Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 22

Why I Write Fantasy: To Submit Drafts at the Very Last Minute.

But it is in. With 2 minutes to spare MST.

I look forward to making it better, with help.

But hurrah! Phase one is done!

The Writing Life: Almost there…

The draft for my editor is almost ready. I’ll need the weekend to finish it, but we’re almost there.

As a result, I really don’t have anything to say here.

Other than this, haha!

Writing is a privilege. I am lucky in my life that I have the inclination, and the time, to write. Many others who would like to, have not been able to. Many stories have been lost, untold. I am grateful to have had the time, and the opportunity to write. To tell another story, and not leave it untold.

There is great pleasure in writing, great satisfaction. If I didn’t get a certain singular high from writing that I get from no other activity, then maybe I wouldn’t be so drawn to it. But crafting words to represent thoughts, and to sometimes feel that you have in fact lasso’d the moon, captured a thought entire, is an incredible rush. You may look later at that same sentence and feel like the moon slipped its mooring again and escaped you, but you still had that flash as you wrote, and sometimes, just sometimes, when you look back at what you put down on paper, you see the moon still there, glowing. Maybe only for you, maybe no-one else will get it, but even as a solipsistic exercise in expressing something to youself, it had worth, because it is bloody hard to make the ephemeral tangible. And that’s what writing is for me, and it is awesome in the real sense of that word.

I’m going on. Bed calls. Another long day tomorrow.

Fare you all very well.

Why I Write Fantasy: To Hit Deadlines

Yep, I have one week to deadline on getting my manuscript to my editor for the developmental pass.

This means I have a liquid eff ton of work to do in the next seven days, five of which I will be working. Oh yeah.

I got a lot done this past weekend, enough so I’m sure I’ll get there now, perhaps messily, perhaps sideways and with my wheels on fire, (I’m fond of that phrase, apologies for its reuse!) but I’m going to get there. I just won’t get there having written much in the way of an in depth blog this week!

Just like Comic Con before it, this task sucks all the air out of my other endeavours. There can only be one focus right now, get the writing done, review it, lick it into shape a little, let it go. There will be a lot more reworking after I get the developmental notes back. Or the developmental stack, as the case may be!

But I’m excited. This is a new process for me, trying to do things on a tight (for me) schedule, set well in advance, with a final product in mind by the end of this year. I’m accentuating the positive, enjoying being forced to work harder in shorter controlled bursts, (another phrase I’m fond of!) not having the luxury of procrastination, or of too much reflection. I’ve got to go, put it on the page, and move on. No time to agonise! Which I would, if I gave myself time. I’m curious to see how it turns out. I want it to turn out well: I have a lot of stories to write, and less time than I’d like to write them in, seeing as I waited until I was the wrong side of 45 before I published my first book!

So for now I’m embracing the rapid fire, trust your instincts, let your subconscious do the work style of creation. The careful planner and plotter in me is a litle horrified, but continuity can be fixed, right?? My main worry is the big picture continuity – the threads between the books, the set ups and links to later books, and making sure they are in place as I like them, and pointing the reader in the right anticipated direction. All while having the book function effectively as a stand alone, which it is. That is my biggest concern – will I overplay my hand too early, or not give enough hints of things to come? Will the book feel spontaneous, or rushed? I can’t know yet, it is always impossible to tell when you are in the midst of creating it, but I’m looking forward to finding out. Sometimes you just have to forge ahead and let the doubts trail behind you. I’ll  have time for review, analysis, and reflection later.

But that time isn’t now. Onward!

Good luck to all writers out there who are trying to get projects completed – it isn’t easy, but if you keep pushing, you’ll get there!

 

The Writing Life: Writing as an Exercise

Part of writing is persisting when you’re not feeling particularly up for it: you’re tired, distracted, unsure, stuck, maybe even bored and wanting to move on, but no, you’ve got to write that next page.

Sometimes I’ll just go to bed.

Other times I’ll get a cup of tea, play a few racks of pool, procrastinate.

And yet other times, like now, I’ll just sit down and type anyway, and see what falls out. It doesn’t have to be inspired, but it should at least be true. True to how you’re feeling at the time, anyway.

When I’m writing fiction that is harder – it is difficult to write a scene in which your character is supposed to be on fire with emotion when you the writer are feeling like a wrung out dishrag.

