Fantasist's Scroll

Unfortunately, that leaves little time to be creative.
Still, it’s that job that pays for this website, so I guess it’s not all bad! I have been writing a bit, or at least trying to write. At the suggestion of my therapist, who I can’t see right now thanks to insurance and job change issues, I was trying to write a story that did NOT include fantastic or magical or science-fictional elements. Honestly, it was going okay, but I just didn’t have much invested in the story, so I haven’t done well writing on it. Well, that and my total lack of time for writing and discipline. I still suffer from the illusion that my writing should be “inspired” and just flow naturally onto the page. Sadly, that’s just not how it is for most writers, especially the professionals.
Oh, but I do have an OpenOffice Story Templatethat you can download! (Just click the link and you’ll get it.) It might be a little buggy, but it should get you started. If you have problems, let me know and, if I have time, I’ll try to get them worked out.

I LOVE Friday the Thirteenth!
Why? Well, mainly because I’m perverse and everyone else seems to distrust it. Also, over the years, I’ve complained about my bad luck so often that I used to say the only time I had good luck was when everyone else had bad luck. So, Friday the Thirteenth, became one of my “lucky” days. Not sure how this one will turn out, but I’m hoping for the best!
Oh, and here’s a link to why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.

Hey, why not click that link. After all, what else could go wrong today?

More art!
Yeah, I seem to be stuck in a “water and rocks” phase, but that’s mainly because the free version of Vue d’Espirit that I’m using has very limited materials and objects from which to choose. Still, it is fun to mess around with now and again. I’ve been thinking “nature themes”, lately, but I’ve also been messing around with some more, well, abstract stuff as well. It’s a little strange, like most modern art, and, again, defined somewhat by my limited toolset, but, I think it’ll turn out okay. In the meantime, you can enjoy this simple scene.

I know why I have such trouble starting stories.
The answer came to me while reading someone else’s blog: Chad Fowler. He was talking about the book he’s working on and his observations of other people who want to write books. His observation, which I thought was dead on accurate, was that most people wanted to have written a book, not to go through the process of writing a book. I think many people dream of being a writer, but few dream of the work involved in writing. There are times that I can sympathize with that.
But, my problem tends to be indecision. I have a hard time picking which story is worth writing. Or, which story is most worth writing. So, I fret over which one to start until it just doesn’t interest me any more, or until I come up with enough pre-writing requirements, so that I never actually get to the writing part. Hmm, that therapy stuff must be making me more insightfull or something. Damn. One less excuse.

Here’s a variation on last week’s writing exercise.
Instead of using a “cliched” title or phrase, use the title from one of your favorite books or authors. Of course, you must write a totally different story than the one associated with your chosen title, but that can be half the fun. For example, you might want to rewrite a favorite story but with your own ideas about what the characters would do. Or, perhaps you want to continue a story where the author left off. Both are fine ways to start, but remember that you’ll need to go back and edit the characters so that they are yours, not your favorite author’s characters anymore. And, keep in mind, that means more than just changing the names!
Another possibility is to take a favorite title and write a story in a totally different genre. As an example, I love Ernest Hemingway and I think his titles are often quite evocative, but I love fantasy and science-fiction. So, perhaps “The Sun Also Rises” might be a good working title for a sci-fi epic! And, “The Old Man and the Sea” might take on some interesting connotations as a fantasy story filled with old gods and high magic.
The point here is to let your imagination run wild. This is meant to be an aid to creativity that gets you writing when you might have some trouble starting. As always, though, remember to change the title to your own and edit anything that doesn’t belong in your final work out before submitting your story for publication.

Or, at least looking like you do!
I’ve always loved sleight of hand and optical illusions, so plans for a gravity-defying room really tickled my fancy. It’s actually an old trick and not more complicated than attaching things to a wall instead of setting them on the floor, but the pictures alone are cool. And, the author gives you some handy hints for ways to make it look good if you want to try this yourself.
Hmm, an upside down room in my house…. Naw, it’d never sell if I had to get out later. But, the idea sure sounds like fun.

