Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 24

Why I Write Fantasy: To Connect the Dots…

Last week I talked about how sometimes ideas assail me, story concepts or character ideas that want to make the difficult transition from idle fancy to fully-fleshed reality.

It is really easy to just daydream the good bits: the dramatic confrontations, the epic climaxes, awful betrayals, heartbreaking deaths, hard-earned victories. And any amount of acid-tongued conversation. I think a lot of people get stuck at that stage, or perhaps after sketching out their favourite sections, villainous villains being especially venal, and then their richly deserved defeat and downfall, long-awaited and eagerly anticipated. Those are the easy parts, the fun-filled stage where you can imagine what you want, insert whatever you need, because there is no narrative structure to constrain you, yet. Sooner or later, however, you’ve got to take the story, and your hoped-for readers, along the long road from Alpha to Omega, from story set-up to completion.

The problem is bridging the gap in time between your (for instance) villains getting away with murder and finally receiving their just deserts. In The Thief and The Demon there was a lot of ground to cover between the opening and the final confrontation between the title characters. A whole world of ground. I had a lot of ideas studding the time between, and quickly wrote a long outline detailing it, but even that left gaps that would need to be written: bridging material to make all the high-points work.

Connecting the dots can be less fun than writing the set pieces you first fell in love with. Or it can be more: it is very hard to tell which will be which before you start writing it. I’ve experienced the process a few different ways in the course of my writing career. Sometimes the connective writing becomes so much more exciting than imagined, adding tons of texture to the characters, story, and themes I was building. This is an absolute delight to experience as a writer: the ideas flow into each other and create a new, stronger whole. Or the interludes can be as difficult as anticipated to bring to life and made to fit in terms of feel into the other parts of the story I clearly enjoyed writing more. (That was more the case in my earlier unpublished writing, I feel – but of course I could be blind to current examples of the same tendency!) I’ve also slogged through writing what I thought would be a fantastic scene, a great set piece long imagined, only to find the first writing of it to fall terribly flat – I’d told myself that part of the story so many times when walking, showering, or waking up that actually putting it down seemed a pale echo of the better versions I had already created.

I am drawn to fantasy by vivid imaginings, but I am impelled to write it by the need to put flesh on the bones of those scenes, to give those shining flashes context worthy of them, and to make everything in that world work as a whole. My desire is not to be content with a fifteen second elevator pitch of the groovy bits, but to put the story together as a complete entity, and for everything to complement the original conception I had, and hopefully in writing actually improve upon the original ideas. When I have breakthroughs as I’m writing the bridging sections of the story, when I realize how and why these sections are just as important as the highpoints I imagined first, then I know I’ve got a real tale worth telling.

To the writers out there: does your experience reflect mine at all, or do you have a very different process? Do you start out wanting to write the highlight reel sections of the book and get bogged down in what you can’t help but think of as ‘filler’ at first, or do you treat every section the same? Or some other approach? I’d love to hear how you deal with this part of translating the original ideas for a book into the finished article!

The Writing Life: Finding Yourself Involved in a Comic Con

So a while ago you will recall I chatted on Jesper Schmidt’s YouTube channel about Morality in World building. See it here, if you missed it! My blog series on morality in fantasy starts here.

Well, he mentioned that it was not a topic he’d ever come across when discussing fantasy fiction before, so I decided to pick up that ball and run with it, and submitted a panel suggestion to Denver Comic Con: “Morality and Culture in Fantasy Fiction”, and guess what? It has been accepted, and I shall be presenting a panel at the Con this June! How cool is that? I mean look at the incredible guest list – what an honour to be part of that experience!

More details to follow as I get them, but sometime over June 15th to 17th I’ll be introducing the topic and having a chat with panelists and the audience about the joys of exploring morality and culture in fantasy!

Now I really should organize some bookshop readings, it seems backwards to do a convention before doing signings, but hey, I’ll roll with it!

Thanks to Jesper for being interested in this subject and giving me the confidence to go further with it.

So if you know of a convention you can get to (being a local boy may have helped me out here a little) and that is looking for panel submissions, the lesson here is to have a subject you’re passionate about that is a bit off the beaten path and submit it. You never know what might happen!

 

Why I Write Fantasy: The Recurring Ideas That Won’t Let Go

I write fantasy stories because ideas for them keep popping into my head, almost always when I am in no position to write them down or record them. Life’s ironic like that.

