Tag Archives: peter of windbourne

Coming out in Character

For Coming Out Day, 2009

Peter was “born” sometime in the second half of 1999, likely toward winter. I remember that first scene very vividly. I saw him wrapped in a brown cloak, his hands wrapped around a staff, a tuft of his sandy hair protruding from the hood. He was standing by enormous bronze gates, cast in the torchlight, keeping watch: yes, my first original protagonist of my first original (non-collaborative) novel, then titled, The Gatekeeper. He started out as the savior of the world and ended up its doombringer.

Yes, much about Peter has changed in ten years, and since then his world has become home to The Aldersgate and The Ward of the Rose (albeit a Great Collision and 400 years later). But as of last April, though I’d finished a (fourth… fifth?) draft of his book, Peter of Windbourne, I was not happy with it. Something was bubbling somewhere under the surface that I couldn’t root out, couldn’t figure out. And so, instead of flogging a dead horse of the manuscript, I abandoned his story for a while and moved forward in the timeline, beginning The Aldersgate.

I had honestly given up on Peter, thinking his story to be that dusty tome of a novel never meant to see the light of day. Except, as I started work on The Ward of the Rose, his story started once again to surface… in my dreams, in my writing. I realized there were questions I had left unanswered that directly related to the story of The Ward of the Rose and, to finish that book off, I had to revisit Peter again. Which meant another ground-up rewrite; which I’d done countless times already.

I won’t pretend that Peter’s story is particularly unusual. It’s heroic fantasy, though without Elves and Dwarves and “easy” magic. There are swords and prophecies, alliances and sworn enemies. It’s about family and friendship, belief and blasphemy, outside and inside. But, all that aside, the relationships in the book, the characters, are always what made the story move for me. And yet for all my writing and rewriting, there was a note off in the chord that took me years to decipher.

And then I realized part of the problem. Peter didn’t like girls at all.

I remember mulling about the house after I realized this. No, it wasn’t the first time a queer character made their way into my writing. But it was the first time that the sole-POV did. It made for some challenges but…

What struck me most clearly was how unimportant it seemed in relationship to everything else, and yet (paradoxically) how much of an impact it had on Peter as a character. As I rewrote again, the story arc didn’t change; Peter was still working in the same capacity as before. Except his motivations changed. His reasoning behind things changed. The intensity of his emotions had to change, the way he viewed other people. Once I had figured out his sexuality, a great deal more about him became more obvious to me, much of which I had abandoned in earlier drafts for a stock lead character.

The result is that the last draft of Peter of Windbourne has a very different leading man. Seeds of the same character exist, but Peter and I have a connection that even ten years of working through couldn’t account for. I finally have his entire motivation boiled down into one sentence: Peter wants love and knowledge. The shades of those two desires change throughout the course of the book, and at times, writing it has been far more emotionally draining than anything else to date. But it’s far better for it.

No, writing a gay character doesn’t give me any kind of real-world cred. It doesn’t mean I know what it’s like. But it gives me a window into a soul, however contrived, and I think it brings me closer to knowing, to imagining what it would be like. That’s the beauty of writing, isn’t it? Exploring what cannot be explored in this world. The story is more complete now that I have a full view of my character. Whether I wasn’t brave enough before to go with what was clearly there from the beginning, I don’t know. It’s a journey and, technically speaking, the longest writing journey I’ve ever been on (the island on which the story’s set technically appeared in ’92).

But I’m glad for it. It’s the story as it should be, as it was meant to be.

“Be patient, keep writing” and other things I tell myself.

Pacientia_or_PatienceLast night I finished chapter 20 of Peter of Windbourne, and am now approaching the part in the book in which a series of Very Bad Things happen. The draft is sitting at 101,122 words at this moment, with hopefully no more than five or six chapters remaining (generally my chapters hover between 4-5K). It’s a blind rewrite, as I’ve mentioned, so I’m giving myself some extra wiggle room. I know it’ll be edited down a bit next. I’ve got until November to get it done, because I’ve promised to do NaNoWriMo again this year.

This chapter has been particularly difficult, mostly due to the influx of freelance work that’s come in. When I was in business writing full-time, progress was slow like sorghum, and I’m definitely feeling a bit of that strain. Coupled with the fact that this week has been one endless succession of death and ill-health, ugh. Yeah. Hard to concentrate.

