the ultimate adventure

[adelaidesean]

When not making LOLzillas for the infamous Rob Hood, I do try to get some work done. Below is the text of a speech I gave last week, immediately before handing a bunch of Premier's Reading Challenge awards to over a hundred primary students at my old school.

The idea was to encourage the kids to remain excited about reading--a very worthy goal indeed. I don't know if I achieved it, or if there's much in this speech for regular readers of this journal, but here 'tis anyway...with apologies for the lack of formatting and the occasional typo that might have slipped through...

I reckon I have the best job in the world.

I get to sleep in all day, if I want to. I don't have a boss telling me what I can and can't do. I can sit around in tracky-dacks or pyjamas as long as I feel like it, and never shave again.

Best of all, I'm doing something I love. Writing. Telling stories. Entertaining people. Life couldn't be sweeter.

I guess I've always been a bit of a story-teller. In a box somewhere I still have my old grade 5 creative writing exercise book. That book contains my earliest stories, complete with pictures. The stories are pretty bad, but the pictures are a lot worse. Looking them, it's easy to see why I didn't become an artist.

The stories are full of ghosts and spaceships and aliens and things blowing up. I don't know what my teachers thought of them. Well, I know what one of them thought, because in grade five she read one of my stories to the whole class, something I was both embarrassed and excited about. That was my very first audience.

This small encouragement led me to write stories for my fellow students in high school, right here in Pulteney. I wrote a story once that featured these buildings and all my teachers--sort of like Lord of the Rings but funnier--and my friends loved it. Not sure about the teachers, though. Their depictions weren't terribly flattering.

Why spaceships and ghosts and all that stuff? Well, it reflected what I was reading.

This year I celebrated my 40th birthday, which means I was 10 in 1977. A movie came out that year, one a few of you might have heard of, that changed my life. Star Wars: A New Hope was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen on the big screen. It was perfect for a 10 year-old, and could have been written especially for me. I saw it dozens of times, read the books, and dreamed of writing my own Star Wars novels.

Of course, that particular dream came true many years later, when I was asked to write for the New Jedi Order series. Having written lines now for Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia, I can tell you that it still feels a bit like a dream.

And it keeps on coming. There's a computer game being launched next year called The Force Unleashed. I've written the book based on it, and I had more fun with that than just about anything else. If you like things that blow up as much as I did (and do) at your age, you're going to love this game. And there's even some romance in it, for the girls.

But that wasn't all I enjoyed as a kid, so it's not all I work on now.

If you take how I feel about Star Wars and multiply it by about a million, you get my feelings for Doctor Who. You've all heard of Doctor Who, right? I loved Doctor Who long before Star Wars came along. I read the books, and still have them in my collection. It's a complete obsession.

So when I had the chance to write something in that universe, I knew I had to go for it. I could pick any Doctor from the first eight, and I chose my favourite, the third, the one with the frizzy white hair and the old-fashioned, yellow car. He may not be as cool or as sexy as the latest couple, but I've always like him the best.

So, Doctor Who and Star Wars. Two of my great loves from 30 years ago, part of my job now. No wonder I love it so much!

But they weren't my only favourites. I didn't just like books based on TV and the ovies--although a couple of my favourite books have been made into movies since then. On the whole not terribly well, I should say. You might know one called The Dark Is Rising. I've read the book twenty times if I've read it once,and it's infinitely better than the film. If you saw the movie and thought it was okay, do yourself a favour and pick this one up. It'll blow your mind.

Another was The Wizard of Earthsea. I read this novel every year. Studio Ghibli--the animators who made "Spirited Away" and other wonderful stories--made a movie out of this series, and it kinda comes close.

But nothing on the big screen matches a book for depth and spectacle, and that's because Hollywood and even Japan is limited by money and actors and directors and special effects.

When you're reading a book, there are no limits, except for what's on the page.

Your imagination can do anything. It can create whole new worlds filled with thousands of incredible things. It can tell stories that reach right down into the depths of a person's heart, and capture lives making and breaking in a moment.

There's no way a movie can capture such things--not fully, not so spectacularly.

When you close your eyes, the only thing setting the scene is your imagination. When you open a book, you are letting an author set the scene for you. The rest is up to you.

I'm very excited to be a writer. I'm honoured that readers let me and my stories into their lives. I wish I could peek into their heads and see what their versions of my worlds look like. As well as Star Wars and Doctor Who, I've written numerous books, some of my stories are set a million years from now, some set right next door, among people just like you and me.

Reading books can take you to amazing places. I dreamed of being a writer, and here I stand, being one, just because I read a lot when I was a kid.