When I’m half-awake is a classic, that’s when ideas for dramatic situations come to me, cliffhangers without the set up that my still partially dreaming mind begins to colour in haphazardly. If the imaginings of this semi-conscious state persist until I am fully awake and continuing to actively daydream the images I woke up with and fashion them into something concrete, then I have a story idea… if I bother to write it down that day, or the next. If I don’t I run the risk of losing it, but the most persistent ideas keep coming back until I make sure to record them.

One of the ways these dreamy imaginings impinge upon me is to mug me with dialogue. I’ll be in the shower and a spoken sentence will ring out in my mind. A conversation starts and I follow along, enjoying the story I’m telling myself, but the trick is to not get too analytical, to just let the two characters (it is almost always just two) fight it out (and it is almost always an argument) until it either comes to a resolution, or peters out on its own. What normally happens is the conversation runs along very fluently until I have the smart (read: foolish) idea to re-run it from what I might recall as the beginning, and look for different emphasis, or try to make a different point. This most often kills the fluency of the speech and characters stone dead, (and I also often lose exactly where the conversation started, if it has meandered on long enough before I decide to interfere too much, so restarting means chopping the conversation into sections and thinking about how each worked, and what the whole point might be, hopefully before I get too frustrated at losing some parts that felt great the first time around and that I now can’t quite remember) but sometimes, just sometimes, the conversation deepens, becomes richer, and threads attach to it, linking it to the dreams of settings and dramas I have had at other times, and a window into a world is created. Again, I have to remember to quickly write it down, or it will be lost. Many random conversations that occurred when out walking, or washing dishes whilst looking out the kitchen window (another favourite) have been lost because it was so vivid I feel sure I’ll remember it later, but when I finally try to recapture those half-forgotten thoughts they become elusive, or irritating cardboard cut-outs of the cavorting characters they had been before.

But then again – some scenarios stick with me and keep coming back until I write them down, and when I do, they either show themselves to have real potential, or remain lost fragments in search of a story to fit into. There’s an old salt miner’s tale that remains a hollow fragment, still looking for the spark that will turn his story into a book of the future. For over a year, maybe more, I would occasionally entertain a pair of tremendously bitter old rivals, a man and a woman, who would dig up the relics of their shared past, impale them, and throw them at each other with delightful viciousness, always with the threat that this time, one or the other would finally end their rivalry, most likely in the form of some sadistic revenge plot for the many past injuries each had done to the other. Or could they? Did they enjoy their shared pain too much to end it now, after so many years of opportunity?

When finally I wrote down one version of their tirades against each other, a whole story came out, a solid seed for an epic tale of a difficult present (which had never appeared before) for these bitter enemies to navigate, shot through with the painful memories of their often glorious, frequently futile past. It is only five pages long, just over two thousand words, but that outline makes me certain that the story could be told, and be one that would delight me in the telling. The first draft is the story you tell yourself, after all!

And so there is another reason why I write fantasy – because the ideas keep coming, and sometimes (just sometimes) when I write them down, the certainty that these situations can grow into novels is born.

If only it were as easy and as quick to write the novels as it is to have the ideas that originate them!

Good luck to all dreamers and dwellers of the imagination out there. If characters or situations, kingdoms or dilemmas keep cropping up in your thoughts, write them down, and see if you’ve found a new fantasy to make real, at least on the page!

The Writing Life: What Have Deadlines Got to do with Past Tense Boxes of Chocolate?

I don’t know what I’m going to write this week, so I’m just going to start like this and see where my mind takes me, and come up with a title to match the verbiage produced.

Is the writing life like a box of chocolates? If so, have I been chewing on the same near solid toffee/hardened caramel for the last few months? Chewing and chewing on one scene, to finally escape it, thinking maybe I’ll be done with this toffee and get onto my favourite cream centres, a whole run of lovely bits of action and conversation, but no, the toffee just shifted and got stuck to my teeth with the very next bite, locking my jaws together in that way that has you fearing you’ll pull a tooth out when you manage to snap them apart. Hot tea through a straw might help break it down. Now what could that be a tortured metaphor for?

Maybe for the decision to schedule an editor and as a result create a hard deadline for myself. It worked last time! (Really well, though this time I’ll be juggling in work too. I’m up for it!) Everything in the story is mapped out, with room for me to add in some thematically too good to ignore surprises if they occur to me, the words just need to be, you know, written down! (I have a strong sense that good ideas are waiting to erupt out as I write the final act, which may be why I haven’t embraced writing it – but inaction really does you no good. I’ve used the “I’m letting my subconscious work the problem” excuse enough times to know when it has been exhausted!)

