The Annes and C J Cherryh (by sarah)
This post is about inspiration and following dreams and what I consider good fiction writing. However before I begin let me just say that I don't believe gender has anything to do with someone being a good writer - but this post is about females and their perceived place in literature.
Now I have always loved stories, loved hearing them, creating them and taking part in them. My dad used to read or make up stories for me pretty much every night until he had to work nights stacking shelves in Tescos, then the stories were restricted to holidays or sometime he would read out bits from what ever novel he was reading at the time.
One of my early favourites was Anne McCaffrey and her Dragons of Pern, though I actually started with the Doona books. What child head full of Thunder Cats could not like these stories?
I struggled with reading as many of you know but the burning wish to read these stories for myself grew until I was painstakingly stringing the sentences together myself.
Then I read Anne McCaffrey - everything the library had (though after I had read all of their point horror collection I will confess). You see I went from a can't read to an avid reader - I used to walk home from school reading a book and I walked home to do this as the bus was too noisy and crowded to read.
From the First Point Horror book that I managed to read at 12 years old - I was consuming the bigger of Anne McCaffrey's books in 2-3 days by the time I was 14.
This was also the point at which me and my friends became obsessed with horror movies and of course being teenage girls we fixated on VAMPIRES!
Which we avidly watched at our sleep overs - films like Lost Boys, and My Best Friends a Vampire and the new movie Interview With A Vampire - oh we were obsessed. Which was better Louis or Lestate? But for either you would need to kill them or become like them and surely they were dating each other? And so on (remember we were teenage girls).
This was another Anne having an affect on me - this time Anne Rice.
I mention this as it ment I suddenly started trying to write about vampires but due to the influence of Anne McCaffrey's books I felt I wanted to have my vampires explained with soft science fiction - essentially I had the idea of not just writing Scifi or even scifi fantasy but of melding the genres having a scifi fantasy horror cross breed and of course it all had to be mixed up with legends and myths ranging from norse to ancient greece and aztec. I had not yet touched on India or China or Japan and their myths.
At around this time I discovered another Anne - Anne Auel and her Clan of The Cave Bear series. Now it turned out my Mum was a fan of her books and I was only just allowed to read them!
The strength of the main character in at least the first two books (I start to have issues half way through Mammoth Hunters with how she treats men) led me even more onto the idea of including pre-history and the mysteries of our origin as a species.
It was then that my friends aunt having heard us go on and on about Interview with a Vampire bought my friend Taltos - a story by Anne Rice. We were like wow there are books by the vampire lady? And that was the next thing - starting with The Witching Hour.
These were along with Stephen King, Stephen Lawhead , Dean Koontz and Clive Barker were my big inspirations. Now imagine my shock to be told that a) these books and authors don't count as great works of literature and b) that girls don't write scifi or even read it?
During my A'levels I took a creative writing short course to help me as I was trying to write and side tracking myself with new stories and the like. The result was I got several poems published, ended up as part of a team doing a magazine which I lost heart with as the two main people had very different ideas of where it was going. And told by the Lady running it that my scifi vampire story had the makings of a best seller.
I doubt if this was true but I needed that boost - especially after being told by peers I couldn't have my female assassins and vampire warriors without it being all about the boobies. I didn't understand this as concept as I had been reading books with strong female characters doing all sorts, half of which were written by women. And of course though I wanted to punch her half the time there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer around as well.
I found the vampire story I was working on back then - the first three chapters printed on old yellowing tractor paper (yep I was retro as we had like fifth hand computing equipment). It was called The Forever Criminals and reads unsurprisingly like a point horror story as does The Crystal Singer (nothing to do with Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer - mine involved jade skulls and a female mulan-esk warrior) and The Warrior Monks (a story of post apocalyptic epic adventure). I can see I was aiming for the epic even then.
And the thought that I was supposed to write ROMANCE sickened me - it was something I found anathemous. I didn't like reading romance so why should I write it?
But I have found this repeatedly with people and I think I was also lucky to go to Imperial College were there was a whole Scifi Library. I had by this point also discovered Terry Pratchett who's female characters again were not the weak and willing and nor where they there just for the boobies.
However as I found more and more great scifi authors moving away from my beloved horror I started to feel the doom. I had proof that women could write horror and fantasy and scifi fantasy but what of scifi?
And then Alaric stepped in with CJ Cherryh and I knew I was right and that it shouldn't even be questioned that women like scifi or that they should even think of perhaps writing some of their own!
Anyway I what I have found is that two of these authors have continued to be an inspiration in me in my writing and creativity. This is CJ Cherryh who is on twitter and has partaken in some of the # scifichats I attend and the other is Anne Rice who has her Face Book page and actively encourages interaction and discussions - part of the reason this has been so valuable to me is that these two people who's work I love - I get to see they are people like me - they have cats and rooms stuffed with books etc... They are people who have struggled and suffered and not some mysterious force that churns out books.
Now it is important for me to see this sort of connection with people who have succeeded in an area I want to succeed in. Especially as I am still coming across people who are horrified that I wrote that horror story when they would have been fine with it if Alaric had written it. But I am no Mary Shelley - I do not need to hide behind a surname - women have the vote and have proven time and again that they can achieve if given a chance.
Our society has changed but there is still alot of prejudice out there - this is a minor thing to most people but even in rescent publications I have seen it suggested that you submit your scifi under a male pseudonym which is horrendous!
Wed 2nd May 2012 9:35 pm 
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