But amazingly, sometimes if you just start, your dishrag prose can start to smoulder, your brain light up, and the character can indeed catch fire once again. And no, I’ve never read the Hunger Games.

Make a game of it, decide that you’re going to make the next sentence run on far too long, just for the fun of it, knowing that later you’ll probably break it up because when you get to reading it out loud you might run out of breath, no matter how many strategic commas you put in there. Or decide to be deliberately repetitive, repeating words just to go against the rules you read that told you not to be repetitious. Repetition sometimes has its place. It can drive home a theme, or a message, or a feeling. Not here, but if you choose the right words in the correct context, it can do wonders, and be fun for the reader – when the page is a kaleidoscope of endless, continuous variation, sometimes it is nice for the mind to rest in a familiar spot here and there. Never repeating things can be as bad as overdoing it, to my mind. And only you, the writer (and then your editors, hahaha!) can be the judge of that.

A lot of writing is feel. What feels natural to you, what feels dramatic, what feels intimate, empty, powerful, sorrow filled. Your own natural timing for scenes, conversations, fights and more are all at least initially a matter of feel. Yes you can find rules, be taught best practices, be shown formulas, but ultimately each writer makes their own decisions about how to implement them. Learn well, but don’t be afraid to let your own personality shine through, because otherwise we’d just be writing algorithms, not writers.

So just start writing, make it a game, try to surprise yourself, insert an unlikely word and make it work. Puissance is a great word to try to slide into a scene unobtrusively. Doesn’t really manage not to stick out, but in thinking about that you may have written a bunch of other stuff as its set up that will actually be worthwhile later! Because yeah, writers recycle, and not all the stuff you write, even when you are rested, ready, and inspired, makes the cut. So if even your best material can be put aside as stuff that might find a use later, so the writing you do to dig yourself out of a funk doesn’t have to feel bad if large chunks of it get stuffed into the recycling bin for potential use either. It goes right in next to the pieces you thought were going to be awesome. Or to put it another way not involving recycling: when you know even your best first draft will always be edited into better shape, why worry about the somewhat sub-par stuff the first time around, as it will also inevitably be elevated through editing too? Just write, and let your later self pick the diamonds from the rough. They might be surprised and impressed by what you wrote when you didn’t feel 100% as you started typing!

And of course, any writing is better than none. If you can’t approach the subject you really want to, approach another, just to keep the words flowing.

And finally, remember that perhaps making the writing muscle work when it doesn’t want to is the best way of all of strengthening it. I like that idea. Now I’m off to bed!

Why I Write Fantasy: Morality, Culture, and Character Creation

So folks, while it is fresh in my mind I thought I’d reiterate what I thought was one of the central points discussed during our panel at Denver Comic Con. (Thank you once again to my fab panelists!)

And that is this: I feel that paying attention to the culture a character grows up in, and the moral values that culture may have instilled in the character, or that he or she may have chosen to rebel against, helps to integrate the character into the world the writer has created, and makes their actions and motivations more concrete, more real. I think that this lessens the occasional sense you get when reading fantasy that the protagonists, while living in a world of magical mcguffins very unlike our own, seem to be more like us in their values and beliefs than you would think they should be, given the world they have supposedly grown up in. (Of course this does not apply to a portal fantasy where characters from our world go into a fantastical one – but the challenge then is to make sure that the people that the lead characters meet are suitably alien in their viewpoints and not also thinly disguised early 21st century fellow travelers.)

This isn’t reinventing the wheel. I think many writers do this without consciously addressing it as they write the story, it is just part of building their characters, but I think that if you do think about it consciously, you have a chance to add real depth to your characters, and make them and the world they live in all the more real for the reader. It is an extra addition of awesome, not a whole new revelation that will change writing forever. I’m not so deluded as to think this is a hugely original idea, but it is one that I think is worth sharing.

And, to be honest, I came up with this idea after writing The Thief and The Demon, but found upon reflection and looking at the book I wrote, that I had done a lot of the work I had advised anyway – linking characters to the world through their upbringing, and the values they had adopted as most important to them. Could I have done it better? I think so, and had I been consciously doing it as I wrote I think I would have rounded out everyone that little bit better. It is all in the details.

But I did use songs, stories, sayings, attitudes of other characters to show what influenced the protagonists, and I think I also showed the characters’ moral positions crucially through their own attitudes and decision making. Some of these, particularly Fistmar’s, our hero, shifted through the book as he re-evaluated what he thought he knew about life and rejected some of the things he had always believed in as he discovered more and more about the ‘true’ nature of his world, and the society he grew up in. So I think I did pretty well, but would strive to do better next time.

