Gillian Polack's Blog, page 211
January 24, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-25T10:19:00
My weather sense is informing me of something, but it's not quite sure what. The only thing it's certain about it that the Bureau of Meteorology is probably wrong.
My work sense is telling me to work hard, but it can't make up its mind on what. I have a half dozen choices in front of me and the sense of urgency doesn't demean itself with hints.
I shall ignore both of them, drink coffee and chicory (since my coffee has problems) and gradually wend my way through lists. This is what lists are for, after all, to give direction when the inner direction fails.
Although I wouldn't mind knowing what my weather sense is trying to tell me.
ETA: It's lunchtime and the BOM has caught up with me. We have patchy storms this afternoon. Small and vagrant and unpredictable.
My work sense is telling me to work hard, but it can't make up its mind on what. I have a half dozen choices in front of me and the sense of urgency doesn't demean itself with hints.
I shall ignore both of them, drink coffee and chicory (since my coffee has problems) and gradually wend my way through lists. This is what lists are for, after all, to give direction when the inner direction fails.
Although I wouldn't mind knowing what my weather sense is trying to tell me.
ETA: It's lunchtime and the BOM has caught up with me. We have patchy storms this afternoon. Small and vagrant and unpredictable.
gillpolack @ 2012-01-24T12:51:00
Today is like a small stream. On the surface everything is frantic activity. On the stream bed there are pebbles and fish and overcrowding, with the water tugging constantly. If I can just slip into the water, however, between the pebbles and the surface, then I can flow downstream smoothly, my life but a series of happy bubbles in a burbling brook.
January 23, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-23T20:21:00
The last of the three parts of the discussion of older and much-loved books is here. It didn't quite turn out as I expected...
gillpolack @ 2012-01-23T16:11:00
I braved the darkness that is my storeroom just now. I'm trying to make space in my unit and shrink my possessions into a reasonable quantity (without actually getting rid of books - I need my books!), and I wasn't focused on my research anyway, so I took a spiderweb break. It wasn't that dark, to be honest, but it really had a lot of webs. And books. And papers.
I have extracted two boxes and a bag for re-use in other matters, rearranged things a bit and found some early drafts of things that need to go with the other early drafts of things. Another two dozen visits of this sort and the whole storeroom will be tidy and beautiful. Or maybe only one dozen. After all, the floor is already visible.
I need to bring the boxes and bags inside one by one and sort them. The papers will be a lot of work and I'll be much less worried about space when that's done. The problem is, I don't want to throw things out. In an old suitcase are all my overseas living papers - letters and essays and strangenesses. In a box is the foundation of Women's History Month in Australia, alongside a bunch of work against racism. There's history research that never quite went anywhere, and stories that were published so long ago that no-one even knows they existed.
It will be rather tough to throw them all out. Or even to throw half of them out. I might just leave the cobwebs to grow a bit longer...
PS If anyone who lives within reasonable distance has a VHS player and would like all my old VHS tapes (some of which have only been watched once) they're yours. All you have to do is collect them and not quibble about titles. (I don't want to get rid of one or two, I want to get rid of them all.) For $50 I'll even throw in the VHS player! (It's perfectly operational, but doesn't like my television.)
I have extracted two boxes and a bag for re-use in other matters, rearranged things a bit and found some early drafts of things that need to go with the other early drafts of things. Another two dozen visits of this sort and the whole storeroom will be tidy and beautiful. Or maybe only one dozen. After all, the floor is already visible.
I need to bring the boxes and bags inside one by one and sort them. The papers will be a lot of work and I'll be much less worried about space when that's done. The problem is, I don't want to throw things out. In an old suitcase are all my overseas living papers - letters and essays and strangenesses. In a box is the foundation of Women's History Month in Australia, alongside a bunch of work against racism. There's history research that never quite went anywhere, and stories that were published so long ago that no-one even knows they existed.
It will be rather tough to throw them all out. Or even to throw half of them out. I might just leave the cobwebs to grow a bit longer...
PS If anyone who lives within reasonable distance has a VHS player and would like all my old VHS tapes (some of which have only been watched once) they're yours. All you have to do is collect them and not quibble about titles. (I don't want to get rid of one or two, I want to get rid of them all.) For $50 I'll even throw in the VHS player! (It's perfectly operational, but doesn't like my television.)