I’ve also been thinking about what happens after I get this draft done. Specifically about tenses and continuity, things I want to have had a very solid whack at before my words go out for editorial input. The Killer and The Dead is written in the first person, something I wanted to do for the challenge of it, because it suited my story, and because I’ve always wanted to write a first person novel since I first read a somewhat mildewed copy of Nine Princes in Amber. I still have that copy. It’s awesome.

Anyway, writing a tale recounted in first person can be tricky, because you are by definition telling a story that has already taken place, so embedded in the past. The problem is, if you are replicating a teller of a tale, there are times when the teller him or herself will get taken up in their tale, and retell an incident as though it were happening in real time. How to do this without getting hopelessly confused, or confusing the reader? How to tell when it is the speaker of the tale getting involved in the story so much they shift tense versus our clumsy scribe just forgetting his tenses and switching to versions of the present because that is how he’s thinking that afternoon? It is going to be an interesting problem to deal with. I suspect shifting to past tense all the time outside of my framing device will be the sensible option. Which can be grudgingly explored!

Much easier is dealing with continuity (Ho ho!) – I started out with one chronology, but realized it needed to be telescoped in order to make sense of the decisions made and actions taken by the significant actors in our tale. Fixing that will be fun and not too tricky. More complex is making sure that everything in the book either adds to, or enhances world building elements of The Thief and The Demon, and sets up revelations to come in The Slavegirl and The Traveller, and subsequent tales. This is accepting of course that not everything has to agree, and sometimes I deliberately want it not to, as a prelude to ‘truths’ being discovered later. It’s the best kind of brain ache, one that begs for a Gordian knot of a flowchart to keep track of all the truths, lies, and misunderstandings. I prefer fifty and one hundred page ‘planning’ documents, with various key nuggets lost at random on pages 34 and 77. More toffees for me to chew on right there, but my brain needs the steady supply of glucose to keep on top of all of that, so the chewy chocolate covered delights are welcome then!

So that’s it for today. I suspect I could break this into two or three separate articles, each with their own theme, but what the heck, this is where the road has meandered for now. Let’s think of this as blog seeds for later! Have a good day all! Random Tina Turner shout out seeing as she kind of lurks in the title I came up with!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 4: A Clash of Codes

You can check out earlier discussions of morality in fantasy writing here, here, and here.

This one goes long, as I felt the need for examples to make sense of what I was saying, so saddle up!

This week let’s talk about something a little tricky – the minefield where morality and ethics meet, because in this difficult terrain there are so many opportunities for character conflict and plot development for your stories it’s almost criminal.

First, let’s set some crude and easily disagreed with parameters here. (i.e. what I consider the crucial differences between what I term ‘general morality’ and ‘ethical systems’, or codes of conduct.)

I understand ‘general morality’ as a social and cultural artifact, rules of behavior and accepted norms in any given society that have varied greatly in our own human history, but tend to share some core characteristics: they promote social cohesion and the ability for people to live and work together, to organize their lives around common assumptions. Cultural norms and the sense of what actions are acceptable to a particular people have varied across time and geographical location within our own world, and there is no reason to believe that in fantasy literature those variances could not be more sharply drawn, and would form part of a rich fabric that could enhance and improve any fantasy story.

An ethical system, by way of contrast, is not the rights and wrongs you learned at your mamma’s knee, or absorbed from your peers and elders as you grew up, but is something that as an adult you choose to investigate, consider, agree with, and embrace. Or, over time, reject or enhance, according to your own understanding. My favourite example is the good old Romans. (Cue Michael Palin chained to a wall.) People could in general grow up surrounded by the actions and beliefs of their families, the social structures built around the Mos maiorum and the Roman Virtues, but as adults some could also then be educated in, and choose to follow systems of ethical belief, in the hopes of living the in the best possible manner. In ancient Rome ethical systems like Stoicism and Epicureanism (and many other ‘isms’) existed in addition to, alongside and often in conflict with both each other and sometimes traditional Roman values. And that is before you even consider the religious and cult affiliations present in Roman society – an individual in that culture could have many conflicting demands placed upon their actions and their consideration of what was right, and a vast array of reasons to disagree with people within their own society about how best to act, never mind what to do when they met people raised within a different culture with its own moral norms!

A host of extra options to develop conflicts between characters, nations, religions, and races exists when you add in the wrinkle of personal ethics and ethical orders or schools. You can then easily have scenarios where people on the same side, with the same moral upbringing, can sincerely disagree on how best to meet a challenge, because of their differing ethical viewpoints. This may help to further involve your readers in the story as they feel compelled to take one side or another, or wonder which point of view truly is ‘better’ if there is a ‘better’ option at all! This leads, I think, to an enriched storytelling experience. Now, if only I could practice what I preach!

