the Inheritance Cycle have become – he points gleefully to the fact that the final instalment of the latter had a print run of over two million copies. But equally clearly, he doesn’t think they are very well written: Stephenie Meyer is “an awkward writer with little feeling for construction” and Paolini is “an unskilled narrator and a derivative mythmaker.”

Take those comments in isolation and he has a fair point; the magic of neither series is in the technicalities of its execution. But bearing these examples and those comments in mind, and reading the essay as a whole, the implication is that Gopnik believes *all* fantasy is poorly-written, derivative or backward-looking, bereft of psychological depth or realism–

What substitutes for psychology in Tolkien and his followers, and keeps the stories from seeming barrenly external, is what preceded psychology in epic literature: an overwhelming sense of history and, with it, a sense of loss. The constant evocation of lost or fading glory—Númenor has fallen, the elves are leaving Middle-earth—does the emotional work that mixed-up minds do in realist fiction.

and comparable to video games—

The gratification comes from the kid’s ability to master the symbols and myths of the saga, as with those eighty-level video games, rather than from the simple absorption of narrative

But that wasn’t the only thing that made me wince. He also uses the phrase

even someone susceptible to almost every kind of fantasy

as if it’s not the fantasy reader’s fault that they like this kind of thing; they’re susceptible to it, the poor dears, as if it was a genetic defect like fallen arches or a predisposition to diabetes.

Ouch.

To be fair to him, Gopnik makes some good points that fantasy helps kids learn, organize and master the myths and symbols of these sagas as tools to get to grips with school and growing up. Except he made them whilst also pointing out that Paolini’s titular hero Eragon learns to be a dragon rider but never grows to be a man, and thus reinforces the tired old condescension that fantasy – any fantasy – is just for kids:

By the time they’re ready for college-admissions letters, they’re already dragon riders, if not yet grownups.

And then he invites us all to mock this “mere mock history”.

Uh-huh.

His final argument is both cogent and compelling, but by then he’d lost me, and no amount of gentle humour was going to win me back. By selecting the examples he did, then picking holes in them for their so-so writing, impenetrable dullness or derivative plots, and highlighting as their strengths only their relevance to teens’ lives, Gopnik leaves the reader to conclude that if these are the biggest sellers¹, the rest of the genre must also be like this – only somehow worse, because they didn’t sell as well.

And by making sound points about what fantasy can teach in the same paragraph as references to the childhood lessons of how to hold a knife (which most of us mastered before we started primary school) and learning right from wrong (which most of us have got to grips with well before we hit our teens) he again implies that these are lessons for juveniles, ones that grown-ups have already learned.

In other words . . . yes, you got it. Just for kids.

Pardon me whilst I splutter.

Tell George RR Martin he’s writing books for kids – it can’t have been all the nudity, incest and beheadings that meant the HBO series A Game of Thrones was shown after the 9pm watershed with a warning about adult themes.

Just for kids?

Tell me that kids get all the jokes in Terry Pratchett’s books – yeah, even the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle one. I’m pretty sure they teach quantum mechanics at middle school these days.

I could go on about the nonverbal communication in Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet, or Joe Abercombie’s The Heroes as “an indictment of war and the duplicity that corrupts men striving for total power” (Eric Brown, The Guardian). Just for kids? Seriously?

There is more to fantasy than vampires and werewolves, elves and dwarfs, whatever the intended demographic. If he’d picked more representative example texts instead of just the most visible ones – hell, even read around his subject a bit – Gopnik would know that. Instead all he showed was his beautifully-articulated prejudices.

***

¹And why only select the biggest sellers? Why not select The Hunger Games, or Artemis Fowl? The Forest of Hands and Teeth or A Wizard of Earthsea? OK, they’re not high fantasy,  but that didn’t stop him picking Twilight. Could it be that Adam Gopnik actually doesn’t know much about YA fantasy and is only looking at the bestseller list? For shame. Commercial success has never been a metric for literary merit – occasionally they intersect (Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: sold over 600,000 copies in 2010, and won the Booker); usually, they don’t (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: sold by the shedload, and, erm, didn’t).

Hey, guess what? Songs of the Earth got a mention in the Sunday Times!

Unfortunately, that mention turned out to be little more than a single line of internal dialogue quoted out of context†, with the admonition that lines like that aren’t going to do anything to make fantasy cool.