January 22, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-22T19:52:00
Nothing to report today. I've not done nothing, but I've not done anything terribly interesting, either. I feel terribly apologetic about it, too, as if today was supposed to be something rather special.
January 21, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-21T22:16:00
This morning I was assistant at a garage sale (junior assistant, not chief assistant). The total highlight of my morning was when my five year old friend tried to sell me all the toys. Her reasoning was that if I bought them, she could play with them at my place and wouldn't have to give any of her old toys up at all. Her logic was brilliant, but alas, my resolve was firm. Although I do have a little Sesame Street Count, to help protect my library, I do not have a big box of second-hand toys to lighten and brighten my loungeroom.
I have a new (old-new) bookshelf and somehow made it fit into my library and I have solved the book space problem for the rest of the year. One should always volunteer to be junior assistants at garage sales.
I have a new (old-new) bookshelf and somehow made it fit into my library and I have solved the book space problem for the rest of the year. One should always volunteer to be junior assistants at garage sales.
January 20, 2012
Joshua Palmatier - building cultures
First, off, thanks to Gillian for offering to host me at her blog. I really appreciate it!
For those who don't know of me already, my name is Joshua Palmatier and I publish under that name and a pseudonym, Benjamin Tate. All of my novels are from DAW Books, and all of them are fantasies set in alternate worlds. This means that in my novels I need to create real and believable cultures, and so Gillian asked if I could talk about how I create operational cultures and societies. My current series—started with WELL OF SORROWS and continuing with the just-released LEAVES OF FLAME—contains three main cultures, along with a few "side" cultures that readers run into along the way, and the worldbuilding that I did for these novels is one of the main elements praised in the reviews they've gotten.
I think the first step to creating a culture is to consider the setting and the world where this culture is supposed to live. In my series, the premise was that a new continent had been discovered across the ocean and it had been settled along its coast already. However, the settlers needed to expand their territory, and so they began sending wagon trains out into the unexplored plains to the east.
This setup gave me the initial "feel" for the human culture—those that had discovered the continent and were beginning to settle it. I wanted that culture to have the same feel as one of our own European cultures at the time that the American continent was discovered. However, I didn't want it to BE one of those European cultures. I wanted it to simply have the flavor of one of those cultures. But this gave me a foundation on which to build the rest of the culture. Starting with that very generic base model, I began adding elements to the culture that would make sense in this "new continent" context.
For example, I needed the settlers to be contentious, so I divided the homeland into various Families and decided that the Families were at war with each other, something I called a Feud. The Feud was happening at home, but it would naturally spill over into rivalries in the new world as the Families vied for power and resources in this new land. This would cause a major shift in the homeland, depending on who was gaining power and land faster. And as tensions rose in the homeland, the lesser members of each Family—the peasants in essence—would seize on the new world as a place to flee the coming war, thus causing even more tension in the new world as it becomes overrun by refugees.
From this simple setup, you can see how the world is fleshing itself out and defining itself. All of this is happening in my head, without having really written anything at all. I have a flavor for the culture, and now a setup. The rudimentary elements are beginning to take shape—Families divided, each Family composed of those in power (part of the Family itself) and those beneath who keep the Family running (guilds, trading houses, etc). Each Family would need its own army, to keep everything in balance. I then begin adding layers to the culture. What kind of religion do they follow? I chose a belief in one god and modeled the religion after Christianity, but loosely. I took into account the land in which the Families lived. This created nuances between the different Families. Those along the coast took on aspects of Mediterranean cultures—olive groves, terraced buildings and streets in the harbors, those higher in power living in mansions on the cliff heights with open-air rooms and colonnades supporting the roofs, etc. In my mind's eye, all of these layers gave the culture a texture, enough that I could see the green-blue of the ocean near the harbors, could taste the salt of the water in the air. It's sort of Italian, sort of Greek, with a little flare of the Machiavellian in the interplay between the Families and the Feud. Some who have read it felt the homeland had a mob flavor to it.
But you can see from this how the culture was created. I started with a very amorphous foundation, a "flavor" that I'm looking to capture that fits the story setup. And then, as I write, I begin introducing multiple layers, each forming from and adding to the layers already present. I add a religion (always important), sometimes multiple religions. I think about the geography and how it might shape the culture that would spring up there. I think about what the buildings will look like, what clothes the people would likely wear (this depends on climate), what foods they might eat. I think about how their society needs to be set up, and how they'll have incorporated an army into their culture. The answers to these questions expand my understanding of the culture I'm creating, and the answers interplay off of each other as well. Consider how the religion factors into the political structure—is it integrated into it, or is it separate? In my homeland, the church ends up being a power in its own right, almost another Family in essence. It uses and manipulates the Families for its own ends. As the layers grow, the culture and society takes on its own feel, its own texture, and the people that live in this culture come alive for me.