Which is all not to mention other exterior forces that are involved in my writing that I can’t control. I feel a bit stagnant at the moment, as far as The Writing Career is concerned, but there’s really nothing to be done for it. So instead, I’ve crafted a new mantra for myself: “Be patient, keep writing.” I started drafting an email to an expert in the field, and then realized, if I had sent it out, that’s what she would have told me to do. So I saved the virtual ink.  I also keep telling myself: “You’re only 28. You have time. You’ll only get better as a writer in that time. Shut up, and work on other stuff.”

That’s the cool thing about writing and remaining unpublished, something I believe lots of fledglings like me take for granted. I’m at the point where I can write whatever the hell I want, as much as I want, and whenever I want. I don’t have deadlines, I don’t have people telling me what’s selling and what’s not. I’m completely free. If I want to write about a bunch of female steampunk knights chasing around arcane arachnids and lightning worms, I can. And I will.

So, that finally happened…

If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll know I was on something of a writing binge this weekend. Every few months this happens. It’s like my own personal NaNoWriMo, where the book I’m writing takes on an absolutely powerful life of its own, and I’m kind of strung along. While it sounds kind of cool, and in some ways it is, it’s also quite exhausting. Usually, it means I can’t sleep, and every spare moment is at the MacBook, clacking away. Time slips, stars move, and I remain rooted to the keyboard.

At any rate, after clocking just about 13K in a day and a half or so, my mind feels a little like mush. Trying to sleep last night was darn near impossible, as even though I left the computer the part of writing that happens in my brain didn’t want to stop.

What was particularly interesting for me, however, was the progression of events within the book. I’m about 2/3 finished at this point. Actually, exactly 2/3 through (83K of a planned 120K). And these little bridge chapters are the backbone of the book, right before all the Really Big Shit happens. But, from a character perspective, for Peter–the main character–a whole lot just happened.

He finally had sex.

I don’t want to get weird about this, but sex scenes have been on my mind of late, not the least of which is because Peter is, well, gay. So. There’s that. My heroic fantasy lead is a gay male. I didn’t intend for it to happen like this. In the first three drafts of this story (I’ve been trying to write this story since I was 18… ) he always crushed on a girl. But it never ceased to feel odd. Forced, strange. It took me almost ten years to figure out that Peter didn’t like girls to begin with.

Part of me realizes that I totally pulled a Stephen King. i.e.–in The Stand, he makes sure Nick Andros doesn’t die a virgin, because I believe he thought that would be a fate worse than death. While I promise I’m not sending Peter off to his death, his sexual realization was actually intrinsic to the plot. There is so much more about sexuality than the actual sex, especially in his situation. And I thought a great deal about the scene before I wrote it, even if thinking doesn’t mean planning.

What surprised me is, writing as a woman, how powerful and emotional the scene was as I sat down to finally put it to paper. It didn’t need to be gratuitous, but it was very much about these two men seeking comfort and love, about learning to accept who they are, and definitely a bit of a rite of passage.

I talked to a few people about the scene before I wrote it. Some suggested simply writing “like a woman”–just taking the scene as I would. Others suggested not making it too graphic. I didn’t want it to feel disingenuine, you know? Or, ill-informed. Or whatever.

Ultimately, I let Peter lead me. I mean, he’s a character, a person, regardless of his sexual orientation. It’s emotion, it’s passion; these are all things I understand. The story is third-person limited, very much his story. And approaching this scene together… somehow that felt right. I let the character do the talking, in a way, and I realized how absolutely important the scene was for his own journey. I didn’t want gender and sexuality issues to define the book, but be part of his struggle to fit in, to come into his own. (I also didn’t want the scene to feel spliced in, which is the case in so many fantasy books.)

So, that finally happened. I feel like I can move on now. So much of what happens in the last third of this book is tied to The Aldersgate, and it’s giving me a bit of performance anxiety. Hopefully in the next week I can really get the gears moving. I can finally see the full draft taking shape (again) and it’s definitely… heartening.

The self-conscious fantasy epic.