A working title helps me write.
When I was a kid in grade school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. It was the Fifth Grade, in Mrs. Ploen’s class, that I first started writing creatively and recieving praise for doing so. That was the same year that my older brother got tired of telling me about the science-fiction books he was reading and shoved Ringworld into my hands to read for myself. It was, as you might imagine, a pivotal year.
I still go back to the method of writing that I learned that year. Our teacher would write a title on the board for us and demand a story. I’m sure there were minimum requirements in pages or words or both, though they escape me now. That was our only constraint, however, that title. We could make our story into anything we wanted, as long as it had something to do with the title we’d been given. I managed to take “My Adventure At The Circus” and turn out a fantasy piece about a boy going to an underground kingdom of dwarves where he became the fated saviour of their entire way of life. Not bad for a kid in the Fifth Grade. Heck, there was even a recognizable plot. That’s more than I can say for some of my later work, frankly.
I still go back to that technique because it’s usefull for getting me started. These days, I may change the title when I’m done, but using that kind of working title gets me started, which is often the hardest thing in the world for me. This is a method that can work for you, as well. You can come up with a title in many different ways. You can use my very own Story Starter, or you can simply use a cliche. (Here’s one list of Cliches and Weak Phrases by Jessica Page Morrell to get you started, if you need help.) So, pick a cliched working title and then start to write a story. If nothing else, it will get you started writing something, which is the only way to produce anything. If you’re lucky, it will give you a story that can be worked into something for sale. Just don’t forget to change the cliched title to something that works better before you send it off!

So, what are you waiting for? Get writing!

I finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel!
Though it was very long and not the kind of thing I usually read, it was atually a very good book. Of course, part of the hold up on my end was all the stress of the divorce, but I’m getting so that is my normal state of affairs, if you’ll pardon the pun. In any case, it was a different sort of book which came to my attention thanks to one of the many “Best of…” lists for fantasy literature. What caught my attention, in this case, was the very unusual setting for a fantasy novel: Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. The overall theme of the book centered on the rebirth of magic in England as brought about by the two title characters, Jonathan Strange and his mentor Mr. Gilbert Norrell.
I would be hard pressed to layout a single plot that describes the book, because there really wasn’t a single plot that dominated the action. Instead, it seemed to me that there were several stories going on at once that were interwoven. In fact, it was what I liked least about the work. It seemed to promote style over, well, over virtually anything else. Normally, that would spell disaster for me in a work, and may have been one of the things that made this particular book so hard to read at times, but, in the end, it worked. Among the more interesting sub-plots was one involving a Faerie King who steals away the wives of two characters in the book. As Faeries are wont to do in legend, he enchants them and makes their lives a kind of marzipan hell filled with music and dancing and celebrations of a somewhat inhuman nature.
Another story, if you will, is that of Jonathan Strange’s education and his competition with his mentor Mr. Norrell. At first, these two are the only “practical” magicians left in the world, and they are not even aware of each other. Soon enough, though, their lives become quite intertwined. The author, Susanna Clarke, uses the personalities of these two men to clearly illustrate two very different kinds of scholars and magicians. Each man embodies a different view of magic and how it should work and, of course, they are at odds. It is quite interesting to see the ways in which the two men rub each other the wrong way, but still need each other, as no one else in the world understands the things they each do. It is an interesting study of need, compulsion, desire, and, in a strange way, repulsion.

Though this was a very good book, I certainly would not want to make a steady diet of this sort of writing. There were far too many slow points and sections for my taste, but it was worth wading through them to gather up the gems of description and the pearls of characterization which Ms. Clarke scattered liberally throughout.
I reccomend the book to anyone who has read a lot of fantasy and is looking for a new challenge. But, it is certainly not light Summer reading for the beach!