In fantasy, consider the oaths and strictures of Knightly orders – codes of behavior beyond the standard morality of their people, and how that can complicate things when characters who want to adhere to those codes are placed in a position where their code clashes with their own morality, or the morality and codes of those they are working with. And of course consider the personal anguish if the character realizes they have to compromise their code in order to do the morally correct thing. For instance: a holy warrior fights only for his church, and who adheres to a code of non-interference in secular political matters finds himself compromised when he feels compelled to save a royal child from a dynastic assassination attempt – what consequence will that have for him within his order (will he be cast out, given a penance, sentenced to death?), and almost more importantly, within his psyche? If his identity is tied up in his ability to adhere to his code, what will breaking it mean for him? Beyond that, what will the political result be? How will the enemies and friends of this royal child react to his actions – someone who had sworn never to involve themselves in secular politics is drawn by one action into a web of it, the last thing he (or his order!) ever desired. That could be the entire seed for a story idea, or just one facet of a wider narrative, but I hope you can see how the clash between the character’s code (ethics – his decision to dedicate himself to holy conflicts as the only correct reason for him to fight) and his sense of morality (his inability to stand by and let a child die when he can intervene to save him, though the act is not one furthering his church) has led him into a very interesting and difficult place. He might not be comfortable, but hopefully your readers are very interested in how he will deal with the many possible ongoing conflicts in his life, internal and external!

But it doesn’t have to be only knights in shining/dented/rusty armor that have codes: any character could have a reason for a highly developed personal code of conduct, that they stick to in addition to, or often despite of, the prevailing moral order. An oath of revenge at all costs, the decision never to kill, the refusal (or commitment) to accumulate wealth, the adherence to a rigid ethical hierarchy of actions (lying, then thieving, then murder as bad actions with associated punishments for instance, or a similar hierarchy of ‘good’  actions, which the character may prioritize over more pragmatic concerns), the belief that anyone can be redeemed, the determination to never act on emotion, all these things could be major issues that could cause conflict between characters, or be the seeds for enmities that grow much more profound. The advantage is in having the roots of those conflicts lie in something your readers can trace for themselves and understand, even if they may disagree with them! This, I believe, leads to far deeper characterization, and better development of plot, as the conflicts will have a more personal and organic resonance between the characters, and for the reader.

Another form of code can be caused by trauma – a compulsion formed because of, or as a reaction against something that happened in the character’s life. Think Batman. There can be ethical and moral repercussions, but these codes tend to be more irrational, harder to control on the part of the character, yet also something that they could learn to be free of, if they can either resolve their original trauma, or learn to put it behind them. Or they could remain trapped in that behavior – it is the writer’s call, and is a very strong story hook indeed.

In popular culture Batman’s refusal to kill, borne of his early personal experience, has had many unfortunate unintended consequences, but it is a code he will not break, and drives many dilemmas in his adventures. It would be easier for him long-term if he just killed his enemies rather than returning them to Arkham. Simpler, but how much would be lost to his mythos, and how much weaker would the stories that can be told about him be, if he just killed his opponents. And of course he would then lose his grip on being a hero with a moral compass to be admired: his code is what elevates him above the criminals he fights. Speaking of the criminals he fights, Two-Face similarly bound himself to a code that in his case can be a weakness when often the flip of the coin results in him committing to actions that are not in his best interest, that a rational actor would have avoided: this makes him a much more compelling antagonist, as you know that once he flips that coin, he is all in, whichever way it falls. You can wish he would make the other choice, but for him his code (or psychopathy, let’s be honest) forces him to honor the coin. The Joker… well the Joker is a morass of contradictions and whims, most deadly, and could take an entire series of articles on his own to pick apart and explore!

Anyway, I hope this helps you see that ethical codes can add dimensions to your characters and reasons for their actions beyond just the morality of their culture or indeed their religious beliefs. These three things can often confusingly interact and seem very similar, (I did say it was a minefield!), but if you can draw the distinctions, at least for yourself as a writer, then I think it helps your characters become more real and nuanced in your mind, which I believe will translate onto the page, and into the reading experience. Not every character or antagonist needs to have a code of ethics, (they will all have some sort of moral position, however) but if any do, I think the code begs to be challenged, to make the character’s struggle more intense, and more real for the reader.

Next time I hit this series I’ll discuss morality and social class. Does, and should social status effect moral decision making, and how can that impact storytelling in fantasy?