I did the same for the other two main cultures in the books—the dwarren and the Alvritshai. You can guess the foundations for both of those: the dwarren are my take on dwarves, but these "dwarves" live on the plains in a complex system of tunnels beneath the ground, like a prairie dog warren. I have them riding gaezel instead of horses, bringing in a ripple of Africa. The land they live in shaped my version of "dwarves." The idea of "settling the west" led me to give these dwarren a culture similar to Native Americans, although like my human culture it's just a flavor, a touch of that culture. Similarly, the Alvritshai lived in the far northern regions beyond the mountains. But the encroaching ice moving southward has forced them to adapt to the mountainous regions they once thought of as their border, pushing them into the plains.
So that's how I create an operational culture: start with something simple and then add layers based on the land, the setup, and sometimes just something that strikes me as cool (the prairie dog warrens, for example). The culture and society ends up being an amalgam of all of these things. You have to keep in mind that I'm a very "organic" writer, meaning that I don't outline my novel ahead of time. I usually have a picture in my head of where my characters end up at some point along their journey and I sit down and begin writing toward the vision. The fun of writing for me is to see how they get there. So this approach to creating a culture and society is organic in nature. I let it grow and shape and reform as I write. But that's the way I do it.
Thanks again to Gillian for letting me stop by and chat with you all. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I'll swing by every now and then and try to answer them as best I can. Good luck creating your own societies in your own writing! And remember to have fun while you're at it. If it isn't fun, it isn't worth it. *grin*
For those who don't know of me already, my name is Joshua Palmatier and I publish under that name and a pseudonym, Benjamin Tate. All of my novels are from DAW Books, and all of them are fantasies set in alternate worlds. This means that in my novels I need to create real and believable cultures, and so Gillian asked if I could talk about how I create operational cultures and societies. My current series—started with WELL OF SORROWS and continuing with the just-released LEAVES OF FLAME—contains three main cultures, along with a few "side" cultures that readers run into along the way, and the worldbuilding that I did for these novels is one of the main elements praised in the reviews they've gotten.
I think the first step to creating a culture is to consider the setting and the world where this culture is supposed to live. In my series, the premise was that a new continent had been discovered across the ocean and it had been settled along its coast already. However, the settlers needed to expand their territory, and so they began sending wagon trains out into the unexplored plains to the east.
This setup gave me the initial "feel" for the human culture—those that had discovered the continent and were beginning to settle it. I wanted that culture to have the same feel as one of our own European cultures at the time that the American continent was discovered. However, I didn't want it to BE one of those European cultures. I wanted it to simply have the flavor of one of those cultures. But this gave me a foundation on which to build the rest of the culture. Starting with that very generic base model, I began adding elements to the culture that would make sense in this "new continent" context.
For example, I needed the settlers to be contentious, so I divided the homeland into various Families and decided that the Families were at war with each other, something I called a Feud. The Feud was happening at home, but it would naturally spill over into rivalries in the new world as the Families vied for power and resources in this new land. This would cause a major shift in the homeland, depending on who was gaining power and land faster. And as tensions rose in the homeland, the lesser members of each Family—the peasants in essence—would seize on the new world as a place to flee the coming war, thus causing even more tension in the new world as it becomes overrun by refugees.
From this simple setup, you can see how the world is fleshing itself out and defining itself. All of this is happening in my head, without having really written anything at all. I have a flavor for the culture, and now a setup. The rudimentary elements are beginning to take shape—Families divided, each Family composed of those in power (part of the Family itself) and those beneath who keep the Family running (guilds, trading houses, etc). Each Family would need its own army, to keep everything in balance. I then begin adding layers to the culture. What kind of religion do they follow? I chose a belief in one god and modeled the religion after Christianity, but loosely. I took into account the land in which the Families lived. This created nuances between the different Families. Those along the coast took on aspects of Mediterranean cultures—olive groves, terraced buildings and streets in the harbors, those higher in power living in mansions on the cliff heights with open-air rooms and colonnades supporting the roofs, etc. In my mind's eye, all of these layers gave the culture a texture, enough that I could see the green-blue of the ocean near the harbors, could taste the salt of the water in the air. It's sort of Italian, sort of Greek, with a little flare of the Machiavellian in the interplay between the Families and the Feud. Some who have read it felt the homeland had a mob flavor to it.
