Kathleen McDonnell's Blog - Posts Tagged "notherland"
The Notherland Journeys books are what I call "girl-hero" stories, ones in which females get to do the kind of heroic stuff that male characters in fiction usually do. It turns out that 2012 is the 50th anniversary of a girl-hero story that's arguably the grandmama of them all: Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
A Wrinkle in Time was a major inspiration for the Notherland trilogy, especially for Book III, The Songweavers, which is also about a girl-hero travelling across many universes.
Pamela Paul, writing in the NYTimes, says that L'Engle was the first sci-fi writer with girl-appeal. To my mind, though,books like Wrinkle are more rightfully called speculative fiction. There's some "sci" in it, yes, but it's not futuristic and there's all kinds of wonderful speculation about what existence actually consists of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/boo...
A Wrinkle in Time was a major inspiration for the Notherland trilogy, especially for Book III, The Songweavers, which is also about a girl-hero travelling across many universes.
Pamela Paul, writing in the NYTimes, says that L'Engle was the first sci-fi writer with girl-appeal. To my mind, though,books like Wrinkle are more rightfully called speculative fiction. There's some "sci" in it, yes, but it's not futuristic and there's all kinds of wonderful speculation about what existence actually consists of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/boo...
Every mythical world has its own Origin Story. The seed of The Notherland Journeys was planted some years ago, when I came across a book about “paracosms” or imaginary worlds created by children. I knew right away that I wanted to write a story around this idea, and that it would involve a young person who returns to an imaginary childhood world to save it from extinction. Children instinctively know that it's possible to see a "universe in a grain of sand," in the words of William Blake, who makes a prominent appearance in the second book of the trilogy, The Shining World.
After that initial bolt of inspiration, the story took its own sweet time taking shape. I did lots of daydreaming as a kid – who doesn’t? But I had never conjured up an entire world inside my own head, and the tough part was having to create one with my adult mind. I threw out an entire early draft – over a hundred pages – when I realized that my imaginary universe looked too much like all the other neo-Arthurian, Lord of the Rings-style fantasy worlds out there. (In defense of my pathetically uncommercial instincts, it was the mid-nineties, before the LOTR movies spawned an entire industry.) But once I stumbled upon the notion that this world would be inspired by the far north, the ideas began to flow – the landscape, the characters (a talking loon among them), and the central image of the RoryBory or Northern Lights, populated by singing spirits known as Nordlings.
After that initial bolt of inspiration, the story took its own sweet time taking shape. I did lots of daydreaming as a kid – who doesn’t? But I had never conjured up an entire world inside my own head, and the tough part was having to create one with my adult mind. I threw out an entire early draft – over a hundred pages – when I realized that my imaginary universe looked too much like all the other neo-Arthurian, Lord of the Rings-style fantasy worlds out there. (In defense of my pathetically uncommercial instincts, it was the mid-nineties, before the LOTR movies spawned an entire industry.) But once I stumbled upon the notion that this world would be inspired by the far north, the ideas began to flow – the landscape, the characters (a talking loon among them), and the central image of the RoryBory or Northern Lights, populated by singing spirits known as Nordlings.
Early on I decided that Notherland needed an animal character. It just seemed to make sense for an imaginary world inspired by the far north. I mulled over a number of animals in my mind (at one point I even considered a skunk - don't ask). A polar bear might have been an obvious candidate, but it never occurred to me, and when I read Philip Pullman's wonderful The Golden Compass a few years later and encountered the armored bear Iorek, I was just as glad.
I can't recall exactly how I came to settle upon a loon, but once I did a lot of other elements of Notherland clicked into place. I seem to have a thing about birds. Waterfowl, in particular, turn up in my writing again and again. I had learned a lot about loons when I wrote my play "Loon Boy", and one of my other plays is a retelling of the Grimm Brothers' "The Seven Ravens".
Right now I'm working on yet another play with birds - in the case, swans - that will be based on my latest book Emily Included.
But I've strayed from the subject I started out talking about - Gavi the philosophically-inclined loon. Among the inspirations for his character were the many animal and "mechanical-man" figures in the Oz series, as well as Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android who's always trying to figure out just what it is to be human.
I can't recall exactly how I came to settle upon a loon, but once I did a lot of other elements of Notherland clicked into place. I seem to have a thing about birds. Waterfowl, in particular, turn up in my writing again and again. I had learned a lot about loons when I wrote my play "Loon Boy", and one of my other plays is a retelling of the Grimm Brothers' "The Seven Ravens".
Right now I'm working on yet another play with birds - in the case, swans - that will be based on my latest book Emily Included.
But I've strayed from the subject I started out talking about - Gavi the philosophically-inclined loon. Among the inspirations for his character were the many animal and "mechanical-man" figures in the Oz series, as well as Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android who's always trying to figure out just what it is to be human.