The Writing Life: The Lessons of Genre

Hello there!

I’m a writer of fantasy. This is the genre in which I have always wanted to work, into which my intuition and imagination have drawn me. I cannot conceive of doing anything else.

However.

There is much to be learned from other genres: the well crafted misdirect of murder mystery, the connection of human experience across time in historical fiction, the emotive thrill of romance, the capturing of moments in literary fiction, the propulsive plotting of the thriller, the down in the dirt immediacy of military fiction, the exploration of ideas in science fiction, the creeping shift of consciousness in horror, the lush atmospherics of the gothic, and so many more. (But wait! Buy this boxed set and get these three limited edition graphic novels free!)

If I had to write in other genres I think I could jump into crime or mystery most easily, science fiction with some effort, historical fiction with a lot of research. (Fantasy requires quite a bit of research, but not to the level of detail demanded by historical fiction.) Maybe not horror, but gothic noir would be something I’d enjoy doing, undoubtedly with supernatural elements, so it would become fantasy in sumptuous crushed velvet skin.

Now that last is the truth: I could write any genre, as long as I mixed a little fantasy in. I think if I want to try out the techniques typical of other genres it is likely I will approach them through the prism of fantasy.

I admire writers that can hop genres, and write convincingly in more than one. If you have the story in you that requires a particular form, I imagine it would be natural to write in the genre that best expresses the story you want to write. But I believe I’m a one genre man, and cleave to fantasy (in all its variety) I shall, but I think the lessons, the strengths of all the genres listed above (and many more… keep reading for 30 more seconds to receive a very special offer…) can be incorporated into fantasy. Certainly I, in my more maniacal moments, imagine I could do so.

For example, I have written twenty six thousand words of a contemporary and literary novella that rapidly showed me it had no intention of remaining slim and novellaesque (yes, I know), but for all its realism, the main premise was a fractured conversation between our heroine and Lucifer, (that may have been real, or a symptom of mental distress – I left it for the reader to decide) so let’s be honest, it was a fantasy, because that is where I’m most comfortable, but I was trying to capture some of the moments of life that literary fiction allows the reader to identify with so strongly, as well as the lingering sense of “What is real?”, so prevalent in the psychological thriller. I have plenty to say in the fantasy field, but I want to learn from other genres, first by reading them, second by implementing what I have seen into my own favoured medium. There is a lot to learn from trying other forms, but I don’t think I want to stray too far from my passion when experimenting with other genres in order to expand my own writing range.

What do you think? Can genre writers learn from other fields? Should they? Are genre distinctions useful today when you look for books to read?

Why I Write Fantasy: To be an Original, Baby

I’ve talked about various inspirations and influences that led me to writing fantasy, an urge that has stuck with me since childhood, but it seems to me that at times I am endlessly circling around the central question of this series without ever answering it. I think in part because I’m answering it piecemeal, a long form puzzle to put together on a rainy day.

But today I think why not try to put my finger on one prime mover in my desire to write.

Beyond the things that inspired me, that influenced me, that shaped the course of my imagination, beyond the things that drive the particular form of my fiction and alongside the primal urge to simply speak and tell stories is the desire to say something new. In my youth I wanted to shout huge NEW things that were mindblowing (at least to me). The first paragraph of this blog was a major thesis of my first unpublished novel. The need to try to explain, to encapsulate, to know (a moment, an emotion, the universe – what it is that needs to be explained, encapsulated, understood is almost secondary to the pathological desire to capture it in words, so another may also know this thing, the butterfly of rarity that you have magically managed to pin down, without killing. (If you kill it, it won’t live in the minds of others. Mangled writing represents the corpses of thoughts that writers tried to capture, but didn’t quite manage to keep alive. This could well be a classic exemplar of the form.)) The desire to do this runs up against the sense that thought is fleeting and can rarely be caught, however much we want to capture and crystallize it into something beautiful. And of course the feeling lingers that capturing something free and fleeting is to alter its nature and rob it of its beauty – the Schrödinger’s cat of creativity – if you record a moment perfectly, have you also somehow destroyed what made it special?

I cannot deny that simple ego plays its part in the desire to be an ‘original’. I think that most modern writers write, or started writing to record parts of themselves, however shadowed, hidden, or obscured by image and subject. There is a certain sense of wanting to leave our smudged fingerprints behind us, to at least be regarded, if only briefly, by another, one mind to another. I woz ‘ere, ‘ere I woz, woz I ‘ere? I used to insert ‘ere woz I! (Superfluously) to that little ditty, until I realized it added very little, and in fact ruined the simplicity of the three line scheme. I was trying to be different, but marring the original.

