Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 22

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.

This is my 100th posted blog!

I was going to write about my megalomania and need for control and how that factors into my writing choices this week, because recently I’ve been all too zen talking about acceptance and revised visions of what success means to me nowadays, and I wanted to remind myself that I’m still a potentially delusional patient living in the writing ward of life’s hospital. Which of course I am currently okay with! But then I saw that this would be the #100 blog published, and thought I’d just spend this space being astonished at having come so far.

*Pauses for period of astonishment.*

It really has been a long road. I really do intend to do that Mystery Blogger award that Mitch nominated me for. I really am very grateful to everyone who has stopped by and read my burbling on this, that, and the inevitable other. Thanks folks!

I haven’t been paying close attention to the numbers, but they are slowly growing. The number of blogs, of visitors, of views, likes, comments. That is awesome, and is down to just persisting, and occasionally (not often enough) reaching out to my fabulous fellow bloggers. Thank you thank you to the bloggers who have, and continue to drop by regularly with likes and hellos, it means a great deal to me. My nose remains to the grindstone, that crank (thanks JM!) keeps getting turned. I’m enjoying this, even as it represents another chunk of time to be juggled. My pool game has suffered recently, as I’ve put in far less practice, just as I will be entering a bunch of local tournaments over the next couple of weekends – let’s hope muscle memory is real! My touch shots will be all over the place, alas… On the other hand, the writing muscle has been getting exercised, and boy does it need the work!

Anyway. I think that I and this blog have come a long way, and it is good to look back and see the journey as it was taken. I am looking forward to the next 100, and have no idea where I will be when I reach that bend in the path, but it is an exciting prospect, and I hope some of you will get there with me, as it is always better to travel with friends.

Thank you all once again. Here’s to 100, and many more to come!

The Writing Life: Feeling the Fear, but Still Having Time for Fun

I’m beginning to feel the fear. In a good way. I have deadlines looming, and many miles to go before dawn. Right now there is actual uncertainty about whether or not I’ll get everything done on time.

This is okay. Not the idea of missing a deadline, but feeling the fear early enough that I can act on it. It may well be that as zero hour on various projects draws closer I shall have to put this blog on hiatus, or cut down to once a week in order to satisfy my other commitments. I hope I can avoid this, but want to acknowledge the possibility, in the hope it drives me to work harder.

I wrote a difficult scene a couple of days ago. What I created is probably only a fragment of what will ultimately be delivered to the reader for consumption, but the core is there. I have to remember this is a draft, not the final product. Broad strokes for now, even if I like to paint them with a tiny brush sometimes!

Writing fresh scenes like that, discovering more in them as I go, even if I know some of those revealed details might not make the cut, is one of the quiet pleasures of writing. Feeling the fear and having the motivation to get that writing done, to put those ideas down, is another. New threads have been added that recall earlier ideas, reinforce motifs, perhaps create new wrinkles that I might decide to echo earlier in the book to give them more power – the joy of rewrites and editing! This aspect: the creation of the new that then needs to be retrospectively added in to the preceding text, is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that I feel it is refining the overall depth of the book, a curse in that I have to watch against falling in love with such extra echoes and keep adding them to the story’s detriment, either by padding it out unnecessarily, or by calling attention to my artifice by overdoing it, and risking the reader being broken out of their suspension of disbelief by the intrusion of the author showing off!

Often, in writing The Thief and The Demon, I would throw in lines that I realized echoed or paralleled things before or after simply because it pleased me to do so as I wrote, it made me smile, and felt right. The linked images, or mirroring lines could be hundreds of pages apart, no-one might ever spot that I did it, but for me, it was part of the fun, the pleasure of writing the book. I also thought at times they added irony, or pathos, or thematic reinforcement, and so took the risk of it perhaps looking arch or forced. I hope my readers do not find these touches leaden and overplayed, but that is the chance you take when at times you write for your own private satisfaction, but then justify it as something that improves the novel as a whole. There is a fine line to walk there, as is so often the case in writing, but when it feels good to me, rather than feeling intellectually forced in for the sake of a rhetorical device’s presence, then I am inclined to let it remain, and leave it to the audience to decide.

