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Lingering in Londinium; or, Monasteries of the Imagination
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats It occurs to me that it’s not just characters who choose us, but it’s places that choose us, too. When it comes to Watcher of the Skies, I had a great many plans. I thought that the first part of the book would take place in Britannia (England), an alternate history version where the Romans never left and the Angles, Frisians, Jutes, Saxons, etc., were assimilated as a servant class (those that didn’t ally with the Welsh and eventually end up part of the monarchy, that is). Then I was going to travel to the New World, to…
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“You speak of Lord Byron and me…”
“You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees, I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.” — John Keats to his brother George, 1819. For more on the issue, there’s a bit here.
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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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The blood between the lines: writing who we are
When I was three, my world was changed irrevocably. I had been a very happy child, by all accounts, albeit a little precocious and sometimes serious for my age. I loved art, music. I used to stand next to my dad while he played guitar, and leaned my head on his knee to hear the vibrations of the music. I watched my mother sketch life from the nib of a pencil. But no one was as life-changing for me as my sister. Llana was born, and everything came into focus. I remember virtually nothing before she came into the world, this little blond miracle. Though now she’s an elegant woman,…
