So I’ve been reading Furies of Calderon, the first book in The Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. The premise is a good hook–his world-setting is a place where humans routinely harness the power of the elements (called ‘furycraft’) for daily life. Who needs to build a siege engine when you can call up a cohort of soldiers to blast a city wall with their fire furies? You don’t need to ‘build’, period–earth furies will build it for their human partner. Watercrafting not only heals, it can slow the aging process, sense changes in the body as a person readies for action (or tries to hide something), on top of being able to harness and direct a flood. Aircrafting…you know where this is going!
It’s basically Avatar: The Last Airbender set in the ancient Roman Empire. Except, his main character (MC) is the ONE person in this society who has no elemental abilities.
Very. Cool.
I won’t lie. Another reason I’m digging the storyline so much is for the details. The supreme First Lord of the land is named Gaius Sextus; the legions are divided into cohorts; other Roman-influenced or outright borrowing from the Roman Empire are sure to crop up as I read. At first, I was hoping that I would learn how to write a world setting RIGHT, from a published author. Not just a world setting, MY world setting, for the book I was going to write.
And then…reality.
Scouring the internet for spoilers, I came across Butcher’s words, from a review at The SF Site on a later book in the series :
“Butcher had this to say about his fascination with the Romans, ‘There’s plenty of Lost Roman Legion stories out there. Mostly, the stores are about where they went, and what they did when they got there. This one just happens to be about the world they go lost on, and the society that developed there over the next couple of thousand years.'”
Well. That just left my Bright Idea in the dust. One of the truths of writing: It’s Not New.
Admiration says: This is awesome! Envy says: Dammit I didn’t think of it/do it first!
Better to get it out of me now than let it haunt me whenever I write. It’s no lie that plenty of other people write the Fantasy genre (along with other genres) into the ground. It’s all been done before. Even the Bible says so. My Writer Within can’t help scruffing the ground with his/her boot and feel a little sullen. Then again, it’s good to be open about it–at least for me. I hold in bad feelings for about as long as I can hold my breath…which isn’t long.
The only thing I can do is know what I’m trying to write, and feel confident that even faced with obstacles (work schedules, laziness, crippling self-doubt, bills, etc.), I will write the Story I Want To Read. Even when it’s written by other authors. Even when it’s written WELL by other writers.
Maxxim's Realities 