In writing fantasy I do want to write something different, perhaps a style, or a subject not necessarily seen a hundred times before. Of course there are elements and tropes seen many times already: use the word wizard and you tap into oceans of association by now. Every story written by every writer is in a sense original no matter how derivative it may appear, because nobody (I believe) can erase their own voice: a perfect stylistic mimic will create their own content, a copier of content will have their own stylistic tics. In trying to be as others, still they betray themselves. In trying to be different, we are drowned in how we are just the same as everyone else, all those voices that came before us and staked out the ground of the genre or subject we wish to discuss.

This is why genres get expanded, why new forms are created – the restless desire to find a new way of expressing old ideas for new generations, as conceived by single minds who just had to speak.

It is so easy to be jaded. I get the message in Sheryl’s song. Or Cypress Hill’s. But damn me, I still want to write my stories, and I (perhaps foolishly) still think they are new, and say things just a little differently to those that came before. The urge to say “this was my voice, this was my song”, is strong, and no matter what the genre, I think when you look at a writer’s work closely, you will see the desire there to be noted as something original in some way – maybe in the engine block, maybe in the fairing, maybe just in the way the story rides.

So there you have it: this week’s confession – not surprising I think. I write fantasy because it is a mainline to being original – if everything in the world of your creation is your choice, then it is hard not to imagine that the expression of your choices will be original. That is the baseline. If from there you want to write the stories you never read, but wanted to, there is an extra dollop of possible originality – but of course all of your fellow generational cohort who grew up reading those same books are also kicking against those traditions, many in ways very similar to your own. If your writing is not a reaction to anything you read, but an expression of newly synthesized ideas in a unique environment, well, don’t be surprised if it reads to others like a strange mix of Aristotle, Molière, and Tolstoy. Many restless minds before you have tried to capture the ineffable too. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though.

It ain’t easy, being an original. But we all are. So just write.

The Writing Life: Doubts Part 5: How I Made My Peace with Doubt (Or: How I Reduced Doubt to the Guerilla War Option Only. Or: Be The Shark)

That’s a lengthly title. But for me an accurate one. I have not defeated doubt, I have not cast it into the outer darkness to lie impotent and weeping. I have, like the demon in my book, cut it down to a manageable size, and reduced it to fighting me at the page by page level, a guerilla in the word jungle, ambushing my paragraphs and sentences, but scattering before me when I bring my full focus to bear on the same territory.

Does this make sense for you, dear reader?

Once I was locked in total war with doubt, and for a long time it held the field and it was I who waged the guerilla war: scratching out words and phrases, stitching together paragraphs and pages before the doubt shock troops rolled in and halted all progress. Sometimes the troops didn’t have to be employed, the long range barrage from the doubt cannon simply kept my writing self crouched in its bunker, unable to escape or write at all. I would retreat from the front lines, go on furlough and pretend all was right with the world, attend parties, go to work and ignore the distant conflict for months at a time. I would say I was recharging my batteries, gathering my strength, but no, I had retreated from the battlefield and left doubt the victor. Doubt was happy for his ally distraction to keep me from the field. Or for dissatisfaction to keep me from engaging when sometimes I did dare to look at the pages of words once again. Doubt had me pinned, and was not in any mood to relent.

What happened, how did I turn the tide of this conflict?

Well, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I got older. The dreamtime of my 20s passed, and my 30s rolled on as I pretended I still had acres of future ahead of me. Even into my 40s, delusion, another ally of doubt, kept its grip on me, telling me I had time, I could delay a little longer. (And you know, I’ve never read Sandman, but I think all the main characters there are D this and that – it seems I’m going down the same path here!)

But the cold awareness of growing mortality finally struck. The sense of time’s sand running between my fingers, not in any pretty trickle, but in a flood, overwhelmed me.

Now I spent many years working as a nurse. I have seen death many times, peaceful, traumatic, fearful, accepting, surrounded by love, alone but for strangers. I have tended to the dead and to their families. But it is a funny thing: you can work in the field, see mortality in all its certitude, and still delay in your own case, still not viscerally understand that there lies your future. So I ignored my own mortality for 20 odd years. When finally I felt it in my gut, the utter grim certainty that I too would pass, and needed to act soon or miss what chance I had in life to share my stories, doubt attacked again, telling me it was already too late, why even try now, with the dried out husk that my creativity must have become after all those wasted years? Why even try?