In feeling the fear might you might imagine that I would cut down on these little bits of writer at play, but so far I think that as I write, if the ideas are flowing, those little mental associations just pop up, and at this stage of writing it is fine to throw them at the wall and see if they stick to it in pleasing patterns. Ideas, images, word play, stylistic games and thematic structures are all there to be experimented with now, because if not now, when? There is always time to edit, to refine, to cut, to kill some of those darlings, and perhaps invent others!

Here’s to feeling the fear, and having it fuel some unexpected fun in the race against the dreaded deadline.

Why I Write Fantasy: Memories of Nature and Other Fragments

Glen Clova, orienteering like a ranger or druid or both, the summit of Arthur’s Seat at sunrise, the Trossachs and trout over fire, Loch Katrine swimming, the shock of freezing, the amazement of finding warmer currents and following their course, shivering anew every time they were lost, wet bracken and green ravines down to running water over black rock, narrow paths through clinging leaves that laid cold hands through damp clothing. Low cloud, climbs over muddy slopes and loose stones, and the danger of teachers walking off cliffs, calling to each other in the mist to be sure of location. Walks along overgrown railway cuttings, balancing on bridge parapets over drops that would kill the small boy I was. Rapidly grew out of such risk taking. The fields and copses of the borders, the wooded estate of Mellerstain with its fields and paddocks and farm tracks for a boy with dogs, a cat, and the occasional horse to explore. The hourglass eye of a horse, looking, as nostrils quivered in search of treats in little pink hands. The smell of harness and brass, molasses and oats, of ammonia and dung, the taste of hay dust in the air as you moved the bales, the dance of it catching the light, the straw scratching at your skin and then itching as you got it down to put in the stables after you cleaned them. Earlier memories of churning water and sky, low shoulders of land approaching, heather covered slopes and a stag that didn’t want to share them – though I doubt he really chased me, as I think an adult deer would easily have run down the 8 year old I was at the time, for all my terrified speed. The revenge of venison for Christmas dinner. Orion over sycamore trees, Drumbrae hill at night, the dark paths filled with dangers, all alone with my imagined and palpable fears, the cobalt of a predawn sky over Edinburgh, a special colour that never lasted long. Frost on stone and crazed pavements as breath hung in the air, dew turning to crystals to crunch underfoot, the sharp smell of silage and a hundred cows, udders bursting as they trooped in for milking. The silence of pine woods, the brown empty spaces of the needle covered ground between the high trees, the annoyance of spindly dead branches blocking your path when the ways got tight. The charge of water past a white prow, cold spray in the air, hands lifting me out over the waves, rushing beneath. Chestnut trees and the contented calls of pigeons on misty mornings, cooing to the sunrise, a gentle wake up call.

The Writing Life: Acceptance

Last week I talked about what success meant for me nowadays. A big part of why the shape of success has changed for me over the years is a growing acceptance of the things I can and cannot control in this writing life.

I was very unrealistic in my youth. I wanted it all, but without working for it. I wanted to be recognized and feted despite putting no effort into getting recognized or doing something worth celebrating beyond finally producing a first draft. The glory was just supposed to ‘happen’ for me, because I wished ardently for that to be the case.

I refused to do my research and work out what I needed to achieve beyond write a draft. I knew there was an industry out there, and I’d need to interact with it, but finding out about it seemed terribly bothersome, and very like hard work, so I bought a book or two about it and barely broke their spines, still hoping a literary prince charming would appear from nowhere to sweep me off to a land of endless parties and praise.

Now, that was all ridiculous, and I must say in many ways I was so lazy I didn’t even daydream that hard about it all, I just had the draft and was going to ‘do something about it’ later. I had a job and a flat and was getting on with life in my 20s and all the distractions that presented. My earlier self would dispute the characterization I have described above and say I was just editing, or busy, or even doing nothing, rather than say I was just hoping for something to come out of the nothing that was my utter inability to engage with making a career from my passion.

So what changed?

I accepted a lot of things. This took a long time, and happened incrementally over a number of years, and is still ongoing today. I’m not the finished article by any means, and likely never will be, which is fine by me.

First, I accepted I needed to start again with a new story. I accepted the need to rewrite and edit. I actually worked on learning what that meant: a spine or two, real and virtual, were actually cracked and creased as I put some time in. Eventually I accepted that I needed external help.