Um, what? Who says a particular genre of fiction is cool or uncool? Is there a Department of Cool somewhere in the bowels of the Home Office that makes these distinctions? Do I have to apply to them in triplicate for an EC Certificate of Cool Conformity before I’m allowed to write books?

Bollocks to that.

As a reader and writer of the genre, I already believe fantasy is pretty bloody cool, thank you very much. Where else can I get to play with kingdoms all day long, and weird beasts (come on, dragons? Could they be any cooler?), and sharp, pointy weapons. Just because there’s a castle on the horizon, or we’re in some fantastical city run by thieves doesn’t mean the writer can’t examine the human condition just as deeply as anyone else – in fact fantasy writers often get to examine it from new and exciting perspectives, like the inside, amongst the tubes and wobbly bits.

Maybe I’m reading too much into a couple of sentences in a review round-up. Maybe the reviewer was not approaching from a standpoint of “I already think fantasy is deeply uncool and slightly icky, so go on, try to change my mind”. Or maybe I’ve just heard one too many people sneering at fantasy lately, because, you know, it’s all just made up stuff.

Newsflash, people: all fiction is ‘just made up stuff’. Even the kind of fiction that wins the Booker.††

It’s not my job to try to make fantasy cool to people with attitudes like that. Prejudice is their problem, not mine.

It is my job to serve the story, to tell it to the best of my ability, and transport the reader somewhere else for a few hours. My job is to entertain with words. If I happen to also inform, elucidate, illuminate or otherwise make the reader say “Huh, I didn’t know that”, then that’s just gravy.

So here’s my book. Try it, don’t try it, it’s your choice. But why not forget what all the other cool kids are doing, stop trying to be so achingly hip you can barely walk, and make your own mind up for a change. Try some fantasy; it won’t kill you. It’s rousing, riotous, heroic, horrifying, absorbing, philosophical, thrilling, heartbreaking, edge-of-your-seat fun.†††

Hell, you might even get over yourself and enjoy it.

Or is it better to be seen to be cool than be entertained?

***

† I’m not saying it was the best line in the world, but in context it was appropriate, dramatic and effective. Stripped of context, pretty much any ten words (short of Shakespeare) are just words.

†† Keeping it topical. But seriously, is the Man Booker Prize awarded to the best book of the year, or just the best book of a certain type?

††† Not necessarily all at the same time. Obviously. But some books, like Martin and Rothfuss there, will give it a damn good try.

There’s going to be no getting away from me in the next few weeks, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.

Aidan Moher has very kindly invited me to write a guest post for A Dribble of Ink, whilst he has a few days off to go and do something far more interesting than blogging. I’ll do my best not to tread mud into the carpets whilst I’m there. Check it out on Monday 9th May!

I’m also putting in an appearance in the June issue of Words With Jam, rubbing shoulders (figuratively speaking) with none other than J K Rowling.

Speaking of magazines, this time in print, SFX have an interview with yours truly in the current issue, available now.

Busy, busy, busy. It’s a wonder I get any writing done. Enjoy!

Authors of fiction should wear their learning lightly, I feel. Research should subtly inform their writing, not dominate it, and the reader should never, ever feel as if they’re being lectured. After all, they picked up the book to be entertained and transported into another world, not sat down and told to pay attention, because there’s a quiz later.

It’s a widely-held view that fantasy as a genre is one in which the writer can pretty much dispense with research. It’s all made up, so as long as you make sure there are certain natural laws by which your world functions and you stick to them, you can do what you like. It’s your sandpit. You make the rules.

Except it’s not that simple. Even in fantasy, there are some elements where a little research will prevent your reader frowning and thinking “That’s not right.” I mean, they might write to you and complain.

For example, there’s likely to be horses in the book somewhere, so it pays to know the hairy end from the end with the teeth. How to get on and off. How far you can ride one in a day.

If the blokes on the horses are knights, you’d better know your hauberk from your pauldron, and where to find the vamplate (it’s the bit which guards your hand as you grip your lance, in case you didn’t know).

So I was sitting at my desk, putting the finishing touches to the second book of The Wild Hunt series, and I had a sudden thought. An epiphany, even. One of those moments of realisation which is often—nay, almost inevitably—followed by “Oh, shit.”

