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Falling in (and out of) love with fantasy
Occasionally, I still have moments where I look at a scrap of dialogue or a descriptive phrase, and I feel a little self-conscious, writing what I’m writing. It’s fantasy, sure. It is epic? Sometimes. It is heroic? Yeah, a bit. Does it have magic and all that? Of course. Am I way hung up on defining it? Not really. Okay, maybe a little. But it’s also not a lot of things. There are no elves, dwarves or, really, even wizards. Magic is… ordered, in a way. Effectively I’ve written out a great deal of the things that define the genre for other people, and even for me. Sometimes I forget…
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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…
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A wee story @thaumatrope
I thought this was cool! I recieved a little DM this morning to find that my micro-short story, on a steampunk theme, that I had submitted to Thaumatrope was accepted. How very neat. You can read it here.
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Nothing to see here, move right along.
Yeah, haven’t been posting much. I just have this thing, see, where I like to be interesting when I post, and honestly, I don’t have a lot of interesting stuff to say at this particular juncture. I’ve started and stopped a handful of posts, and they all just feel rife with ‘eh’ to me. Having been blogging about writing for the better part of 18 months or so, I fear I’m repeating myself occasionally… I sincerely don’t mean for this to sound whiny. It’s not. It’s just sometimes, I think, people get quiet for a bit. I’m trying to focus on writing Peter of Windbourne right now, and even I…
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Interview with Joe Abercrombie
I interviewed Joe Abercrombie for GeekDad. The interview is up! Joe is a really great guy, and a very witty fellow, as well. For anyone who’s read his books, the witty part’s not surprising at all. Currently Michael and I are fighting over Best Served Cold because I made the suggestion that he read it before I’d even finished it. Joe had a lot of great insight for writers and geeks, and I hope you enjoy.
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The not so secret secret to writing a book.
About two and a half years ago, I saw an Oprah special on the Secret. Wait! Don’t go away. I know it’s bullshit, but bear with me a second here. I promise I’m not going to go all hormonal on you. So, I watched the episode. I was home with a baby, and contemplating Existence and Everything. I had yet to finish my MA, just a thesis away, and wasn’t sure if I should go on with a PhD in English, didn’t know if I should go into freelancing, had no idea what the future held. I knew one thing: I wanted to be a writer. But, on the whole,…
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The words that linger… so you can laugh at them later
I used to have a rule: never throw away writing. For some reason, I believed that the writing of yesteryear was more important than just about anything else. So, if I dig through the boxes that still remain from college, high school, and elementary schools, what remains is lots and lots of writing. Last night I was stricken by a need to organize and to downsize, so I hauled two boxes down the attic stairs and rifled through a strange amalgam of stuff. I’d say it was half art and half writing. Most of the art was Tolkien-inspired. Lots, and lots, and lots… and lots of hobbits. And if it…
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(re)writing blind
I’m in the process of a complete rewrite, the most extensive I’ve ever done. It’s true, first novels aren’t the best novels. And my first novel was written three times before I put it away for a while. But it kept pestering me until I realized that the characters, the story, and the plot (if tweaked considerably) were still worth the trouble. The exact trouble is rewriting a 75K exceptionally mediocre story into something around 120K that has a lot more grit and substance. What I’ve done is written blind. I didn’t even read the last draft, completed some three or four years ago. Oh, it’s still around, and occasionally…
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New writers and the lure of self-publishing
Sure, we hear a great deal about self-publishing from established writers, agents, and editors. Most tend to agree that it’s not the most brilliant idea to go bandying your first ever work about. At least if you intend to make a career out of it later. (For a good idea of when it is/isn’t a good idea, you can check out Christina Baker Kline’s “To Self-Publish or to Not Self-Publish“) But I think, however, much of this information goes unheeded because, from my experience, new writers are the most susceptible to this trend. Surely you don’t see Stephen King uploading his latest. But why is this? Here’s a few reasons…
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The self-conscious fantasy epic.
This 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…
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Notes on the woman warrior, fantasy literature style
The first woman warrior I remember reading was Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings. That image of her standing before the Nazgul Witch-King, her sword brandished, her blond hair spilling down her shoulders and catching in the wind is probably one of the most vivid early memories I have of fantasy literature. And I remember feeling a swell of pride, too, that this woman had done something so remarkable in a world so dominated by men. Just the other day, my husband remarked to me how surprising it was that Tolkien chose to have Eowyn act so. On the surface it sure seems that way; she’s a rare spot…
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Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Eight Years On
I can’t express how excited I was when I heard they were making The Lord of the Rings into a bona fide film. I had suffered (and enjoyed) through the Rankin-Bass and Bakshi versions in my childhood, and had always hoped something great might come of Tolkien’s trilogy beyond cooky songs and scary vibrato. In 2001 I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in theatres in Washington, DC. Of course I loved it. Frankly, I’d never seen anything so remarkable on film. Anyway, I saw all the films, and loved them. Cried, laughed, etc. Tolkien has a very special place in my life, for many reasons. (My husband and I…