In my current project, The Killer and The Dead, the issue of showing the protagonist’s moral center or viewpoint is made somewhat easier by the fact that the book is written in the first person. He is telling you what he thinks and why. But of course he may not be entirely honest with you, or himself, so there are gaps there that can be exploited to show that what he thinks, and how he actually acts, can be at odds, allowing the reader to see through his lies or self-deceptions and see another truth that is hidden from our narrator. That is an interesting new challenge that I am enjoying taking on.

So there you have it folks – when thinking about morality and culture in fantasy fiction, what I’d recommend is that you think about the morality and culture your characters were exposed to early, and how it would effect them throughout their lives. This, I believe, will add a extra layer of verisimilitude (I just wanted to use that word) to your characterization, and who doesn’t want that?

(Writers who are pursing novels of ideas, that’s who, but that’s a whole other discussion for next time!)

Thank you to Kat at the Lily Café for nominating me for a Liebster award! I now have two awards to do the blogs on! Some of those questions are tricky, and need time and consideration to answer, but I will get on it soon! (It may have to wait until after my July 2nd deadline though – I have a lot of writing to get done, and not a lot of time to do it in!)

The Writing Life: Go Team!

Now I’ve done a blog before about how it takes a team, but tonight I’m just saying, for the last time, that I and my companions on the panel will be at Denver Comic Con tomorrow at 12 midday, room 404, discussing Morality and Culture in Fantasy Fiction: a look at how grounding characters in the culture and morality of their world can improve characterisation, enhance drama and provide extra depth of motivation for heroes and villains alike.

Speaking of heroes and villains, we will also touch on alternatives to good versus evil as moral paradigms in fantasy worlds, and discuss how to present moral codes and behaviour for younger readers, as well as mature audiences!

There truly will be something for everyone, reader, writer, lost cosplayer alike! Come on down and enjoy the fun at Denver Comic Con 2018!!

(Normal service will resume next week – LOL!)

Why I Write Fantasy: To Introduce My Fellow Panelists at Denver Comic Con

Of course in truth that isn’t why I write fantasy, but it is a pleasant and unexpected side effect! Only 4 days to go now before my first visit to a Comic Con, and my first participation in a Con! How weirdly awesome is that? I’m going to geek out and take my ancient paperback of The Sword of Shannara and hope I can run into Terry Brooks and get him to sign it, and tell him the story of how a famous Scottish writer gave me a copy of his book in response to being shown my first fantasy novel that I’d written at 14. I still remember looking at it (the shiny new copy I had been given), frowning, and wondering what the hell a book I had already read was supposed to tell me, apart from the fact that it was a Del Rey version, which was kind of exotic, but I preferred the one I had, which is now so old it smells of mildew or magic, depending on your viewpoint. And the brothers Hildebrant cover is just tops. (Now let’s just let the whole SoS = LOTR thing go – I recognized that when I first read SoS when I was 10, and loved the fact that I got to experience that kind of adventure all over again! Now, maybe I’d want more, and hey, that’s part of what I’ll be talking about on Friday…!)

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the panel, and meeting some great new people, and getting to listen to some interesting takes on a subject dear to my heart, plus fielding questions from the floor! With me on this all too brief adventure will be, in alphabetical order: Cheryl Carpinello, a writer of middle grade and YA fiction who has used her love of ancient and medieval history to craft Tales and Legends for Reluctant Readers. From King Tut to Camelot, she has it covered! (And has my great admiration for working so hard to bring books to audiences that might otherwise shy away from the written word. Writers need readers, and Cheryl is helping to make more readers!) My friend Steven Craig, who knows what he wants to write and how to execute it, and whose debut novel, Waiting For Today is a modern day reworking of the trials of Job, and which would have qualified as a fantasy novel in the era (was it really 2004??) before the Red Sox won the World Series – but now we have to accept that even the Chicago Cubs can win the big one! Strange days!

I’m abusing exclamation marks. I apologise. Maybe I’m a trace excited. And not using them to indicate the imperative at all. Hey ho.

Next up is Todd Fahnestock, a writer of classic fantasy with multiple twists for all ages: I am currently enjoying his Fairmist opus, and he is launching his Threadweavers trilogy in its entirety this year, (Tip of the hat to you, sir!) with the final installment, Threads of Amarion, due out on July 17th – so you have enough time to read the first two and be ready for it!