I'm glad that all you bright kids are here today, encouraged to read and loving what you're reading. If you also dream of being a writer, I'm an example of what might happen, if you pursue your dream hard enough. If you don't want to be a writer, then I advise you to follow whatever dream you do have wherever it will take you.

Books teach you about life, but life is the ultimate adventure.

Enjoy it, and write your own story as you go.

Comments

[satimaflavell.livejournal.com]

Nice one, Sean:-)

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It was interesting seeing the demographic spread of readers in primary school. Few in grade one, increasing numbers up to grade five and six, then a sharp drop-off once the kids reach grade seven. Strange, and a bit sad, to think that kids might stop reading just when the books they can access become more interesting.

Or maybe it's just that doing the Reading Challenge is no longer cool at that age...?

[satimaflavell.livejournal.com]

I hope that's all it is. According to the news yesterday,we, as a nation, are slipping on the numeracy and literacy scales:-(

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read that too. :-( We here at the Big Book Club are working on the former, at least...

http://www.thelittlebigbookclub.com.au/region.php

[satimaflavell.livejournal.com]

Thanks Sean. I didn't know about the Big Book Club - or the Little Big one either:-)

[millisynth.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

Well done, Sean. Gold star for you. :)

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. Thank you, Ms Clayton. :-)

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Excellent piece, Sean. Change a couple of details (e.g. the really big influence on me when I was 10 was Apollo 11), and it's my story too... though in my case, "I'm an example of what might happen" would probably be taken as a dire warning rather than encouragement!

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Stephen. Can you imagine what you might be doing now but for Apollo 11? I'd probably be writing music of doing something maths-related, but it's really hard to picture it...

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I really don't know: I was writing fiction and reading widely before Apollo 11, and had had some exposure to sf (mostly on TV and 50s movies), but I probably wouldn't have become an sf writer or fan. I might have continued writing horror fiction, but I probably wouldn't have become a full-time writer that way. I probably would have devoted even less energy to the physical sciences and maths when in high school. I might have become a lawyer or an English/drama/lit teacher, and been okay - but somehow, I don't think the person I am now would envy or particularly the person I would have become without that inspiration. The idea of an exciting future, conveyed by that moment (and, I admit, Star Trek), helped me through some pretty bad times.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

The thought of you as a corporate lawyer is causing me some amusement. I presume your aspirations would've been considerably more society-friendly than that! :-)

Life would be pretty grim if we didn't think the future was going to be worth getting to. It's grim for a lot of people. Maybe they need more SF in their diet.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I did contemplate studying law, while in the last years of my high school career, but decided against it. I wasn't sure I could cope with the uncertainties of criminal law, and was (and am) completely uninterested in corporate law.

Had I made a more accurate guess at what the future would be like, I might have gone into environmental law or some other science/law double, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

I'll admit that much sf is and was even more pessimistic about the future than I am, but at least it suggested that it would be different, interesting and possibly exciting. Growing up where I did, this was a consumnation devoutly to be wished.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

As Joseph campbell said: "Follow your bliss" It looks like you really did.

I'm soooo glad you're a Dark is rising and Wizard of Earthsea fan. I knew you had class (not that I doubted it) Those books made a huge impression on me too. Earthsea was a set text in Year 9, and all the class hated it, except me. I pleaded with the teacher to keep my copy until the end of the school year, and she let me. I found a copy in a bookstore that summer, and I have it still. Imagine my delight a few years later when I found there were two sequels.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! My other fave book from that time was/is The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I would love/hate to see that adapted to the big screen. The scene in the old mine still makes me shudder with delight!

[gloripebbles.livejournal.com]

You deserve a gold star.

You're not far off re the cool factor of doing the challenge. My very voracious young reader didn't participate (he also had issues with the parameters set but that's another issue entirely).

You have an effect on people you meet. Who knows maybe you spoke to the 'next Sean Williams'!

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

:-)

And :-( for the lack of cool factor. I wonder if it was called the Teenage Mutant Giant Robot Word Championship or something it might have more of an appear, at least to boys!

[gloripebbles.livejournal.com]

Example - my Bionicle Nut Son aka BNS (he rivals that other Dr Who freak I live with) thinks the fact a Bionicle he thinks is way cool (released in US this week) has just became Waaaaaaaaaay Cool as it is described as a Mad Scientist..... I think you'd be onto something!

As long as - world domination, anti-adult, unintelligble title meaning is included you'd be on a winner. Oh & keep anything like 'politician' out ;)

Did yours have an open choice of matter? I've known some that have defined author &/or title lists etc - really takes the edge off it.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what restrictions they had to work under, but I suspect there would have been some guidelines. Really should know, if I'm giving them awards for it. Will hastily backfill some research... :-)