I’m letting my story rest for a few days, so today I’m working on a character profile for Faradris, Elvish language stuff, and playing around with VoodooPad, which is an offline wiki for Mac OS.

VoodooPad is pretty fun and easy to use. To create a new page you just select some text, click the “link” button, and start typing away when the new page is generated. Couldn’t be simpler. So far I’ve done really super-basic pages on the geography of the city-state of Searoyal and a couple of characters and important organizations. I’ll have to take some time to compile what I’ve got in my notes already and add it in.

Speaking of compilation, I’ve got a huge plastic tub full of old writing and other papers and notebooks that need sorting, and in many cases, junking. I’m trying to put behind me old stuff that I know is going nowhere, and organize the current stuff so I can work more effectively. I’ve got notes on Searoyal in every corner of this apartment, exploding from bookcases, letter pockets and my purse, just to mention a few places, and I could really do with adding some method to this madness. I have a cunning plan to set that all in motion . . .

I just finished my first completed story in years. The King’s Wedding (very much a working title) is 5,574 words long in its rough draft and set in Searoyal. I just checked, and the last full-length (non-flash fiction) story I finished was a Harry Potter fanfic written in February 2005. I feel like I’ve overcome a huge mental and emotional hurdle, and rather than being ashamed that I haven’t finished anything in so long, I am really . . . relieved. I can still do this. I can finish things. Writing is possible. My writer’s block is dead.

I wrote the ending of Faradris last night, 1,494 words from the villain’s point-of-view. I’m reasonably happy with it, and it gave me some ideas to shoot for. The real ending may turn out completely differently, and I kind of hope so, but this gave me a chance to see some weaknesses in my plan and to see some things to focus on while I work on the rough draft. Now I’ve just got to do some quick setting profiles and/or maps and I’m all set.

It’s harder in Fantasy than in any other genre, I think, to avoid the feeling of deus ex machina in the ending. I mean, the magic has to happen, you know? And I don’t really believe characters should be totally self-reliant, proving their mettle by how much butt they can kick. I find that sort of autonomy unrealistic and not very admirable. Fantasy is a metaphor for real life, and at least in my experience, in real life we do often have to rely on others, and that often takes more inner strength than trying to do things in our own power. It’s human nature: we want the credit, we want to prove we can do it, that we didn’t need anyone else. Even more difficult is being totally reliant on God. . . . Nobody wants to do that. I think characters who keep trudging on when hope is lost, relying on others and on a Power ouside their own, expresses a far deeper truth than, “Believe in yourself! You can do it!”

The difficulty is bringing those other, often magical elements into the story’s climax without giving the impression of a God-In-a-Box. I’m not sure I’m able to do that adequately.

On a related note, I’ve been struggling with this question: In a Fantasy story, what is the difference between magic and miracles? Does magic in a tale preclude the co-existence of the miraculous?

I’ve been taking care of some housekeeping that has long needed doing around here (basically my apartment is too small for all the stuff I’ve crammed into it), so I haven’t had much time to post or write. Fortunately though, the answers to story problems have been coming to me, albeit slowly and at random. Not the ideal situation, but you take what you can get.

I’d been deliberating over one particular character who never seemed to fit in, and a couple of nights ago I figured I’d better do some freewriting on him. I did, but only ended up with more questions, albeit more pertinent ones. Tired (and sick), I let it go for the time being.

Lying awake in the middle of last night, it dawned on me what had to happen, how another character would react to certain actions by this character (party of the first part), what she (party of the second part) wanted and how it would conflict with the desires of the party of the first part, and I figured it out. Mostly. I do find it peculiar that all along I sensed the first character’s arc didn’t fit in somehow, but found out exactly why and how weeks later.

He’s a dead man walking.

I’m here drinking a cup of black tea with too much cream (nice, admittedly) and recovering from a tiring weekend. I thought I’d just post an update on the writing.

Most of the work on Searoyal has been going on in my head lately. Fortunately, I’ve come up with some background for Avrillon, a Royal Herald, that needs typing out, and the elvish culture has been taking further shape in my mind.

I also have a much, much clearer picture of my main character for the first novel, Faradris, who she is and what her driving forces are, crucial for any main character. I’ve been reading in an older special issue of The Writer magazine about yearning and the role it plays in story: providing that initial epiphany that connects the reader to the story and gives it a soul. For some time now I’ve known Fara’s compelling need, but yearning is something deeper, I believe; it’s the thing that pushes her, and is closer to her soul-level response to her compelling need rather than the need itself, if that makes any sense. Not only that, but a realization about the setting and her place in it (she is a country girl who is conveyed unwillingly into the great island city-state) melded together, along with a memory of a book by Drea Leed on 16th century Flemish workingwoman’s dress, and I now can see her in my mind’s eye with clarity (that is, if I had the skill I could sketch her.) I know this is a key element in my ability to progress in story-planning.

I still don’t have a clear picture of my male principal character, Castien. I may have to do more freewriting on him before he’s ready. Fortunately, he can be started without. Fara is the one who was holding me back. I can’t help but wonder if Castien is not the right male principal, but only time and more writing will tell.

