The world lost a great writer this week with the untimely death of Terry Pratchett, though we’d slowly been losing him ever since the cruel diagnosis of his unusual form of early-onset Alzheimers. He leaves an exceptional body of work. There are very few writers whose books I buy to keep, and only a handful of those are writers whose every book has to go on the shelf, but I have nearly all Terry Pratchett’s right the way from Diggers, Truckers, and Johnny and the Bomb through all the Discworld novels to Raising Steam. His Discworld series is loved by readers everywhere, illuminating the essence of our own lives in the gentle guiding light of fiction to show how we might do things better. Many of his characters have become old and treasured friends –particularly Sam Vimes, the Patrician, Granny Weatherwax, and Tiffany Aching. Through them, Terry Pratchett holds up a mirror to let us see our own lives more clearly. A man of ferocious intelligence, he knew how things worked, from politics to family life to religion to human nature.
I met Sir Terry once at a book signing after one of his talks and found him to be a slightly daunting character. His comments in the talk had made it clear that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and anger was never far below the surface, though he signed books and fulfilled the tasks of publicity and promotion with grace. But that daunting persona was uppermost in our minds when our local theatre group staged a season of Mort, as permission to use the script came with many provisos and warnings. (Royalty payments all went to the Orangutan Rescue society, incidentally.) On Opening Night, a ripple of gasps ran round the theatre foyer as a tall, dark, grey-bearded figure strode in, topped by a flamboyant black hat. Is that HIM? Should we give him a free ticket? Do we tell the actors? No, they’ll go mental! What if he hates it? Will he stop the performance? Yes, Sir Terry’s reputation put the fear of God into us – but it turned out to be a local audience member taking advantage of a certain look-alike quality to get into the spirit of things.
As a writer, I find enormous encouragement from how bad some of his early books were! The Dark Side of the Sun is a confused mishmash of sci-fi fantasy that lacks the apparently effortless coherence of his later works, giving me hope that any writer can get better if they persevere and work at their craft. It tells me that it’s OK to suck at first as long as you get better, and that even the most brilliant writer learns and improves as they go along.
He has entertained and inspired countless people round the world, and worked hard to make it a better place. That’s a pretty good legacy.
I met Sir Terry once at a book signing after one of his talks and found him to be a slightly daunting character. His comments in the talk had made it clear that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and anger was never far below the surface, though he signed books and fulfilled the tasks of publicity and promotion with grace. But that daunting persona was uppermost in our minds when our local theatre group staged a season of Mort, as permission to use the script came with many provisos and warnings. (Royalty payments all went to the Orangutan Rescue society, incidentally.) On Opening Night, a ripple of gasps ran round the theatre foyer as a tall, dark, grey-bearded figure strode in, topped by a flamboyant black hat. Is that HIM? Should we give him a free ticket? Do we tell the actors? No, they’ll go mental! What if he hates it? Will he stop the performance? Yes, Sir Terry’s reputation put the fear of God into us – but it turned out to be a local audience member taking advantage of a certain look-alike quality to get into the spirit of things.
As a writer, I find enormous encouragement from how bad some of his early books were! The Dark Side of the Sun is a confused mishmash of sci-fi fantasy that lacks the apparently effortless coherence of his later works, giving me hope that any writer can get better if they persevere and work at their craft. It tells me that it’s OK to suck at first as long as you get better, and that even the most brilliant writer learns and improves as they go along.
He has entertained and inspired countless people round the world, and worked hard to make it a better place. That’s a pretty good legacy.
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