It is a bitter thing to realise you are trying to sabotage yourself into soundless oblivion.

But the urgency of life in me toppled doubt’s ramparts, scattered its troops, shattered its grip. I had to write. I had to publish. I had to ask for help in order to do those things.

I forged forward, I wrote, rewrote, edited, edited again, and again, until I decided that any more was just another form of delay creeping in to hamper me. I published. The doubt of a lifetime, that told me I would never do such a thing, was defeated.

But though driven from that field, it was not vanquished. I started writing my next book, powering through the early phases until doubt started to say hello again, creeping in to spoil progress, to snipe from the edges of the page, to argue over paragraphs, character moments, plot choices. I can tell it to sod off and push through, but I have to acknowledge that it is still there, but reduced to the guerilla fighter I once was. If I keep pushing, maybe I can make it retreat further, to a bunker of its own, or to a spot far from the front line where it can languish, ignored. For now though I can take comfort in knowing I hold the whip hand, and the more I do, the less it becomes. That is how I have found it is best to handle doubt. Doing weakens it.

How might this help you? Well a) please learn from me and don’t wait until you have a not-disguised-at-all midlife crisis about your creativity and finally do something about it. Be aware of all the ways in which doubt, distraction, dissatisfaction, and delusion can work together to delay your output. I know it is hard, but try not to imagine that you have next month, next year. I spent years locked in that trance. I once looked after a man who died on his 40th birthday. When my own 40th birthday rolled around I remembered him, and thought I really should do ‘something’. I dithered (another one!) for another two and a half years. Don’t do that, just don’t. b) understand that the best way to defeat doubt is to act, to work, to write and not stop. Doubt and distraction dazzled me for years. I have found that putting my head down and writing breaks their barrage and advances my own position, line by hard earned line. Persist, if you possibly can, and if you can recognize the tricks doubt and its allies are playing on you, respond by writing. Don’t be satisfied to have an idea, or hold it in your head, or talk about it: write it down, then expand upon it, and then rework it and make it stronger – that is territory hard earned. Defend it, and move forward. Just as doubt likes to hold you still, so moving forward, even erratically, can cause it to scatter before you. Be like that lad I once met in London during a big freeze when all the planes were grounded, the roads blocked and the train service was all that was left, and that not certain for long. We were boarding a train, which did not lead to his destination. He said to me as he bobbed and weaved in the cold, “Gotta keep moving, like a shark. Keep moving, and I’ll get there in the end.”

That memory always makes me smile. I know he got there in the end, because he refused to stay still. Be the shark.

Why I Write Fantasy: Inspirations – the Music of Fantasy Part 2: The Metal Years

I started buying metal and rock albums in 1983. I still remember the date when I first bought Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath, and the Rainbow albums On Stage and Rising, and I celebrate those days each year. Loudly. 35 years this year. That seems hardly credible, let me tell you!

Ronnie James Dio was the prime musical influence for me, and I listened to his music over and over again, but the 80s were an incredible decade for metal music, and I had the 70s to mine for classic albums from the fathers of metal too. (And the older albums were way cheaper, and so stretched my paper round pound all the farther!)

The first band I owned 5 albums by was Judas Priest. I bought them all in September and October of 1983, the most recent release I bought being 1980’s British Steel, the rest were 70s classics from the time before studs and leather came to dominate their look, and Screaming for Vengeance defined their sound for the rest of that decade. Prior to that they went in quite a few unexpected directions, and I, an ardent teen searching for music to match the feelings and ideas coursing through me, found in them both bone crunching heaviness and otherworldly dreams. The song that for me encapsulates this is in fact two songs that run together on their Sad Wings of Destiny album, Dreamer Deceiver. Give it a listen, you may be surprised by it.

So many of their early songs glittered with ideas for me, Island of Domination, Sinner, Beyond the Realms of Death, Here Come the Tears/Dissident Aggressor (another pairing of songs that should be listened to together, in my mind) making Judas Priest a far more interesting band than the casual observer might imagine when looking at them through the ubiquitous lens of You’ve Got Another Thing Coming, great song though it is.

But if Judas Priest provided a  solid break from the various works of Dio, Queensrÿche and Crimson Glory represented true rivals for the throne of metal in my 80s heart, writing epic songs powered by twinned guitars and voices that in their prime simply had to be heard to be believed.

