Exclusive Essay on Amazon.com

[regis]

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/- ... 30-5892916

One of the promotional essay his publishers made SRD write:

I'm often asked why I waited so long--20 years--to begin work on the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. After all, the previous Covenant books were successful beyond my wildest expectations. My publishers were certainly eager for more. Apparently my readers were as well. So why the long delay?

Personally, I blame the Second Chronicles.

In some circles, it has become common knowledge that I conceived of both the Second Chronicles and the Last Chronicles in the same flash of inspiration. A year or so after I finished work on The Power That Preserves, I had one of those "tail of the comet" experiences (Patricia McKillip's words) that set my imagination on fire. And while it burned, I saw in some detail the enormous developments which would take the essential substance of my original trilogy, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and extend it in two more sections or movements until it formed one vast, unified story: The complete tale of what I call "Covenant's struggles against Despite in the arena of the Land." While the tail of the comet held me, I visualized everything that would have to be done, everything that would have to happen, in order to carry those "struggles" through to their logical and ineluctable apotheosis.

Frankly, the experience scared me. The story I had just conceived was truly vast: Enormous in scale, huge in difficulty--and prodigiously complex. And, as I like to say, my mommy didn't raise any self-confident children. Any hints of assurance with which we may have been born were trained out of us at an early age. The only thing I was sure of when I contemplated my intentions was that they far surpassed my abilities.

On the other hand, I was--as my father would have said--"young and vigorous," and I had already surpassed myself once by writing the original Covenant books. So instead of allowing myself to be paralyzed by self-doubt, I plunged into the project. And some four and a half or five years later, I succeeded at completing the Second Chronicles: The Wounded Land, The One Tree, and White Gold Wielder.

I probably shouldn't say so in public (as it were), but that experience taught me humility on a whole new order of magnitude. I was already familiar with self-doubt; but writing the Second Chronicles taught me to understand real creative desperation. With near-perfect seriousness, I can say that "Covenant's struggles against Despite in the arena of the Land" paled beside my own struggles to surpass myself. And of course I already knew that the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant would be far more difficult to write than the Second.

In other words, the Second Chronicles taught me that I needed to become a <i>much</i> better writer before I tackled The Runes of the Earth and the rest of the Last Chronicles.

So that's what I've been doing for the past 20 years: Trying to become a better writer. Which I've done by pushing myself as hard as I can in as many different directions as possible: By writing gentle fantasy (Mordant's Need) and dark science fiction (the Gap sequence); by writing mystery novels (my four The Man Who …books); by writing enough short fiction to fill two volumes (Daughter of Regals and Other Tales and Reave the Just and Other Tales). Also by studying the martial arts and by raising my children, although such things may not seem obviously relevant.

Now the time has come. The Runes of the Earth is here, and we're all about to find out exactly how far I've been able to surpass myself.

--Stephen R. Donaldson, 2004

[aliantha]

Now THAT'S interesting! Whatever happened to "Lester made me do it"??

Maybe Lester Del Ray was the catalyst for the "tail of the comet" experience?

Hmmmmm...............

[Variol Farseer]

Now THAT'S interesting! Whatever happened to "Lester made me do it"??

Maybe Lester Del Ray was the catalyst for the "tail of the comet" experience?

Hmmmmm...............

Based on what SRD said at Elohimfest, I think you're exactly right about that.

If I recall correctly, he said that del Rey wanted a sequel, and kept throwing all these stupid ideas for pulpy potboilers at SRD. Finally, del Rey gave him an idea so hopelessly bad that he couldn't stand it anymore. His brain said, 'No, dammit! This is what a sequel to the Covenant books should look like!'

And thereby hangs a comet's tail.