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Writing from where?
It used to be, at least in America, that writers often wrote from their heritage. If you were Irish, you tended to go that direction; if you were Jewish, that was important. And it made sense, especially in early 20th century America: everyone was struggling to define themselves as new, yet familiar. Hence, everyone is a (something)-American. What’s weird about me (and, I think, quite a few people of my generation) is that I have very little in the way of cultural identification. My mom grew up in Quebec, but she’s a mix of French, German, and First Nation (the Innu tribe). Most people think she’s Spanish, or Greek, or…
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Medieval and medievalesque armor @DRB
Medieval suits of armor. – Beautiful, beautiful! I have an unabashed love of suits of armor, which is helpful considering my current project is Arthurian. And although, as is pointed out in the comments, not every single one of these is authentic medieval, they are still one barrel of eye candy. The artistry, regardless of the provenance, is really astounding. What a fun thing to wake up to!
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Bookish personality
I’ve been making an attempt to read more. Our power went kaput yesterday, and without electricity, I picked up one of the books I received for Christmas, Emma Bull’s Territory. It had been suggested by a listener a few months ago, who said my style reminded her of Bull’s a bit. I didn’t realize how large of a compliment that was until I picked up and started reading. What strikes me about Bull is her ability to infuse the book with its own personality. It’s beyond narrative voice, something that Paul Jessup was talking about yesterday in his post about narrative urgency. It’s almost to the point where the book…
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Play it again, Frodo: why I love a remake
There are too many purists in the world. Too many folks who cling to original books, movies, songs, rallying for the acknowledgement that their beloved version is The Best That Ever Was. Hollywood is “out of ideas”, books are “recycled”. Like this is a bad thing? The thing is, we’re always telling the same story. It might be a different medium, the genders might be switched, the religions and locations different, but from the Dawn of Humanity, we’ve been obsessed with the same stories: stories of love, hate, revenge, honor, sacrifice. And quite often, we get it wrong the first time. And even more often, we get it worse the…
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(Dis)illusion – on magic
When I was young, the pursuit of magic was a daily adventure. I was nearly obsessed with tapping into some unknown ability, like a Jedi, that when unleashed would undoubtedly solve my problems. Of course, my love of fantasy fueled this preoccupation. I saturated my imagination with books that reiterated my convictions: magic was possible, it was just a matter of finding it. At about the age of twelve, I started writing what could (technically at least) be considered novels (though nothing was ever finished). And magic was everywhere; I remember how intoxicating it was to create a world for the first time, drawing a map, and developing magic. Of…
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Just to clear something up re: self-publishing
Okay, so the last few weeks I’ve been thinking a great deal about “self-publishing” and its definitions. Publishing has been radically altered because of the Internet, and so have the concepts of rights ownership and creative property. From the getgo, when I started The Aldersgate Cycle Blog, the idea was that I wanted to invite people into my creative process with no strings attached. Yes, technically podcasting my chapters is self-publishing, but it’s not the end-product. I don’t plan on going through Lulu or any of print-on-demand publishers at this space in time because, frankly, I haven’t even tried to get the book published. From the beginning I have referred…
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Writing to reach you
I’ve been in a writing zone lately. Every day, writing. In the car, in the house, upstairs and downstairs. It doesn’t seem to matter. As I’ve mentioned over at the Aldersgate Cycle blog, I’ve been so busy that blog writing isn’t really a possibility (except um, obviously right now). I realized I’ve clocked about 70K in the last month and three days. Which is impressive. But what really got me is that I’ve written 35K in the last ten days. Though I’m typically very, um, unpredictable when it comes to writing, I have little in the way of explanation for this one. To my knowledge no one has spiked my…
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More process than product.
I have been editing a book for longer than I’ve been writing it. Such is the way of things. But I am seven chapters from the end of The Aldersgate, and looking at my collected chapters in Scrivener gives me a very warm sense of accomplishment. I’m hitting the home stretch, and yesterday when I went to visit my husband at work, I was listening to the radio and tying up loose ends in my head for the last few chapters; everything sort of rushed and me, and I realized about ten minutes into my thought process that I was going the wrong way on the highway–i.e. north and not…
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TV Review: Legend of the Seeker
Let’s clear something up first. I’m not an avid TV watcher. I don’t stake out stations like I used to, planning my evenings around programming. When I watch a show, it’s usually on DVD and most likely cancelled–a la Firefly–or on its way out, like Battlestar Galactica. And my route to the show usually involves someone, like in the case of Lost, insisting to me that this MUST BE SEEN. Because of this filter of friends and a distance from commercial interruption, I think I tend to hit right most of the time. Except with Heroes. What has been seen cannot be unseen. So, it was through the casual mention…
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Ringing the WIP.
I’m working on something right now, something I started during my horrific cold the last few weeks. I’m purposely taking a bit of a break from AGC (no worries, Alderpod listeners; I have plenty of chapters yet to read, so y’all won’t notice the difference) to work on this WIP, which is a project I’ve actually been contemplating since I started my undergraduate career a decade ago (how did ten years pass?!). At that point, I’d written thousands of pages of writing, but had yet to complete a novel; that came years later, with the end of the YA novel, Peter of Windbourne (unpublished… may never see the light of…
