Wow. Um... I don't have a speech prepared, or anything. Um...
Thank you, Faeelin; I appreciate the honor. As Lord Durham and others have said, I have been here before, but I assure you I felt same explosion of surprise, delight and puzzlement then as I do now. Surprise because so many other people write more for popular support than I do - not a criticism; more on that in a moment. Delight - well, wouldn't you be delighted? And puzzled because I never think I'm writing very well at all.
I'm a veteran, now. I've been here since, what, 2002 I think. A lot - a lot - of the people I admired have gone quietly away. Heck, what may be the largest single trove of fine alternative history on the net - the EU2 library - is now a lost warren of dusty stacks, save for Catknight and a few other brave souls who still venture there. Everything we write here is destined for the same fate, even the excellent collection of HoI2 and the growing field of EU3, and that makes me very sad. So why keep writing?
When I began, I wrote so that people would notice me. My first two AARs were pretty much based on using radical ideas to shock people into paying attention. I enjoyed it, and they are not bad works. Somewhere in there I decided I could write professionally, and I think there are glimpses and flashes of quality in all my works. (How pompous that sounds. But I've probably written the equivalent of three novels by now). 'Dragons' nearly drove me out of writing forever, and from that I learned the necessity of keeping tight control.
I have made one serious attempt at writing an actual novel, which I abandoned early on as a dismal flop. Mostly, it suffered from the thing that makes an AAR possible: episodic segments, each a page or two in length. I'll have to unlearn those habits and learn how to write extended passages of chapter length before I will be able to successfully tackle a novel.
And I want to write. That's my secret. I've enjoyed working here and I appreciate Paradox's indulgence, but I do want more. Unfortunately, what I want isn't in our local bookstores any more. Classic science fiction is dead, reduced to a few shelves of Star Trek and Star Wars novelizations. Fantasy isn't in much better shape - go count the number of Tolkien ripoffs and vampire look-alikes and subtract them from the total. See?
There's nothing wrong with writing for popularity - without it, none of us would write, me especially included. But I want to write deeply enough to please the people who think deeply, as well. I want the freedom to develop a story without putting a hook for applause at the end of every line. It's the eternal difference between popular music and 'classical'. Popular music is hard to write - short, snappy, with a hook. But classical is harder to listen to because it gives the composer time and a broader set of tone colors. Few people these days can concentrate long enough to appreciate a piece longer than 3 minutes, but that's the sort of story want to write. Think of the difference between a sit-com and serious theater. Sit-coms are certainly hard to write well, but every line doesn't have to be built to a laugh track, surely? I've done that - read 'Napoleon', he said immodestly - and now I write to a larger plan.
In any event I am no longer as popular as I once was - writing in Victoria may have something to do with that; poor much-maligned game,
she is not for the masses
- but it is more likely that I no longer write in a way that is accessible to casual readers. And let me confess, 'Providence' is not perhaps my best work, though I think it is the most disciplined in terms of character development and pruning of plot sidelines. In any event I am committed to going forward, so long as the readers sustain me with their comments...
Thank you all for reading. Bless you for commenting, which I think is less common in the forum as a whole these days. If you don't spread your comments around, folks, all you'll have left is a handful of popular stories, and that'll be the true death of this place. All of the 'great writers' you love on this forum were once unknowns, and they were encouraged to start and continue by
comments. The best fade away and the new ones never take root without
recognition, and a comments are the currency of recognition.
Go read. Go write. Go
tell someone what you thought. That's your civic obligation.
And thank you for recognizing me. A bad week just became better.