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