School interview, Erskine Park High, NSW - Part II

And here's the second half of the great questions from the students of Erskine Park High:

12. Why did you give Lena red hair? Was it because it was bright or uncommon? Thisuri

I wanted to use the idea of how unusual red hair is, particularly among blond Scandinavians, and use it as a symbolism of the power of the rune magic. Red hair is definitely uncommon, but even more so in Lena and Calum’s world where it indicated the latent power of a vala or duelva. Red hair is much more common in Britain, or the Isles of the novel’s world, so it also added an element of confusion and a reason why Bjorn might want to take Lena when he was raiding in the beginning of the book. Lastly, I had browny-orange hair and freckles as a kid. I don’t have much of my hair now (and it has become brown) but maybe I was putting myself in the story again.

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School interview, Erskine Park High, NSW - Part I

A class of grade 9 students over at Erskine Park High have been reading The Runes of Odin and sent me a whole slew of great questions about the book, my writing process and tips for being a writer. Below are the first ten questions and my answers, with the first name(s) of the student(s) who asked each question. It is a great pleasure to hear from them and I'd like to thank their teacher, Natali, for setting this all up.

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Tunes to write to

Currently finishing the first draft of The Decay Chain and with the help of a friend from Germany, have found a number of music albums that are really providing the perfect paradoxical mix of angst, chill, atmosphere, energy and darkness for the book.

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The Runes of Odin - initial concepts

Where did I get the idea for The Runes of Odin, my first YA fantasy novel? Generally with any story, I have an idea for the setting first, and then work out who could / would live in such a place, how the environment has shaped them, what challenges them, what the character wants.

With Runes, it was almost as though the setting and the characters, Lena and Calum, arrived simultaneously in my thoughts. I have always been interested in cultural clashes, ever since I first learned some words of German in grade 2, and other in Italian in grade 3... and then lived in Germany as an exchange student when I was 16. I have travelled a lot, Europe, Asia, South America, but it’s only by living in a place for a while that I feel any real change. The old clichés of expanding horizons through travel I think only really sticks if you dive in and stay long enough to try to become as much of a local as you can. It’s through that struggle that you are challenged, linguistically, socially, culturally; that you are forced to re-evaluate your own assumptions by seeing the world not only through the eyes of other people, but people who have been shaped by an environment very different to your own. Everyone has a home that serves as their foundation, but what if you learn to love another place long enough for it to become ‘home’. How does that change you?

With Runes, I wanted to look at two characters who were already outsiders, who were displaced from a young age and had fewer ties to their current ‘homes’ than others. Of course, I wanted them to eventually meet (in fact, their meeting and getting to know each other is the essence of the book and the trilogy), but I wanted them to first show the reader their worlds through their own eyes, get the reader to sympathise with both sides of the impending conflict. No blacks and whites, just greys, mixed sympathies and the power of learning that your enemy is a real person with their own real fears.

A setting of northern Scotland or Ireland and the historical raids, invasions and settlement by the Norse (Vikings) and other northern peoples has always been of interest. How better for two impressionable young people to meet from opposite sides of a cultural divide?

The late German grandfather of the exchange family I lived with was a soldier on the Russian front during World War II. He was an amazingly generous man and wanted nothing more than for his family to know and love the people of other countries and cultures. He reasoned that if we all understood one another then there would be no wars. This then was the theme for my novels: learning to love the enemy by breaking down cultural walls. Learning to see the beauty in others’ ways of life.  

And having fun with it all with adventure, and mythology, and above all, the Runes.

Making memorable scenes

Every scene has to be memorable, otherwise what is the point? No one wants to read about ordinary characters, ordinary scenes, ordinary conversations. Banality is your bane.

Construct scenes (and populate with characters) that highlight something unusual, something weird, something amazing. