When I wrote the second draft of The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, I was also reading The Last Unicorn. Even though my story and Beagle’s had little in common, the music of his prose, the vitality of his world made an impact on me while I was writing. I wanted my book to capture some strain of the magic that I felt The Last Unicorn possessed. Even though I knew my own novel would never equal Beagle’s masterpiece, I wanted to try. In short, The Last Unicorn was inspiring. It energized my writing, and I found myself more joyful while I read it, and more joyful while I was writing my own story.
It’s no secret that I’ve had trouble finishing my second novel, Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess. I’ve had babies, become the mother of three children all under the age of five, struggled to navigate the demands of teaching, mothering, and adulting, and all the while, I’ve felt less joyful and more overwhelmed. My writing time has evaporated, and with it, a lot of my enthusiasm. I’ve still managed to push on, to write even when it feels like a slog through the Swamps of Sadness, but without that spark of joyfulness that I felt when drafting The Thirteen Treasures. So this second book is taking an eternity to finish.
Curiously, at this very moment, I’m reading another classic of fantasy literature (A Wizard of Earthsea), and I’m finding myself suddenly joyful and energized again, inspired to sit down and work on the draft of my own novel.
Just like what happened with The Last Unicorn.
Le Guin’s prose, the depth of her world and her themes, the way I become completely immersed and lost in her story, the way it feeds my imagination — all of these things remind me of what it’s like to be a fantasy writer, to dream up characters and places and fantastical creatures. And when I do sit down to write, I feel nourished by Le Guin’s story. Great writing makes us as writers see what’s possible, what can be achieved with words, and when I know there are storytellers out there who have reached greatness, then in some small way, I hope I can reach it too. I know I won’t; that’s not the point. It’s the striving for greatness that gives me energy, that helps me find joy in my writing.
I am, at times, haunted by Ray Bradbury’s maxim to “write with gusto.” So much of my writing over the last year and a half has not been filled with much gusto. But when I read a great book — fantasy or otherwise — I gain some measure of gusto, some “kick-joy” (as Kerouac? would say), and I begin to wonder why I don’t just read great books all the time. If these books work like a tonic on my brain, why wouldn’t I imbibed every day? Why am I spending time on things that don’t fill me up with this kind of excitement and awe?
I suppose it’s because we don’t know which books will contain the magic until we start them, and I’m the sort of reader who hates to abandon a book once I’ve started it. There are a few that I DNF, but they are very few. And I also feel obliged to read widely in my genre, most particularly the books being published right now; I can’t exactly restrict myself to the Great Classics of Fantasy if I’m trying to keep up with what’s being written currently. Of course, I’ve read some current fantasy that has indeed been the magical-kind-of-great that I’m describing in this post, but without the benefit of time and distance, it’s hard to know which of these books will be The Ones, and which won’t.
Maybe I need to constantly have a great book on hand, for those times when my verve seems a little limp. I can always read more than one book at a time; I’ve been that kind of reader since I was a kid. But now I realize that I DO need to keep pumping blood into my imagination via these great books. I need Ged — naming the otak, struggling against the shadow, overcoming his pride — and others of his kind to journey with me, keeping me on the path of adventure, like Gandalf and the dwarves leading Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain.
This is one I do with my students — and I do it myself. It’s just a great warm-up exercise, or a way to get ideas when a story or essay feels stuck. I did not invent this exercise (I think it might come from 