AnneauUniqueThis morning I read a piece in the Guardian called When the Lord of the Rings doesn’t cut it: Confessions of a fantasy junkie, and found it rather amusing. In particular this bit (which makes us all sound a bit like Gollum, I think):

I understand the pain of the addict. At the turn of a page, weeks of total immersion in a fantasy world come to an end and mundane reality is waiting. Fantasy is epic because that is how we like it. But like any narcotic substance, fantasy operates on the law of diminishing returns. Once you’ve see a few dozen dragons, you’ve seen them all. The fantasy fan is on an eternal quest to recapture that first taste of magic. Eventually, the doorstoppers don’t cut it anymore. And then we are forced to go underground.

I’ve written on this topic a few times, and it certainly hit home for me. As someone weaned on Tolkien and Lewis, I know the feeling well. I remember trying to hide my undying love for Middle-Earth, and failing miserably when my book report gushing to the world was read aloud in class by my teacher. My school was small enough at the time that there weren’t any D&D groups to join, and the only person I know who also read fantasy read Terry Brooks. And I did not.

Anyway, it didn’t get easier or better for me as I got older. I’m now convinced that my time in both undergraduate and graduate school studying Middle English was only in an effort to study the roots of fantasy literature. It was cheating a little, because all that chivalric literature really isn’t any different than fantasy, save in language and occasional subject. (I should argue that plenty of medieval stuff is even more revolutionary than today’s contemporary fantasy–read Silence for a cross-dressing heroine, for example!) I found quite a few friends in graduate school, however, who loved fantasy, and that was certainly a help.

But my roundabout point is, in spite of coming to grips with liking to read fantasy epic, it’s taken even longer for me to accept writing it. Why? Because it’s a genre that breeds self-consciousness. It’s practically made of cliche and stereotype. Saying you write fantasy literature to some people is no different than admitting a penchant for furries, or a LARPer. I know, I’ve gotten the looks before. Eyebrows up, mouth agape–they struggle for things to say, but the fact is, even if the book was on the Bestseller list, they’d likely never read it. And if they did, it’d probably make them laugh hysterically.

Anyway, currently I am writing a fantasy epic. True fantasy. No steampunk, no time-travel, no squids. And I find that I’m incredibly self-conscious about it some days, and completely revel in it on other days. I have moments where I ask myself, “Is this too fantasy epic?” and others when I think I’m really on to something different. Truly, it must strike a balance to be good, and I’ve never had such a set of demons on my shoulder arguing it out over a book. I love the genre to bits, and I am indeed still reaching to capture that magic–but doing it with my own wand, as it were, is another spell all together.

I wrote a sequel to The Lord of the Rings when I was fourteen. It was about Merry and Pippin meeting up together in old age and making a trip across Middle Earth to Gondor, and their final days there with Aragorn. I wish I had a bit to share, because it is quite amusing. Regardless, I have always expressed my love in writing. I scarcely know how else to do it. I even re-wrote half of The Stand once…  And while I am a bit self-conscious about this particular endeavor (and… well, thankfully not plagiarising) it’s still done with joy. Part of me is very much that same fourteen year old with the ugly sweater and wire-rimmed glasses hunkering down at my Aptiva and composing everything in Footlight.

And thankfully, at long last, I don’t care who knows. I only hope I can do it well enough.

Writing with the darkness.

This week’s writing has been more difficult than others, and not because of the usual reasons (laziness, business, distractedness). While I’ve slowly made progress from 0k to 4K (about 2K from the chapter end) it’s been laborious, to say the least. Though I’m writing from a draft, I know what’s going to happen, so technically I shouldn’t be having issues.

Except I am. And it’s all because it’s so damned dark.

Fantasy tends to fall to either side of the extreme: light and hopeful, or dark and mournful. Or at least, it’s light peppered with enough dark that the contrast leaves you a bit heartbroken.

And I have to blame myself for this predicament, because with Peter of Windbourne I really wanted to take the last draft, completed some three years ago, to another level. I wanted to complicate the characters and relationships more, shake up the alliances, and use a broader brush to pull in the shadows. I wanted it to grow up. As a result, scenes that were once a little depressing, perhaps, are all the more dark, and it’s made a tough haul for me.

Typically this kind of thing doesn’t bother me. I dealt with darkness a great deal in the last few books. It may be that it affects me more this time around because this story is the first story I ever completed, and I know the characters more than any others.

