Paksworld

It’s been a very trying race for Crown of Renewal‘s jockey, as we were blocked,  forced back, had mud kicked onto us, tried to find holes…had those holes abruptly filled by another horse’s big broad butt,   were bumped hard, found other holes, some of which led nowhere at all except to more bumping and fending off other jockeys’ whips.    In fact, all the other horses in the race were trouble:  Fickle Fate,  Interruption,  New Assignment,  HellVirus,  Bad Timing,  Pain in the Neck,  Complication, Accident, Family Crisis.  All ridden by jockeys with the intent of ruining Crown‘s race.  Read the rest of this entry »

The hierarchy of writing-research starts with personal experience.    If you have ever cooked a meal,  mucked out a stall,  driven a car, or fallen out of a tree, you have a wealth of sensory inputs as well as intellectual understanding of those experiences available to use in a story.   You know, in the most direct way, what it’s like.

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After multiple false starts, the braid is well on its way…and it gets easier as it goes along.    It would have been nice to be here a month ago…no, two months ago…but all the braids back then tangled into impenetrable knots.   And all because I kept starting at the wrong point.    If you mistake the beginning,  nothing else fits.

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Anyone who’s taken a journalism class, or written for a newspaper, is familiar with the “Five Ws” which–canonically–are supposed to be at the head of the story.   Also with “inverted triangle” structure.    Most of the time, novel structure is not the same, but keeping readers oriented to person, place, and time is–for most, not all–important.   Even more important–though hidden from readers–is keeping the writer oriented to the Five Ws (and more.)

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This prologue was written way, way back, in the days when I was writing Oath of Fealty and had no idea what the mysterious thing was, where it would turn up, or how it would function.    But it actually started farther back than that,  decades before I  started the first Paks book.    It started with some verses and some music, back in the day when I wrote some of both (not outstanding, nothing worth pursuing with the level of musical incompetence I had.)    “Three white towers in an empty land, red sand like an endless sea…”   That image stuck with me, and became Old Aare when I started writing about Paks.

Some of you may figure out more than has yet been told, and I would ask you not to speculate out in the open too much  about it, just in case you spoiler it for others.    (If I need to open another spoiler topic, I’ll do that.)    Below the break, the non-prologue…as this is not really a snippet (though tagged as one) but a non-snippet, a bit that won’t be in the book.

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Editor has approved the title for Book V:  Crown of Renewal.    Scheduled to release late May 2014, though that’s always subject to change .   You will soon notice that title as a category (like, um, for this post.)

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I’d been struggling with a chapter–and specifically the first scene in that chapter–for weeks, off and on, in and around others.    It’s pivotal to a very important plotline and also to the chronological tangle previously  mentioned.   I’ve rewritten it.  I’ve written completely new versions, not looking at the old one.  I’ve cut and pasted…cut and not pasted…moved things, ripped things out, added stuff…and nothing was quite right.  Today it began to make more sense (well, I understand what it has to do better, maybe) but something was still missing.  Finally, the missing detail was outlined for me  (X needs to have found/be holding Y), but what the heck was Y?

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A:  When you get another email offering you a fantastic idea for a novel because the idea person admits to not being able to/wanting to/having time to write it, but is sure you could do it and then the two of you could split the no-doubt-substantial money.

It doesn’t work that way.   But some people still think it does…or could.  And there’s no polite way to explain (I’ve tried, with those who’ve caught me in person.)

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As some of you with an interest in publishing news already have heard,  NightShade Books is in the process of a potential acquisition.   NightShade published my short fiction collection Moon Flights.   The acquisition hangs on the percentage of Night Shade authors who agree to substantial contractual changes in existing contracts;  the terms are beneficial to writers only in that they may prevent works being dragged into the endless whirlpool of NightShade’s predicted declaration of bankruptcy.

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A listserv I’m on mentioned that a member had published a review of Game of Thrones in a major market,  so I wandered over to look.    Here’s the link: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1543&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint

I was impressed with the review on several counts, but the one I want to bring up here is the way other reviewers, critics, and readers talk about characterization, especially in the area of morality/ethics and spirituality.  This isn’t about GRRM’s books, per se, but about a way of looking at all books, and considering how a writer’s view of reality affects how that writer constructs characters.   Right now–in the review cited and in other writing about Game of Thrones–Martin epitomizes one particular view of reality, history, and human nature.    Tolkein is often cited as his opposite. Thus it’s important to use language appropriate to those fundamental views–which Teitelbaum does in her review,  and many others do not.

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