What I realised was that I have spent mumblety-mumble years thinking, dreaming and writing about folk for whom a sword is a part of everyday life, and I’ve never laid hands on one. Seen a few in museums and so on, but never actually wrapped my hand round a hilt.

My imagination’s done the work up to this point. I knew not to pick it up by the pointy end, for instance, and was fairly confident I could score at least 6/10 on a naming-of-the-parts pop quiz. I also knew that they don’t weigh nearly as much as people imagine, but even three pounds is going to feel like it’s ripping your arm out of its socket after half an hour’s earnest use.

What I didn’t know, and had to rely on my imagination for, was the specifics. Which muscles does it pull on as you start to tire? Where do you get the calluses, and what does it feel like in your hand when the sweat—and worse—begins to run? What does it feel like in your hand, full stop?

So I bought one. A replica of a 15th century longsword (also called a hand-and-a-half, or a bastard sword, depending on your era of origin and local preference). Not a lightweight copy of Andúril that comes with a fancy plaque to hang on the wall, but a traditionally-made, full tang, edge-ready, functional sword. And it’s sharp.

Well, I’m not going to know what a real sword feels like in my hand unless I’m holding a real sword, am I?

Apologies for the crummy pics–it’s pouring with rain and even with the lights on I can barely see what I’m doing. Click to make them bigger.

Sounds vaguely perverse, doesn’t it?

Well, if that’s how you got here, hello and make yourself at home.  New friends are always welcome.  Feel free to poke around.  The main website www.elspethcooper.com has more about me and my writing.

Someone asked me the other day why I write.  Easy.  I write because I don’t know how not to.

I’ve been a storyteller all my life.  Since I could hold a pen, and make marks on paper that weren’t just copying something off the blackboard.  It’s as natural to me as breathing.

As time went on, the stories got longer, more complex.  I’d get an idea and just run with it, to see where it took me.  When I was 14, one of those ideas took me on a wild, 260-page adventure cranked out on an old Adler portable typewriter (forever remembered as the Tripewriter) in one-and-a-half linespacing.  I can still smell the carbon paper.

That was my first attempt at writing a book.  Of course, I didn’t tell anyone I was writing a book; that kind of admission, in high school, can have Consequences, and I was already in enough trouble with the cool kids because I wore glasses, didn’t smoke, and handed my homework in on time.  Talk about making it hard for yourself! How I got out alive is anyone’s guess.

Of course, like most first attempts at novels, it was a load of rubbish.  Derivative, cliche-ridden and agonisingly bad prose, but I enjoyed the process.  More than enjoyed it.  I was hooked.  I wrote more.  When my Dad brought home a BBC Model B computer (he was involved in the schools IT advisory service for the local education authority at the time) I taught myself to use the basic word-processing package that came with it and the words continued to flow.  Now I could write into the night without the Tripewriter keeping the rest of the household awake.  Bliss.

But I never thought I was writing for an audience.  I was writing for me, because I wanted to find out what happened next in each story.  Years passed, as they are wont to do, and “Songs” limped, in fits and starts, into something approaching novel length, though I still refused to call it a book anywhere but inside my head.  I had a subscription to Writer’s News & Writing Magazine, and I called myself a writer, but that was it.  I still only had an intended audience of one.  Me.

I can’t remember what prompted me to put an excerpt up on a writers’ website for some feedback.  Probably chivvied into it by my husband.  Even he hadn’t read anything I’d written up to this point, but I guess he saw some potential underneath all the self-doubt.  That was the first time I’d ever given house-room to the idea that actually, there might be people out there who would want to find out what happens next as much as I did.

Revelation.  It was a whole new world.  People said nice things about my writing; some of them even said they’d enjoyed it.  Whoa.  Headrush, even bigger than the one I got the first time I said, out loud, to another person, “I’m writing a book.”

This was just the confidence-boost I’d needed.  I joined another site, got more feedback, finished “Songs” and with some trepidation, submitted it to literary agents.  I was fully prepared for rejection, but I knew it wouldn’t stop me writing the rest of the books in the series.  Nothing could, short of ceasing to breathe, because I had to find out what happened next.