So, this week’s writing has been in fits and starts. I typically finish a chapter a week, sometimes more. But it’s been all herky jerky, and distracted. Happy funny things on Twitter are so much better than writing about the destruction of a kingdom, and the inability of even remarkable people to do anything to save it. Perhaps it’s that hopelessness that’s getting to me… it’s quite likely.

The destruction of hope isn’t a pervasive theme in the book, but it’s one that I wanted to write more about in this draft. I think that helplessness is important especially in relationship to our world. I have a really difficult time wrapping my head around the kind of hopeless injustice that occurs around the world–violence to children, families, cultures–and this is my way of dealing with it, with commentary.

Because heroes can’t always win. In fantasy we are programmed to think that heroes, if given the right tools and spells and time, can save anyone. But sometimes they can’t. For all the flak that Tolkien gets, I think that was the greatest gift he gave the genre (even if it is so often ignored). Sometimes the hero fails. But in that moment of darkness, out of that despair, comes such a rich possibility.

Anyway, talking to a few people about the issues, the advice has ranged from “carry on” to “don’t write about it”. I am moving foward, albeit slowly. Because if I stop writing about the things that matter to me, if is stop telling the stories that are difficult, I compromise one of my core beliefs. Holding a mirror up to nature, and all that. In reality I may not be the bravest of beings, but in text I can forge on further than the boundaries here in my world…

Crowded house: writing a party

Nah, not the kind with ale and food and wenches, though that happens from time to time.

More like a party of people. At the moment I’m struggling with some of my chapters, as there are just too many damned people there all the time. Up until this point most of what I’ve written has been fairly straight-forward, with a handful of people doing fairly straight-forward things. Two, maybe three people in conversation, nice tight little story arcs… It was particularly comfortable in The Aldersgate because, well, every chapter was a new point of view, and helped me keep things neat and in a row.

Now, in Peter of Windbourne, all of the sudden there are at least five people in just about every single scene. Oh sure I can write it out. Sure I can finagle it. But that doesn’t give me many options. Not to mention that my inability to balance characters was one of the reasons the first draft didn’t work (one of myriad reasons, but one still). I mean, I’m traveling with an entourage. There were five, but soon there will be seven. Seven!?

Maybe this is one of the hallmarks of pure fantasy, rather than steampunk fantasy. With no travel available but horseback, people tend to cluster together and travel in groups. It certainly goes back to the whole retinue concept, of a knight and his soldiers trolling the countryside, and always reminds me a bit of Tolkien’s Fellowship. What Tolkien did was to segment his characters, and build stronger relationships between the to facilitate dialogue and plot. Legolas and Gimli had their competition, Merry and Pippin their food, Frodo and Sam their melancholy, and Aragorn and Gandalf their leadery stuff. Oh, then there was Boromir somewhere in between. But he didn’t end up so well.

So certainly the first step is trying to forge relationships between the characters. It’s also essential to “pull a Dumbledore”–that is, to have a character who serves as a point of exposition, someone that the reader–and protagonist–can believe. Not only does this prevent all the characters constantly asking questions of one another (which would be unbearably annoying) but allows me to advance the plot without resorting to straight-out exposition.

One of the biggest changes I also have done in this draft is to make Peter, the protagonist, smarter and a little older. I think in the first draft he was 15 or 16; by the second he was 18. This draft, he’s almost twenty, and he’s spent his life with tutors. It makes sense for the course of the story, as he was schooled for a monastery. In earlier drafts I was frustrated with his lack of character, which was really more a result of his ignorance and starry-eyed (cliche) nature. Well, suffice it to say I was a little sick of it. I mean, this is sword and sorcery; there are some things I should keep from the genre. But not everything.

More than anything though, it makes Peter active. Even though he’s learning a great deal through his new companions, he’s got something to say. He’s got opinions. He’s not just a sponge. And sponges, as I’ve learned, are boring. Right?

What I didn’t expect, however, is a heightened sense of tension with this revamped crew. I find that because so many characters are in so many scenes, there’s much more opportunity for argument, disagreement and confrontation. It also makes fight scenes a whole lot more like a coordinated dance. Without guns, which was the primary weapon in The Aldersgate, there’s a focus to combat that I didn’t have before. And it’s actually a blast. Both of my readers have commented that the scenes are a bit nail-biting–and they should be. It’s one of the things about medieval warfare that I love so much; it’s more brawn and endurance than skill, sometimes, and it’s drawn out, difficult.