But you can see from this how the culture was created. I started with a very amorphous foundation, a "flavor" that I'm looking to capture that fits the story setup. And then, as I write, I begin introducing multiple layers, each forming from and adding to the layers already present. I add a religion (always important), sometimes multiple religions. I think about the geography and how it might shape the culture that would spring up there. I think about what the buildings will look like, what clothes the people would likely wear (this depends on climate), what foods they might eat. I think about how their society needs to be set up, and how they'll have incorporated an army into their culture. The answers to these questions expand my understanding of the culture I'm creating, and the answers interplay off of each other as well. Consider how the religion factors into the political structure—is it integrated into it, or is it separate? In my homeland, the church ends up being a power in its own right, almost another Family in essence. It uses and manipulates the Families for its own ends. As the layers grow, the culture and society takes on its own feel, its own texture, and the people that live in this culture come alive for me.
I did the same for the other two main cultures in the books—the dwarren and the Alvritshai. You can guess the foundations for both of those: the dwarren are my take on dwarves, but these "dwarves" live on the plains in a complex system of tunnels beneath the ground, like a prairie dog warren. I have them riding gaezel instead of horses, bringing in a ripple of Africa. The land they live in shaped my version of "dwarves." The idea of "settling the west" led me to give these dwarren a culture similar to Native Americans, although like my human culture it's just a flavor, a touch of that culture. Similarly, the Alvritshai lived in the far northern regions beyond the mountains. But the encroaching ice moving southward has forced them to adapt to the mountainous regions they once thought of as their border, pushing them into the plains.
So that's how I create an operational culture: start with something simple and then add layers based on the land, the setup, and sometimes just something that strikes me as cool (the prairie dog warrens, for example). The culture and society ends up being an amalgam of all of these things. You have to keep in mind that I'm a very "organic" writer, meaning that I don't outline my novel ahead of time. I usually have a picture in my head of where my characters end up at some point along their journey and I sit down and begin writing toward the vision. The fun of writing for me is to see how they get there. So this approach to creating a culture and society is organic in nature. I let it grow and shape and reform as I write. But that's the way I do it.
Thanks again to Gillian for letting me stop by and chat with you all. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I'll swing by every now and then and try to answer them as best I can. Good luck creating your own societies in your own writing! And remember to have fun while you're at it. If it isn't fun, it isn't worth it. *grin*
January 19, 2012
Interview: Felicity Pulman
A while back, one of my work experience students interviewed one of her favourite authors, as part of the week's work. It's about time I blogged that interview! The student asked that I not use her name, so here is the interview, sans nom. She interviewed Felicity Pulman, one of my favourite young adult authors. Enjoy!
What was your inspiration for the Janna series?
Why did you follow up that particular inspiration?
I'd been writing the Shalott trilogy and I found I loved writing and thinking about the middle ages. In Shalott: the final journey, Callie brings a child into our own world and asks the Empress Matilda to look after her. So I had to do some research into 'the Anarchy', the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. It was such a treacherous and awful time that I decided to keep it as a setting for the new series. My inspiration came from imagining a young girl who doesn't really know who she is and who loses everything - what would she do? What could she do? The story flowed on from that.
Why did you decide to make it historically accurate?
The Shalott series was set in a legendary 'otherworld', so I was able to use my imagination in creating a quasi-medieval world. But The Janna Mysteries are set in real time in our world and so I needed to make them historically accurate to retain credibility as a writer of historical fiction.
Why did you decide to aim the books at young adults rather than an older or younger age group, or was that just how it turned out?
I enjoy writing about teenagers who are just on the brink of adulthood - as Janna is at the start of the series, aged 16 (although that's actually quite 'old' for medieval time.) The age of the character tends to determine how the book is marketed - in this case as a Y/A novel, but I've received emails from many adults who have also enjoyed reading the series.
(Not necessarily relevant to the Janna books) How do you feel when someone else edits your work and you get it back?