The thing that’s sort of a mixed blessing is that while considering these questions of yearning, I figured out the deepest motivation for the hero of Trouvere (I told you he was back) and it finally gelled. I can’t do anything on that book right now, and I’m not even exactly sure how to take notes on what I discovered, but I feel like I may be able to look at it soon without wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I’m still entering my book collection into LibraryThing. Working through the manga right now, and it ain’t pretty.

I managed to write 905 words of world-building for Searoyal last night, if you count the stuff I typed in from my notes the other day. Not really spectacular, and I need a lot more words if I’m going to meet my goals for the Writers’ Challenge at Dreaming in Ink, but hey, it’s something.

Fairy tales don’t teach children that monsters exist.
Children already know that monsters exist.
Fairy tales teach children that monsters can be killed.
– G. K. Chesterton

This tremendous quote was in an email Holly Lisle received from a mailing list subscriber, and I couldn’t resist posting it (especially as it’s Inklings-related).

I spent last evening working on worldbuilding for Searoyal, the first time in a couple of weeks. That means I actually have a word count to add to my challenge progress meter! Amazing! It was hand-written work though so I’ll have to enter it into a file before I can get a count. Anyway, I feel pretty good about it. I mostly worked on the culture of the Elves (yes, I’ve got Elves. It’s just the way it is.) I think I’m doing something a bit different with them, something that possibly hasn’t been done before. I’m not taking any bets on it or anything, but it could be!

Oddly enough, my muse tells me there are beastmen. I’m not even sure what that means or what sort of trouble I’m going to have to go to because of it, but the image in my mind was fairly clear: not human, hairy, a lionish face, but wearing velvets, a lace falling collar and a duelling pistol. Go figure. I keep arguing with myself about this, but I have a feeling I may not get out of it. Beastmen. Yuck.

I’ve been taking notes on some historical stuff, and he sprang back to mind. And by he I mean the main character of Trouvere. I’m telling him to shut up for now, but he never takes no for an answer.

I sound like a crazy person.

Or a writer.

Wait. Are those the same thing?

Now that I’m happy with the state of Special Patrol Group (my hard-drive), I’ve been going through my library, setting aside books to take to Powell’s City of Books for sale, and writing down all the ISBNs so I can update my LibraryThing. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to start over from scratch; I set aside so many books to sell this year without taking note of what they were that it’s ridiculously obsolete. There are also a lot of books I haven’t added yet, so starting over will be best. I’m going to keep track of what I’ve read, what I haven’t read, and which don’t have covers in their entries at LibraryThing (and therefore need to be scanned).

As for the writing, I had a lot of catching up on personal stuff to do over the past week or two, but I’ll start writing again tonight, beginning with some crits for my writing group, Dreaming in Ink. Then on to just a little more world-building before I start the current novel, Faradris.

I’m working through my novel folders, and I successfully navigated my “Development Hell” folder, where I hid away all the novels I couldn’t bear to look at after wrestling with them for frustrated months. Most of those were not salvageable. I did keep some characters and some notes, and stuck a couple of things in my “Read Later” folder, because they looked worthwhile but were too long to read in a sitting.

As I’m going through all these old pieces, I’m reminded of a Livejournal post by Elizabeth Bear on Conscious Incompetence and the other three stages of learning a new skill.

I think I’m at a stage of Conscious Incompetence in my storytelling, but moving toward Conscious Competence. I’m able to pinpoint what is wrong with most of these old manuscripts, and I can almost feel where the plot is going wrong (or barely exists, as the case may be). I’m not sure I know how to fix these problems yet, but I think maybe I could. I’m ready to move past this state in which I’m too afraid of letting myself go creatively, and everything I write seems robotic and overly calculated. I think I need to finish something new soon. I have a Searoyal short story I’m in the middle of; that might be a good choice.

Or maybe it just feels like a thousand.

Over the past weekend and yesterday, I’ve been going through my very old writing files, looking through them, keeping what seemed salveable and tossing the unredeemably stupid.

It’s interesting reading. I can tell which ideas I wrote before I learned a thing about solid story structure. Some of the actual prose is very good, and leaves me with doubt that I can write anything so inspired anymore; that is, I wonder whether I haven’t learnt a bit too much. I doubt that’s the case. Anyway, even if I have, what good is luminous prose without a solid foundation beneath it? I’m not into literary fiction.

I’ve written a lot of fanfiction. A lot. Mostly Harry Potter. It’s surprising how good some of it is, and most of my finished pieces are short fanfic. I think I was writing the Hufflepuff-centric fanfics during that transitional period when I’d started to figure out how to make stories work, but still felt the sense of freedom that comes from knowing you aren’t writing for publication. I am learning slowly how to get that feeling back, even when writing original work. If I find I can’t get there, I may take a foray back into fanfic writing for a short while; if I can experience that again, maybe I can recapture it in my original work too. That may not be necessary, but looking at the fanfic was enlightening.

I had to trash a lot of my original stuff, but some of it was very old. Some of it is certainly salvageable, and the ideas in some were too good to part with. I have a lot more to go through, but when I’m done I’ll finally feel able to set up a new system for organizing and back up.