I’m still learning this whole “big crew” perspective. Thankfully it’s not something that will be apparent through the whole book–they move on and split up a bit, and reconvene, etc. But I’ve got at least one more solid chapter to keep the balance…

Any writers out there experience similar juggling acts? I’d love to know how you manage a crowd!

What the heck am I doing?

The answer is writing. Writing and writing, and podcasting a little.

In spite of the failure of last week, which isn’t really a failure at all but a disappointment, I’ve been busy putting the oldest story I think is worth telling back in order. It’s a bit like turning a 50-piece puzzle into a 1,000 piece puzzle. The picture is similar, but the pathways are different, and there’s lots more to the whole. I call it editing, since it’s technically a rewrite, but honestly it feels more like writing.

Writing characters I created when I was still a teenager can be a little surreal though. I had the concept early, I just didn’t have the tools at the time to write it. Then later, when I had the tools, I didn’t have the guts to do some of the stuff I’m doing now. Sure, it’s not going to change the world of fantasy writing; it’s sword & sorcery, after all. But I think I’m doing enough things differently that readers will enjoy it.

One character in particular has been wonderfully cathartic to write. Her name is Chira, and in essence, she is a machine of death and destruction. She is somewhere between a Mord Sith and River from “Firefly”–she’s gritty, and her fighting style is crazy. She carries somewhere between eight and ten weapons on her at a time, and she’s obsessed with martial training and strategy. I don’t know what it is, but maybe I just need a little more female warrior in me these days. Writing scenes with her lately has been absolutely thrilling for me. She is also a smart-ass. Heh.

Other than that, the writing is intriguing because it’s got so many characters in the scenes. Rarely do I have less than five people together, since they travel that way, and it’s really exciting writing scenes with lots of banter going back and forth. Not to mention, one of my characters is a real joker, and this is the first time in a while that I’m writing funny stuff. It’s weird, because I’m a funny person in general, I just take myself (and maybe my characters) a little too seriously sometimes. It’s a bit refreshing!

I am also blogging for GeekDad, so that’s been taking up some time that I usually use here. I’m going to try and put together a more strict schedule to ensure I post here more often, but I can’t promise anything due to the energy and unpredictability of being a mom!

“So it’s magic. Like you were talking about before,” Peter said, the word heavy in his mouth. He still felt a bit idiotic talking about magic as if it were real.

Tengel nodded, looking Peter in the eyes. “It feeds on magic. Like I said.”

Peter took the meaning in Tengel’s words, but hesitated to give words to it. “You’re implying that he sent the abael after me due to my own magical proclivities.”

“Good word proclivity,” intoned Quinn, as he drew up to the two of them. As the fire stoked, Peter noticed how brilliant Quinn’s hair was—when it caught the light it kindled like copper. “Proclivity. Sounds like a disease though, doesn’t it?”

“You haven’t got magical proclivities,” said Tengel.

“Of course I don’t,” replied Peter.

“Just magical possibilities,” finished the healer.

Dreams and revelations.

I have written lots of stuff over the years, but my problem is always finalization, finishing. The first finished novel I ever wrote is a prequel, of sorts, to The Aldersgate, occurring in the same world but some 400 years before. It’s called Peter of Windbourne, and it has been sitting in stasis for… oh, three years or so.

First novels are a tricky business. Writing them is like having your first crush; it’s a hectic, messy, emotional process, and the outcome isn’t necessarily something you hold onto for the rest of your life. Peter isn’t that bad, but it’s had a major, central problem that has taken me a very long time to figure out. In fact, I didn’t think I would figure it out. I started to assume, after a few years, that the book itself would just… lie in state.

Funny thing happened last night, though. I dreamed I was in the book. Namely, that I was Peter, the protagonist. It was a very vivid, intricate, and emotional dream. I specifically recall holding a sword at one point and being very… well, psyched about it. Who wouldn’t be?

With the dream on my mind this morning, I was making coffee when a rather huge revelation about Peter’s character hit me. Something I have missed since he appeared to me ten years ago. Something huge and meaningful and exciting. It’s not a panacea for the issues with the book, but it’s a springboard, and more importantly, it’s the component that changes the story from a rather cut-and-dry sword and sorcery epic fantasy to something far from ordinary…

Crap. Now to find the time to do this!