It depends on who is doing the editing & providing the feedback, and whether or not I trust their judgment! It can be quite confronting having someone question what you've written, put red lines through it and, sometimes, suggest you do something quite different. On one occasion (writing the last Shalott novel) I pretty much had to start again from scratch - that was very difficult! After several weeks of stomping around muttering 'I can't do this', I finally sat down and gave it a go - and it was a MUCH better book because of it. I only did it because I trusted the very good editor at Random House - and she was right. If I feel very strongly about something (as has happened with my latest book, A Ring Through Time, due out next year) I'll argue my point. On this particular occasion I got my way, but I did go along with all their other suggestions. I constantly remind myself that while my story may be very clear in my head, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's clear to a reader - and that's why you need an editor!
You can find more about Flick and her books on her website.
What was your inspiration for the Janna series?
Why did you follow up that particular inspiration?
I'd been writing the Shalott trilogy and I found I loved writing and thinking about the middle ages. In Shalott: the final journey, Callie brings a child into our own world and asks the Empress Matilda to look after her. So I had to do some research into 'the Anarchy', the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. It was such a treacherous and awful time that I decided to keep it as a setting for the new series. My inspiration came from imagining a young girl who doesn't really know who she is and who loses everything - what would she do? What could she do? The story flowed on from that.
Why did you decide to make it historically accurate?
The Shalott series was set in a legendary 'otherworld', so I was able to use my imagination in creating a quasi-medieval world. But The Janna Mysteries are set in real time in our world and so I needed to make them historically accurate to retain credibility as a writer of historical fiction.
Why did you decide to aim the books at young adults rather than an older or younger age group, or was that just how it turned out?
I enjoy writing about teenagers who are just on the brink of adulthood - as Janna is at the start of the series, aged 16 (although that's actually quite 'old' for medieval time.) The age of the character tends to determine how the book is marketed - in this case as a Y/A novel, but I've received emails from many adults who have also enjoyed reading the series.
(Not necessarily relevant to the Janna books) How do you feel when someone else edits your work and you get it back?
It depends on who is doing the editing & providing the feedback, and whether or not I trust their judgment! It can be quite confronting having someone question what you've written, put red lines through it and, sometimes, suggest you do something quite different. On one occasion (writing the last Shalott novel) I pretty much had to start again from scratch - that was very difficult! After several weeks of stomping around muttering 'I can't do this', I finally sat down and gave it a go - and it was a MUCH better book because of it. I only did it because I trusted the very good editor at Random House - and she was right. If I feel very strongly about something (as has happened with my latest book, A Ring Through Time, due out next year) I'll argue my point. On this particular occasion I got my way, but I did go along with all their other suggestions. I constantly remind myself that while my story may be very clear in my head, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's clear to a reader - and that's why you need an editor!
You can find more about Flick and her books on her website.
gillpolack @ 2012-01-19T12:04:00
Everyone who commented yesterday said that the Middle Ages is/are/were/oughttobe plural. I did some booksearching to find out when "The Middle Ages is" and "The Middle Ages was" are used together in print, and it's invariably when the direct object is singular. In all other cases (and in some singular cases, too) "Middle Ages" takes a plural. I also found writers who went out of their way to avoid making a decision on this matter...
And that is my grand insight of the day.
And that is my grand insight of the day.
January 18, 2012
Five Things
1. I have a Very Important Question. Two Medievalists (who prefer to remain nameless, one of whom may well be me) disagree on whether it's "The Middle Ages is" (ie Middle Ages as collective singular) or "The Middle Ages are" (ie Middle Ages as a plural). Now I'm curious...
2. It's my stepfather's yarhzeit and I have a candle burning. I miss him.
3. I am two chapters into a book about pi - this is quite different to my usual reading, which would be a book about pie. I keep wanting to translate equations into recipes. I see no reason why recipes can't be expressed as quadratic equations and solved.
4. Summer has mysteriously returned.
5. I only have four things left on my must-do list for the day. Lots of crossings-out indicate that I've done a lot of things. This feels very wrong because actually it's been a quiet and lazy day. Obviously I'm contrasting with yesterday.
2. It's my stepfather's yarhzeit and I have a candle burning. I miss him.
3. I am two chapters into a book about pi - this is quite different to my usual reading, which would be a book about pie. I keep wanting to translate equations into recipes. I see no reason why recipes can't be expressed as quadratic equations and solved.
4. Summer has mysteriously returned.
5. I only have four things left on my must-do list for the day. Lots of crossings-out indicate that I've done a lot of things. This feels very wrong because actually it's been a quiet and lazy day. Obviously I'm contrasting with yesterday.
