Kellen scrambled over the stony lip, sending a shower of pebbles tumbling back down the mountain. Having regained the safety of the path, he allowed himself a well-earned break. On hands and knees he tried in vain to get his breath back, panting in the rarefied atmosphere. The air was clean and crisp, but really too thin Kellen thought to himself. Climbing mountains was not something he made a habit of. Continue reading
Quick shoutout to my brother and sister whose birthday just passed.
Happy birthday Goh Go and Jeh Je!!
Here’s the short story, The Third Dragon, that I wrote for my elder brother to mark the occasion. Jeh Je there’s a cameo in there for you too.
More ado to come later. For now it’s time for bed. It’s been a long couple of days.
Mistborn: The Final Empire, Mistborn: The Well of Ascension and Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
Well, where to start? I’m having trouble sleeping so rather than waste the times tossing and turning I’ve decided to blog about something I’ve been meaning to tackle for some time. Goodness knows I haven’t been devoting much time to my blog recently. I’ve been too busy writing but that’s probably not a bad thing.
I finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy and what can I say about them but wow. I loved it. Detailed magic system. Its own mythology. Great action. In fact, it is the way that these all come together that is truly superb. And Vin kicks ass.
I, like many others, came to Brandon Sanderson only after hearing the news that he would be taking on the monumental task of finishing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This of course is old news. I personally think he’s doing a great job. That the story is finishing (and hopefully will finish) fantastically is of course due to Jordan’s imagination but it will be Brandon’s hard work that will get us there at the end. That hard work is something that, I humbly submit, I am coming to appreciate. Still when this was still new news, I checked out Sanderson’s credentials on the web. And so I was introduced to the works of Brandon Sanderson.
His website, www.brandonsanderson.com, features sample chapters for several of his works. I haven’t read Elantris properly yet but Mistborn is there too. Those samples were enough to get me enthused about this author. I think I tracked down The Way of Kings first, a huge book, the first in a forthcoming gargantuan series to rival Wheel of Time. I won’t say much about it here but it’s a page turner too. In it Sanderson takes a common fantasy trope involving prophecy and puts a sick twist on it. Fantastic.
It’s something that Brandon seems to like to do. In the Mistborn trilogy he takes stereotypical fantasy elements and turns them on their heads. The dark lord wins. Prophecy. Heroes. He innovates by challenging the status quo and he pulls it off satisfyingly well. I haven’t read the short story yet but ironically even his own laws aren’t sacred. In Mistborn: The Alloy of Law he breaks his own rule that guns don’t belong in fantasy.
The series is great. If you like the books I do, then read this one.
What I really want to talk about though are the annotations to be found through the Mistborn portal on his website. These annotations give chapter by chapter commentary on the books. They are a fabulous insight into his writing process. Personally, they demonstrated to me that books don’t come fully and perfectly formed. Sanderson shares with us what his thoughts were as he wrote, what he was trying to achieve, what he changed, what options he had. Sometimes he wrote one thing one way but somehow came to change it to the complete opposite and it ended up perfectly. This could be on things of small consequence but one notable example was that originally, Vin, the female lead character, began her existence as a boy. Did I mention she is awesome?
His notes give me an idea of the sheer volume of work that goes into writing a book. There are all sorts of useful and interesting notes about how the stories were built, shaped and reshaped. He speaks frankly about structure, pacing, tension, character development and screen time; a veritable treasure for anyone looking to see how a story gets made. It was reassuring to see that it’s not all about divine inspiration but that hard work for mere mortals like me can put together an excellent story. It’s god-hard work for sure but there is hope.
I feel privileged to be able to access the thoughts and reflections of such a successful (and honest) writer. Readers check out the books. Writers check out the notes. Good night.
Hard work ahead. I think I’ll head to a cafe.
Tinkering with words. Yay
I just returned from a short trip home to Dubbo. I have been lazy and hadn’t written anything for more than a week but got the urge to pick up my pen. I was trying to bash out an additional scene to ‘White Mist. Red Evening’ (I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be not working on that) and I was regularly interrupted by customers entering my parents’ takeaway shop.
Although lacking in inspiration it simply felt good to be writing again, to get the creative juices churning. In fact, what I was writing was a mess, things bubbling up in my mind and threatening to run away. I had to get them down as quickly as possible and to be torn away to some other task was frustrating in the extreme.
I think it’s important in this early creative stage just to try get down all that primordial goo down on to paper and worry about it crystallising into something structured and polished later. I’m certainly not at the genius stage where everything that flows from my pen is gold and stardust. Write enough words and there’s bound to be a gem in there somewhere.
Serving customers is what a restaurant is all about so that was all to the good. I can put down a thrilling novel or my guitar mid-song but the act of creation is different. I feared to lose whatever words were bubbling up and what momentum I had with them. Obviously this kind of multitasking is asking for trouble and now I’ve experienced firsthand the frustration of having the flow interrupted. The tough question is whether to start writing in such conditions in the first place.
Well that’s it for now and for this year. People seem to be getting in the New Year celebrations mood and it’s catching. It’s been a good year, 2011.
Happy New Year!