Finally I will be joined by Aaron Spriggs, a touring musician (that’s rock star, by the way), poet, scientist and burning man whose published short stories and poetry will soon be joined by a Steampunk novel he has co-written with Brian Kaufman. Is he a drummer? I think he looks like a drummer. Or maybe just a bit like my brother, who happens to be a drummer. Oh, and big metal objects seem to be a theme too.

So here are the folk who will be sharing the stage come Friday at midday, room 404 in the Colorado Convention Center at Denver Comic Con! Don’t be shy – we’re in the program now, so come on down and join in the chat!

(That last exclamation mark was in the imperative, I am forced to admit.)

The Writing Life: Distraction and Distillation

Well, I managed to travel and blog, but couldn’t manage it with a visitor in the house. Strange how that happens.

On the plus side, it was a fabulous visit, and I played a lot of pool, some of it even quite creditable at times!

It is very hard for me to maintain a consistently high level of performance playing pool, so to do well in any kind of setting I need some fortune and some rolls when my best game is decidedly absent (which it is most of the time!), and I’m reduced to my B or C game. Just like in writing, sometimes you have to gut it out and hope for the best! The past two weekends I got the rub of the green (or blue) just when I needed it, and had a lot of fun over a couple of long Saturdays playing local tournaments and pocketing a little bit of cash here and there. Many thanks to all the players who were so welcoming to a pair of odd Scots out to shoot US pool in northern Denver – you guys are all awesome!

My buddy has now departed for home, and my cue instantly gathered dust in his absence, because I’ve got stuff to do!

Eight days to Comic Con. Friday 15th June, 12 noon, room 404 at the Colorado Convention Center. Come see the show if you are in the area!

I’m still learning the new job, and picking up new skills tends to drain my attention and focus batteries even faster than trying to shoot pool, which has left me coming home to stare blankly at this screen thinking “I really need to get on with something right now…” and continue to think that until it seems like a better idea to just get some sleep instead!

However, I need distill my message on morality and culture in fantasy fiction down to a few minutes of easily understood glory. And resist my long-standing habit of randomly going off on tangents when discussing a topic. (Ha. Hahaha. No seriously, I’ll be fine. I’m on it.) I’ll leave my fellow panelists and the audience to do the exploring!

It is funny though, how you can know what you want to do, have the shape of it in your mind, even some of the key passages and phrases sorted out, and still find the process of getting it organized into something that works well very difficult. This week it is a discussion for a convention, other weeks it is key scenes or character moments, but the process is much the same, the search for the one piece that helps make everything else hang perfectly in place, and fit together into a satisfying whole.

The good thing this week is that my inner perfectionist can take a running jump – I don’t have the time to indulge his tendency to over-analysis, so what I come up with can be less a flawless framework, and more a child’s mobile – everything will be connected, but loosely enough that it may amuse and distract those who come in to view it while spending a long day conventioneering!

Why I Write Fantasy: The Illusion of Control

Last week I was going to write this column, but got distracted by a blogging landmark.

So here we go!

Now I’ve always wanted to write fantasy. I have a few memories of my life before I wanted to write tales of magic and wonder, but there aren’t that many of them. One is of my sister looking in at me through a circular window after I’d got myself stuck in a tumbler dryer. Good times. I really should thank her for not fiddling with the controls…

As I grew older, learned more about writing, and began writing my first few stories I was struck by a huge advantage I had inadvertently gained by wanting to write fantasy: I was freed from having to follow the rules of contemporary life. I didn’t have to worry about keeping up with technology, or company names, or laws and police procedures – all of that stuff was irrelevant to me, and what a relief!

Instead I figured I was home free: I could make up anything I wanted, and it was all good because I was creating the worlds and rules myself – I was truly the master of all I surveyed, and I could, to paraphrase Han Solo (I have not seen the new movie), survey quite a bit.

This is my megalomania emerging, the writer as god-emperor of the universe they create. Control of everything, what’s not to like? The ability to bend reality to my will, nothing to limit me but my imagination! Oh yes! Flying hippopotami reciting Swahili haiku that fall as rain upon the orchid people below – why not? It is a sweet drug, let me tell you, and an easy one to be seduced by and keep buying into, but like so many illicit highs, it’s a lie.

