The Dark is Rising
On writers who inspire me
Happy new year, everyone! I find this time of year is a good time for reflection. My out of office is still on until the 6th, and life is slow. There’s sun today, and the dark ISN’T rising now. It’s gradually leaving us behind.
Very late to the arthurian pagan party
I’ve been spending some of the holidays reading Susan Cooper for the first time. If you’re interested in my stream of consciousness responses to it, I’ve been sharing them on bluesky:
My thoughts on Greenwitch, with thoughts on the Dark Is rising and Over Sea and Under Stone as threads nested inside this one. (I’m currently reading The Grey King.)
I can’t speak to how I would have reacted to Cooper as a child, but as an adult, I found her books inspiring - a reminder that children’s books can be anything, and they definitely do NOT have to be safe and nice. They can be about moral greyness of the murkiest kind, and wild powers that have nothing to do with good or evil at all. Also: paganism.
I’m writing something (top secret) that is nothing like The Dark is Rising at the moment, but TDIR still unlocked something in my mind about one of the characters that has sent me down a new path. The echoes and conversations between books provide an alchemy I can never analyse fully, but I find it fertile. Sometimes I think we look for influences in such a narrow sense - almost treating a writer’s influences like comp titles in publishing. When sometimes an influence is more like a pinball being struck at an angle and flipped in a completely unexpected direction.
Behind the scenes of the Fifth Season
Seeing what’s possible is always something that inspires me. But, equally, seeing inside the process of someone who I consider to be masterful…and learning they have some of the same inner struggles. If you’re an SFF fan, I highly recommend this interview with NK Jemisin (and if you haven’t read the Fifth Season books yet, go and do so):
Writing excuses episode with NK Jemisin
I cannot tell you how reassuring this podcast was to listen to. Knowing that one of the most mind-blowing writers working now still has that moment in a book where you think it’s the worst garbage ever written….and that she forgets her character names…thanks for sharing, And now I am DEFINITELY going back to read Fifth Season again to spot all the clues, because I only guessed what was going on quite far in…good to know that the very subtle hints were originally rocks thrown at the reader. Because they’re just the most delicate scattering of tiny sand in the final version.
As someone who finds revising hard, holding onto that knowledge helps me – knowing that the process DOES improve the book, even if it hurts. Her instinct against writerly coyness really spoke to me - I just want to tell the reader stuff because it’s cool stuff! And I have to find ways to NOT tell them everything…but I still want to tell because I’m excited about the story. But that’s what redrafting is for and just because a book may start off its life beating readers over the head, it can yet become subtle.
Off to throw some rocks at readers that I will later refine to showering sand…
Louie x
Forever grateful to Miss McDonald my primary school teacher who read us TDIR and also Weirdstone of Brisingamen, gave me a love of books forever ❤️
I’m so glad you’re enjoying TDIR. The Grey King really leans into the moral ambiguity and not being afraid to upset young readers. I loved it and dreamed my whole life of living in the misty Welsh mountains. TDIR series is a huge influence in my work - I seem to be getting darker and deeper with every book! - and as you say, reading unlocks things in your own stories. I had a major experience of that for The Grimmelings while reading The Owl Service - it showed me a whole character that was hiding just out of sight and expanded the story and the emotional depth. Susan Cooper said something to me similar to your “The echoes and conversations between books provide an alchemy I can never analyse fully, but I find it fertile.” She said “everybody’s book is a long exploratory corridor, full of unconscious echoes…” She also writes in her book Dreams & Wishes about how she drew on aspects of the King Arthur stories and the Welsh Mabinogion, but that she didn’t consciously put aspects of them into the story, she just took what she needed when she needed it: “I didn’t go to the legend. The legend is there at the back of the imagination, in that room where the imagination goes to draw on something. The part of you that’s writing the story at a certain point reaches out and says, I want that bit.” Isn’t that lovely? I love the idea of all the things we’ve read or experienced just sitting there in a room, waiting for our imagination to go and retrieve them at just the right moment.
I also the idea of your new book and my book being exploratory corridors with the echoes of Cooper, who echoes those who went before her. It makes me feel like as children’s writers today we are part of something that stretches back over time.
Oh dear. I seem to have written an essay in your comments. This is stuff I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I’ve never felt ready to write down what those books mean to me. Maybe it’s time! (Though it would take me away from the book I currently need to write 1k words a day to finish - hmmmm) I do like how the pace of things slows down at this time of year, to let the thinking time in. It’s getting light at 5.30am here and not dark until 9pm so it’s a different kind of thinking than might appear in the winter - I’ve been getting up super early to avoid the chaos of my household and it’s not a time I’m accustomed to. X