Once I decided to self-publish, I accepted that I was going into a crowded market, and would be responsible for my own destiny. I finally accepted that I could only control my own actions, and not impose my (daydreaming) will upon the world. I accepted I would make mistakes. For many years I had always described to other people the vast numbers of books written versus the tiny handful that were published traditionally, and then the vast number of published books versus the tiny handful that became genuine, life-altering bestsellers, so there has long been an acceptance that the simple numbers game was against me, but you always hope that you’ll beat those odds. Once I decided that I didn’t require the blessing of the publishing house gatekeepers, I accepted that despite my best efforts, it would be very hard for my writing to find its audience, and furthermore, I could not gauge the potential size of that audience. (You can do market research, but still I think with fantasy books in the current market, now fractured with sub-genres, it is difficult to say with confidence what your potential reach is. I decided to produce my best, and go from there. Perhaps naïve, but I’m stuck with it, for now! This may well be one of my many mistakes, but if so, it is one I will learn from. Eventually, haha! I’m okay with that, because right now what I am doing is fulfilling, and I believe in what I’ve written, and what I’m working on. Doing what you love and believe in is never truly a waste of time or effort, in my opinion.)

I am continuing to learn, trying to improve both the quality of my writing, and its ability to appeal to readers in a way which I hope is complementary, but I recognize that I have a lot to put together in that department, and perfection, while worth striving for, is far from within my grasp. I accept this, and the challenge it represents. Sometimes it is daunting, other times, like right now as I type this, it is exciting.

Acceptance is a strange thing. It isn’t fatalism, or ennui, or resignation. I’m still engaged with my dreams, am possessed of ambition and drive, yet I accept that for all my efforts my writing may end up as a small brief ripple in an oceanic pond. I accept that, because to rail against it, to demand that I am somehow due the attention of large numbers of readers requires a reality-denying level of ego I’m not inclined to feed. I think it would be damaging for me as a person. Now perhaps if I had that intense focus, and decided to settle for nothing less my wildest dreams come true, perhaps that would increase my chances of success a fraction more, but it would also make the failure to beat the odds sting much harder. So is this acceptance a self-preservation tactic? Maybe. But just as I accept I have a lot to learn from writers of all genres, from commercial fiction to experimental abstraction, so I accept that perhaps my shift in focus over the years has been a way to soften the blow of failure. The funny thing is, accepting everything I have mentioned so far has advanced me further down the road to success than denying it ever did, because in acceptance I found ways to overcome the fear of failure that for years held me back. I never expected it, but the slow altering of my attitude has enabled me now to do more than I thought possible, with much much more to come. I will continue to learn, and strive, and enjoy what I have and am doing. For me, right now, there really is nothing better than that, and acceptance has helped me to get to this place, and I feel very fortunate indeed to have got this far.

 

Why I Write Fantasy: The Games of Fantasy Part 1: Game of Dracula

First things first: I don’t write fantasy because of games. I was entranced by fantasy first, games came later. However, there can be a positive interaction between playing games, exercising imagination, and coming up with story ideas. There is one as-yet unwritten story cycle that is definitely based on something I wanted to do in a game, but never happened. Most of the rest of the time it is imagery, or atmosphere that has lingered in my mind and become part of the subconscious soup from which strange ideas can often emerge. The feeling of playing a good game, being immersed in it, is similar in some ways to being hard at work writing. That feeling does not come along often, but it is a lot of fun when it happens!

The first game that really hooked me, that I waited for the last day of each school term for because someone (Jimmy Law) brought it in and everyone in the class took turns playing, four eager players at a time, was Game of Dracula. Once again – it is the horror theme that allowed the fantasy imagination to flourish early on, when other avenues were not yet available! (We played with our own variations on the rules, I discovered years later when as a triumphant (and too old, but I didn’t care) thirteen year old I found it for sale in Woolworths, ran home for my paper round money, went back and finally owned my own version, which I still have to this day!)

