Last summer I attended Mythcon 42 in Dallas, where Tim Powers was the Guest of Honor. I’d been getting to know Tim in fits and starts over the last couple of years because he is a wonderful conversationalist.
He is, of course, also an award-winning author who writes what he calls “secret histories.” That his works get categorized as “fantasy” should give you an idea of the sorts of things that might be “secret” in his books. His novel On Stranger Tides was optioned to provide the basis for Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (due for release in May 2011).
While at Mythcon, I impulsively gave Tim a copy of The Scribbler’s Guide to the Land of Myth. I had copies with me for sale, after all. I gave him the copy in the afternoon after one panel. Later in the day, after dinner, I stopped at his table to chat and he promptly said, “About your book!” I was surprised that he had had time to even glance at it. He’d read just a little, but been completely caught by that what he’d read. He promised to give me a praise blurb.
I didn’t go chasing him for it, but when our paths crossed again at Loscon this Thanksgiving, he was happy to write up the promised paragraph for me.
And here is what he wrote for me —
The Scribbler’s Guide is an indispensable reference book — both to look up mythological figures in and to browse for original ideas. I wish I’d had it thirty years ago!
—- Tim Powers
A good craftsman in any art loves and takes care of his tools. What maintainence is needed for the writer, then? How do we take care of our tools?
The medieval philospher Boethius wrote a book titled The Consolation of Philosophy. Its title is pretty up-front about the book’s intention. Boethius wrote it while in prison facing a death sentence. But if you think (judging by the title) that it is an entirely dry treatise, you would be wrong. Boethius had a sense of humor. He opens the book describing himself languishing inprison, in the company of the muses of poetry, nubile young women who are cuddling and cooing over him, exclaiming how awful it is that he’s in prison and how undeserved this fate is. He’s still facing death, of course, but the company is soft. Then, instrides the bright, beautiful and stern Sophia (that is, Philosophy herself). She heaps scorn on the muses of poetry, driving them out, calling them “strumpets.” She coolly looks Boethius over, tells him he’s a mess, that he’s forgotten his first love – herself – and that he needs to go back to the basics. And then she launches into a lecture about grammar, in Ciceronian prose (which has to be, pretty much, the most precise use of Latin grammar to be found).
And I cringe when I encounter words used badly, words misapplied to the task at hand. Recently, I encountered such a misapplication in the work of an aspiring writer. The author had a passage of a group of people discussing a possible route they were to take, and in the midst of the discussion, he had one chaacter indicate a particular path, then “he alleged.” Ouch. In point of fact, the character had not “alleged” anything, he had merely made a statement of fact. On top of which, nothing in the discussion involved any implication of intent to speak untruthfully on any character’s part. I suspected that the author had simply consulted a thesaurus for alternatives to “said” and selected one without double checking its meaning.