I’ve been feeling a little guilty — I promised some fresh, blog-only content in the new year — and I absolutely have not delivered. I’ve been writing a bunch for Lodestar and That Thing, but nothing fresh for here.
So, the first person who yells at me in the comments gets to pick a topic/genre/main character’s name. Give me a crazy ass writing prompt!
We all write in the shadow of the mountain. At the peak — success. Whatever you think of as the goal of your writing — but I imagine most of us here on WP are all thinking along similar lines.
Writing as day job. Paying the bills with your writing, and your stupid, silly ideas.
Having someone read your writing — and say, “This stuff? This stuff right here? This is good stuff. The 
best stuff. I want to give up some space in my brain, and put your stuff in it.”
You know what I mean — they way that all of us make room in our heads for other creator’s characters, places, and ideas. For me, there can be no higher honor.
If you just think about the base of the mountain, it’s kind of exciting. There are many simple, easy, satisfying things you can do to prepare yourself for the climb. Like starting a blog, or making a writing schedule, or trying out different styles of writing, or just finding a really comfortable pencil.
And the simple magic of putting your head down and just writing.
But, sometimes you accidentally glance up — and take a long look towards the summit.
“How the hell am I going to get up there?”
There are so many pilgrims battling their way up the slopes, many never reaching the peak despite skill, luck and endless determination. And, let’s face it, there are many successful writers up on the peak who certainly don’t deserve it.
It’s freaking daunting, is what I’m saying.
As a logical, sane human you have to accept that even if you finish your work, even if it’s really, really good — there are still so many pitfalls, crevasses, and awful things that can happen in between that and reaching the peak.
So, yeah — this is the part where I’m supposed to have some advice, or say something supportive.
How about this?
Those moments you’re looking up at the top of the mountain, and feeling small, depressed and defeated — look over to the left, where I’m sitting. You can look at me, and I’ll look at you — and then I’ll shrug, and make a farty noise.
It’s not much, but it’s on the table.
And accept that the doubt is part of the gig, and get back to climbing. No use to worrying about the trolls in the heights, until you’ve made your way out of base camp.
Can I just say that writing on Google Docs has been awesome? There’s something tremendously useful about being able to add comments on the fly, without breaking up the flow of the narrative.
I am really prone to having an interesting idea, plugging in some vague reference to it in the story — then not being able to remember a few days, weeks [or hours…] later what the heck I was talking about.
Here’s an example.
I had a character that I was referring to as Madame XXXX. [Name redacted, because of reasons.]
So, like many fantasy writers [I assume.] I had the thought-burst. “Why am I using a French word in my uber-creative fantasy setting? And on top of that, this character is a young female, does ‘Madame’ make her seem too old? I don’t want to call her Miss XXXX, because that just sounds gross. Am I overthinking this? Is there a better honorific, or title I could use? WHELP, TIME TO WASTE SOME LIFE ON WIKIPEDIA.”
[I’m sure your thought-bursts are similar.]
Now, admittedly — I am a giant supporter of Who Fucking Cares?: Have a Manticore Attack school of fantasy writing. I think many genre writers get so bent out of shape justifying their world-building that it sucks all the fun out the fiction, and when in doubt I use a modern term, because it saves time for me and will be most easily understood by the audience.
But, this seemed to fall under the purview of But It Might Sound Cooler If… and WIKIPEDIA is Fun. So, I dove right in — and I came across this little snippet.
The French word evolved in turn from the Latin mea domina, meaning “my mistress (of the house)”.
-From the Wikipedia entry on Madame.
Now, I have a huge word-boner for Latin. It’s my go-to dead language for when I want a cool-sounding fantasy term. So after playing around with it for a bit, I came up with Meadoma as my new honorific. It sounds kind of Madame-y, but it more lyrical and not-French.
Success!
[Well, maybe — I’m already having second thoughts, and may shorten it to “Doma”.]
What was the point? Oh yeah, Google Docs!
So, instead of a cruddy Post-It Note or something, I made a Comment on the page about where I got the idea from, so when I come back through to edit in a month or two, there will be some sort of trail to my though process.
So, in summation: Google — send me a ChromeBook! One of the white ones, please.
Everyone’s filling the blog-waves with their New Year’s resolutions — so here’s my writing resolution.
5 pages a week on That Thing. Rain or shine. Hell or high water.
I started a schedule for myself just before Christmas, and I’m pleased that I’m every-so-slightly ahead of schedule. As of last week I was supposed to be at 55 pages — and I’m sitting pretty at 57. By the end of this week, I need to be sitting on 60.
I’m hoping to get ahead of schedule and stay ahead — but my creative and professional life has a way of throwing me curveballs consistently.
Compared to a lot of other ‘Pressers, I know this is a really conservative resolution. I’m looking at you Quill Wielder. But I’m hoping it’s something I can stick to it, and be cruising into 100+ pages by March — which should be very close to novel size, and something I can get serious about editing.
And after that — scary thoughts!
New page added for The Cost, if you want to read it straight through. Comments and criticism welcome!
Hmmmm….I’m hitting a mental snag. To me it’s completely obvious how Jonas is going to act in this situation, but within the context of this piece — I’ve really done very little to establish his motivations, morality, etc.
Thoughts? Read a la carte how well is this piece holding together for you?
Arg. Recovering from holiday weekend at day job , plus two of my co-workers are out. If I get a chance to breathe in the next few hours, I’ll crank out the next chunk of The Cost.
Sorry for the sporadic posting lately .
Celebrating my beloved’s birthday — no geek cuneiform today!
I’d love any sort of constructive criticism on The Cost – I’m writing one small chunk of it a day, and posting it to the site with very little editing or rumination.
You know, like I do.
This is a continuation of Another Story – and this character is very near and dear to my heart. I know a lot about him before and long after this moment, but I’m curious how effective this piece is without much context for the main character.
Let me have it!
And we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
And now we can return to the regular nerd-scribbling.
spell-sword.com 