Queensrÿche arrived first. I saw them supporting Dio on The Last in Line tour in September 1984 and was instantly smitten. For a fantasy obsessed teenager their first EP and album were an insanely perfect fit, the music, ideas and delivery just shocked through me. So many great songs, like dreams becoming real, with Roads to Madness as my personal favourite by the narrowest of margins over everything else, though The Lady Wore Black rides it very close. They did not put a foot wrong in their first four releases, though they turned their back on the fantastical for Operation: Mindcrime, an incredible contemporary concept album that was their crowning achievement. For me, they were never as good after that, though they enjoyed greater commercial success. I remember (to my shame) being on a train and passing off the lyrics to The Lady Wore Black as my own to two older lads I got talking to, as early proof I was a writer. (I had already started writing my first book by this stage, but didn’t have the confidence to share that, and so offered those lyrics as evidence. I wonder now if they knew what I was doing and let it slide, if so, I thank them both very much!) QR’s early music was the soundtrack to scout trips and playing Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! choose your own adventure books, that were so much fun they inspired me to write my own, which one day I may share with you!

(It’s funny how at that time in your life some sets of input can be so closely intertwined as to never quite fully separate afterwards. For me the Belgariad has as its soundtrack Rainbow’s Down To Earth album, especially Eyes of the World, a song that seemed to sum up the malice and threat of Ctuchik, before he was undone at the end of Magician’s Gambit. I digress. But that is an awesome song – listen to it, and if you are an Eddings fan, tell me it doesn’t capture some of that Belgariad magic, haha!)

QR’s songs went everywhere with me. I scrawled Nightrider across far too many school jotters to count, and was in heaven when Rage for Order came out, even if Geoff Tate did look like a glammed up fish on the inner sleeve photo! (the glam metal phase did have an unfortunate effect on some bands that changed their look to adapt – Saxon took a hit that they almost didn’t recover from when they went glam on Innocence is No Excuse, another inner sleeve photo that is best forgotten, which is a shame because that was a great album otherwise, but the denim and leather lads wondered what was up with that lipstick!! It was very much another world 30+ years ago, children!)

Anyway, for a long time I thought nothing could hold a candle to Queensryche, until I discovered Crimson Glory. It was 1988 and I was a grimmer, smellier, all grown up teen. Crimson Glory matched my mood perfectly, with more pointed songs about madness, (I know, I know, my fave QR song was supposedly about that too, (teenagers got to teenage, I guess, and who wasn’t interested at that age in identity and the possibility of it all melting away beneath your feet? You weren’t? No? Oh well, must just have been me and all those metal bands, I suppose!) but it (Roads to Madness) is a fantasy epic and warning not to overreach versus Crimson Glory’s Lost Reflection, which is, in comparison, a raw depiction of actual pain and suffering, brilliantly delivered.)  loves lost and of course dragon ladies. (I mean, why not?) Song about Azrael? Awesome. Again it was the feelings and imagery that the band managed to project that was so enthralling to me at that time, awash in my own teen fantasies. Of course dark ladies of power and promise abounded –  the lyrics of most 80s bands could never be considered progressive, but at the time those things either didn’t register with me, or didn’t matter. Burning Bridges was the most awesome song ever according to 1988 me, it didn’t matter how dubiously conflicted the lyrics were on closer inspection. At the time I was growing my hair and attempting to be cool, and that song had incredible guitar breaks and vocals to die for, which counted for a lot more than any serious consideration of the lyrical content. He sounded tragically heroic, so he was, dammit! The years bring re-evaluations of more than just books.

Crimson Glory’s more tortured aesthetic, love of dark places and magical mistresses had a strong impact on me: the shadowed antagonist of my college-era novel was definitely partly inspired by their music, which also served as a kind of crossing point between a number of musical genres I favoured in the late 80s: fantasy laden rock, old school metal, glam metal, and gothic/alternative rock. Yes, these years also saw the dawn of my Gothic era, to be visited another time, perhaps!

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The Writing Life: Persistence and Progress

I wrote something with more words.

This week I hit some very pleasing milestones in my blogging career. Baby steps down the long road of blogging glory! I received my 500th like, and my 100th follower got on board. I am very grateful for both of these things. Thank you to my readers, and the first 100 to have joined me on this journey down the uncertain path that is the writing life. It has been a genuine pleasure to meet you, and to share my experiences so far.

I blogged erratically over a few years until buckling down to some discipline last September, and am now discovering the joys of persisting, and of actually using the wordpress reader to keep up with other people’s output! (Sorry for not embracing it sooner, hahaha!)

This is my corner of the sky, I’m glad to share it with you. I intend to persist a while yet, Mondays and Thursdays, and occasionally share my quiet satisfaction as the mile markers add up.

Thank you all once again.