In the game you ran around the thirteen unlucky rooms of castle Dracula, trying to escape while avoiding the bloodthirsty count and his evil minions, especially the green vampire, who was controlled by the first player to be captured by Dracula. (He only took sips of blood in this game, it being for kids and all.) So in this game was the excitement of creeping around a dusty old castle, the thrill of escape, and the embracing of a new role if you became the green vampire, (a first unrealized-at-the-time taste of role-playing, complete with cheesy cardboard mask that no-one actually wore!) who then chased the other players around, and if it caught another player, that player became the green vampire, and the person who had been it reverted once again to a person trying to escape. It was/is awesome. I occasionally inflict the game on my wife, who wins almost every time. In playing the game I was transported to another world of childish gothic horrors, long predating the Hammer movies, but perhaps helping to explain why they struck such a chord with me years later. This imaginary space was filled with monsters and terror, (the plastic Dracula and vampires were well detailed for the era, and made a very satisfying thunk over the simple playing pieces that represented the escaping players when they were captured) where you could safely become the monster too, for a little while at least. Despite the blood and horror elements, the game was never truly scary, just exciting, and it also promised a happy ending in the form of victorious escape to a flower filled field, the gloomy castle left behind. For me it is a simple classic, which when added to the competitive urgings of childhood, made the game wildly addictive. That game was the #1 draw each time we were allowed to bring toys in to school. Cheers Jimmy!

I liked that game so much that the first thing I made in pottery class was a mini castle, complete with corridors to run around in. It was far too small for playing pieces, and my maze didn’t actually work, but the thought was there! I kept that ugly thing for years, not for what it was, but for what it meant to me, the ambition to one day create a bigger, better version of that castle. Perhaps not with clay though – my sculpting skills were quite limited!

Games existed for me as another way, along with books, to investigate the unfamiliar, engage with the unknown or the supernatural, and to escape the ordinary world that seemed so lacking in the magic that existed in worlds of imagination. At first it was horror that led the way, but true fantasy soon arrived, courtesy of the Fighting Fantasy game books, and the grand-daddy of fantasy board games, Talisman. I’ll maybe talk more about them next time!

The Writing Life: Definitions of Success

It’s a long road I took to publishing my own book, and being comfortable with calling myself a writer. A longer road than I would advise most other folk to take. But the good thing about taking the scenic route is I’ve made sure by now of what I want, and what I’m prepared to accept in and from this writing life.

You can have dreams, but not unrealistic expectations. You can work hard, but not feel entitled to reward. You can feel pride, and not have it distort who you are.

I am a writer. Whether or not success as others measure it comes my way, that fact, for me, cannot be contested. I’ve always been a writer, I just used to whisper it in life, shout it in my reveries. I used to enjoy the imaginings of success so much that I did little to actually achieve them. It was easier to imagine, than to do. Living in cloud cuckoo land, I think that’s called.

Now, I don’t really want success in the way I once did. I don’t want fame. I don’t crave fantastic wealth. I do not want ego massage and the adulation of others: that least of all. Once, so wrapped in my insecurities as I was, I wanted that the most: the magic mirror of external validation. I needed the mirror on the wall to tell me how talented I was, because I felt that only other people could reassure me and remove my doubts, and that if other people loved what I wrote, well then I would truly be as talented as they said  I was.

What a horrible trap to fall into, living for the opinions of other people. What then happens if the mirror changes its tune? If you are only as good as the regard in which you are held, how can you not help but become a creature who chases positive regard? What does that do to the things you produce in order to garner favourable attention? Nothing good, I’d wager.

I’m glad success did not happen to me when it was all I craved.

So what is success for me now? Living, writing, being content. Each reader is a success. Each and every one. I hope to find an audience, but I know I’m not entitled to one. I have to work for it, one reader at a time. Success is writing a book, finishing it, going through the process, being satisfied, perhaps even proud of what I have created, and then setting it free into the world, in the hope that readers will find it. Of course I’ll try to help it reach an audience, but there are no guarantees in a bookish world overflowing with new releases, all desperate for attention.

Now I know there may be some who might wonder if this is the triumph of lowered expectations. How can I expect to reach my goals if I am not reaching for the stars? Should I not visualise something more powerful than just one reader at a time? I don’t really have a pithy answer for that. I’m reaching as hard as I can as a writer, to better myself in my art, but as a person I do not yearn for the trappings of success, only to do the best I can in my writing. That is the difference for me now.

Success is having stories to tell, and a voice to tell them. Success is waking up and knowing I have a plan, and a purpose. Success is an Iggy Pop song that always makes me smile. Success is being here, now, and saying hello and goodbye to you again, as always.