All the stories are in my head, you see.  Layers and layers of them, too big and too dense to see the whole thing at once.  Each time I write a scene, it’s like it makes a space through which I can see the next one.  So I write that, and there’s the next one, on and on like a conjurer’s gaudy handkerchiefs.  I have a pretty good idea where it will end, but it’s the getting there, the discovery, that’s the exciting part.

That’s why I don’t plan.  Scratch that, won’t plan.  Can’t.  I’ve tried, and it hammers almost all the creative magic out of the process for me.  If I try to nail the story down beyond a vague outline what I write feels, to me, flat.  Forced.  In some unquantifiable but deeply important way, wrong.

You see, it’s not about  knowing what happens next.  I already do, subconsciously, somewhere under all those layers.  No, what’s important is the Finding Out.

…for I have sinned.

I’ve never read George RR Martin.

Don’t ask me why, because I really couldn’t say.  I adore the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.  I’ve just never found myself motivated to pick up one of his books.  Actually, tell a lie, I did pick up a copy of  “A Game of Thrones” in Waterstone’s once but put it down again before I got to the till.

Before the fantasy establishment mob besieges Cooper Towers with pitchforks and blazing torches, ready to burn the heretic,  let me just say that I am remedying this right this instant.  Since HBO has green-lighted a mini-series based on A Game of Thrones, starring the scrummy Sean Bean, no less, my interest has been piqued.

Piqued enough to go and buy the book.  Gawd knows when I’ll find time to read it, since I’m supposed to be writing one of my own here, but I’ll try.  Really I will.  Now put those pitchforks down before someone gets hurt.

Quite a lot, actually.  A lot of to-ing and fro-ing, trying to find one that looks right, sounds right, balances well on a book cover and isn’t too hard to pronounce (so you don’t end up with lots of confused readers in the bookstore who want to buy your book but don’t know how to say your name and are too embarrassed to go and talk to the girl on the Customer Service counter in case they get it wrong and look like a plonker).

In the opinion of my agent, it is not dissimilar to the naming of cats.  I’ve always maintained that cats should be named something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell down the street at midnight to get the wretched thing to come home, and my subconscious immediately presented me with an image of a group of agents wandering around Bloomsbury trying to round up their authors after one of Gollancz’s legendary parties.

I’d originally picked Elizabeth Cooper as my pen-name, because I felt my real one didn’t exactly trip off the tongue.  It doesn’t seem to have hurt Conn Iggulden much, but there you go.  Anyway, my publisher was keen to go for something that balanced better on a cover, and we batted round some ideas.  We even tried playing the gender-ambiguity card for all it was worth, since research suggests that boys tend not to buy books written by girls.  Strange but true.

In the end, we decided that the rule book had been comprehensively trashed by the likes of Stephenie Meyer and Charlaine Harris, and that for fantasy authors female is the new black and Elspeth Cooper it would be.  Plus the foreign publishers loved it.  The name with which I have existed in a state of armed truce for some forty years, which I am reduced to spelling out over the telephone as echo-lima-sierra-papa-echo-tango-hotel only to have the person at the other end go “Um…”

But really, I don’t care, because in 2011 the name in gold-embossed lettering on that gorgeous cover over the thick hardback book will be *mine*.

On Thursday I had a further phone call from that nice literary agent to see if I’d received the client agreement in the post. I know it doesn’t mean anything yet, in the grand scheme of things, but this is indeed A Step in the Right Direction.  On the way home from work I bought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate–I’d expected a real struggle to score an agent simply because so many have an entry in Writers & Artists that says “No fantasy, thanks”–and allowed it to go to my head for a little while.

Then I had to knuckle down to the serious business of getting together a synopsis for Trinity.  First draft down, just a little tweaking to do; it’s a tad longer than I’d like.

The omens are that I’ve left myself a bit of a mountain to climb in order to wrap everything up in Book 3.  Forcing myself to focus on the plotting of Trinity and what I could and could not do with the characters and timescales has thrown into sharp relief just how ambitious I’ve been here, without me even realising it.  The curse of the pantser.

Pruning will have to occur, no doubt about it, but how much?  And where?  Do I go all bonsai on its donkey and force it to fit, or do I follow my organic instincts and let the tree be free, man?  I’m not sure yet.  My brain is still full of Bollinger.  Ask me again in the morning, when my brain will no doubt be full of Nurofen.