You can create anything you want, but as soon as the first words hit the page, a subtle web of rules is spun, by the words, and by the assumptions that readers will make based upon those words. In the opening of The Thief and The Demon I mention dung being thrown, a horse-drawn cart, and a rutted road. I mention prisoners and a dead prince. In the first paragraph of a book in which I have complete control over the universe being described, I am caught in the web of rules I myself created. The orchid people bend their petals to hide their tittering laughter at my earlier presumption.

What rules? Well, I’ve indicated a pre-industrial revolution level of civilization, a hierarchy based on nobility, a justice system of some sort, a sense of time and stability within that society. I’ve also placed my protagonist as below peasants, who are throwing the dung (so gravity works in a similar fashion on this world), yet apart from the other prisoners (he alone is chained in place on display).

That is paragraph one. And I haven’t really included all the assumptions a reader might make from it, consciously or not.

A writer of fantasy does not escape the need to follow rules. They might not have to adhere to contemporary realism but for god-emperors they sure do tie themselves down with the rules they create with every sentence they use to describe their wondrous worlds. This is good, this is exhilarating, this is a challenge and a delight when you are in rhythm and all the ideas are flowing, building one atop the other to create something dazzling in your mind. It is a disaster, a nightmare, a devilish series of conundrums when you are trapped by the precedents you set earlier and don’t want to break, a monstrous blockade that halts your ability to tell your story in the way you want to, because of the way you’ve told your story so far. Talk about hoisted by your own petard. The irony is delicious and entirely unappreciated when you are trying to work your way out of it. (Some precedents are created to be joyfully broken later, to surprise and enthrall your readers, if done right – and that is another challenge I didn’t anticipate as a smug teenager thinking I wasn’t tied down by any stupid rules!)

So the illusion of control is what fantasy offers: the idea that you will be in charge of everything, only to discover that anything you create comes with its own set of rules. I think that is a strength, and the best fantasy is one that sets out its conventions and then maintains its internal consistency in a way that manages to satisfy its readers while leaving the ability to pleasantly/shockingly/other word ending in ly confound their expectations without breaking the suspension of disbelief that the writer and reader together have worked to create. I have striven to do this, and given the size of the universe I intend to explore that was born with TTATD and will be expanded upon by The Killer and The Dead, I have a lot of rules to follow, but plenty of room to roam!

The Writing Life: Sometimes Sleep is the Answer

The list of things to do in the writing life never seems to get smaller. Not only that, but as you move forward and learn more about what you can do to improve your writing and further your career, you can’t help but run into things you probably should have done earlier.

Much earlier.

It is what it is. Maybe it was a mistake not to submit my book to booklife ages ago. I knew about it (through my inevitable research), but for one reason or other didn’t follow through. More research this week reminded me of it. Ooops. But nobody died. I can get around to it this week, or maybe next: my new job is kicking my ass (in the best and most rewarding way – I’m enjoying being a nurse again!), and my best friend is arriving tomorrow to do the same thing playing pool. Life is busy, but good. I’m writing around the margins and making progress, but the list of other things to do to promote the existing book, to get ready for the next one, can seem a tad overwhelming when you have a limited time budget.

So you know what I’m going to do?

Nothing.

Or rather, I’m going to sleep on it. Sleep has for me always transformed difficult situations into doable ones. To try to keep pushing at something when you are frazzled, physically, mentally, emotionally, rarely does you, or the task you are trying to perform, any good. Better to stop, restore yourself, and look again when you are refreshed. It is amazing what one night’s sleep can do for me. Of course sometimes problems persist into the night, thoughts and worries to gnaw at you and rob you of the thing you need most. That sucks. Insomnia is no joke, and I have nothing but sympathy, and some limited empathy for those that have suffered it significantly. I’ve been sleep-deprived before (because I was dumb and didn’t buy black out curtains when working night shift. For two years. That was some stubborn laziness right there!) and I know how difficult it made life in general: the horror of needing desperately to sleep and being unable to is something I remember with unpleasant clarity, and is not something I’d care to repeat!

I’ve set a lot of targets for myself recently, and there is a great deal to do, but all of the things I have to do are things I love, or am excited about. (Who doesn’t want to geek out at a Comic Con??) But sometimes, despite how much fun a task can be, you just need to down tools and stack some Z’s and get back to it later.

Today is one of those days. The pillow calls!

101 and counting. No that isn’t going to be a thing.