It took four days of writing and an additional day typing it up on the laptop but I have just completed my first story. The first draft that is. It’s come in at 5,389 words, some of which are editorial notes so they don’t really count. Is that long or is it short? I have no idea. It feels short but it is just an episode of a greater story set in a novel that is still bubbling away in my head.
It’s also light when compared to the four days I spent writing it but the truth is I never really wrote for more than a couple of hours a day. The final session I wrote 900 words in 90 minutes. That’s probably just shy of my goal: 2000 words in three hours writing. I don’t write that fast or that long yet but that’s okay for now.
I want to talk about the myriad details that went into creating the story, all the cosmic gears that fell into place to drive the writing but without the actual story in front of you I’m sure it would be very boring. And since only the first draft is complete I’m not ready to ‘open the door’ so to speak.
I will say a couple of things on it though. The working title is “White Mist. Red Evening” (sounds like chengyu, those four character Chinese idioms. I wonder how it translates in Chinese). The plot was inspired by a dream fragment, a visual that defied the odds and stuck with me upon waking. It happened to also come with (or was that later?) a single word in English, “banaca” (don’t ask me, I have no idea why). Combine with some Magic and running it through the old Japanese translatorfier and I had the basics of my story.
The characters actually came earlier, out of one of my sewing projects, but they were just minor characters waiting patiently in the green room of my mind.
The final piece came when I was sitting in the library. I was working with Candy Wars, my first story that I’ve mentioned before. King says that you have to keep riding the wave of enthusiasm when you are writing a story. You need to keep momentum otherwise the characters grow stale and you’ll lose the passion. I was doing that for Candy Wars but I hit a wall which will require a bit of ground work on my part.
So I was sitting on a couch stuck for inspiration. I sat there and let my mind drift, almost nodding off at times, for an hour and a half. I had been watching the people come in and if you’ve ever been to Customs House library you’ll see that all the newcomers do the same thing and that is they take touristy photos of themselves standing over the model of Sydney set into the floor.
I’m not sure how or what but something clicked and I had my setting. There was even a guy sitting next to me on the couch dropping f-bombs every second word over the phone. He made it into the story too.
I did worry that I was not following King’s advice to stick with the first story. Of course having started the second one, should I then halt its momentum and slog away at the first one? In this case I think the answer was clear and it worked out but I can see it could be a nasty dilemma in the future.
The story seemed to flow from scene to scene as the ink flowed from pen to paper. One funny thing did occur while I was writing. I ran out of pages in my notebook which was a first for me as a writer. Then the ink ran out of my pen. These are good things to happen to a writer (so long as you have more of them).
Another piece of advice from On Writing is that once you finish the first draft you should put it away for six weeks or sufficient time to come at it with fresh eyes when it’s time for the second draft. So I’m going to put my baby into the incubator for a couple of weeks at least. Sleep tight.
There are a couple of rules for writers that most people could guess at. One should write every day. Secondly, you should have a place to write that is free from distractions. Well these are not really rules but they are truly great pieces of advice, especially for fledgling writers such as myself. I’m talking about the second rule today but it is related to the first anyway. If you’re going write everyday then it helps if your writing place is easily accessible.
In his most excellent book On Writing, Stephen King prescribes a writing environment free from distractions. No phone, no copies of the latest novel you’re reading, no internet, no blogging and definitely no Facebook. In fact since I’m currently using good old pen and paper for a first draft I can probably do away with the whole computer. A prison cell in other words. If your cell has a window it had better look onto a brick wall or empty car park.
I must say that I agree with the above in theory; I just haven’t gotten around to installing a prison cell or buying an office for writing. Instead I usually write lying on the carpet of my lounge room or at the kitchen table when I’m in house. Other places I’ve written are in a secluded park (like a secret garden) under the train lines between Milsons Point and North Sydney, on the couches of various shopping centres, in libraries too (Steve actually says park benches and library carrels should be last resorts).
Recently I’ve been most productive when I take my notebook and pen to the Westfield shopping centre and choose a café I haven’t tried. I like to people-watch over a coffee and although there are lots of people and noise all around I find that once I start writing these are quite easy to tune out. I don’t bring the latest novel. I don’t have the internet to tempt me. I order an espresso (which obviously doesn’t last very long) and get down to business. The Westfield is only a short walk from my home though rain still proves to be a deterrent for getting to my writing place.
Provided it’s not too busy the café staff will let you sit there for hours having only ordered one coffee. The only problem with this is that if I have the coffee late in the afternoon, say 4pm, I have trouble getting to sleep that night. But that’s a probably a good thing as it pushes me to do my writing earlier in the day. Steve gets his 2000 word quota written in the morning and then has the rest of the day to do other things which seems like a good goal.
The beauty of writing is that you can do it almost anywhere so really all it takes to write consistently is discipline (maybe I’ll write about this when I have some). But café writing combines some fun activities and while I haven’t found my Elephant House yet (none of the cafes in my area have the right vibe), cafes as a group have been where I’ve gotten some good writing sessions in.
I’m in the middle of writing my first serious attempt at a story and took a time-out to do a spot of research on the origins of chocolate. I love it when the real world fits in perfectly with what I am writing.
My muse is smiling.
William Sue 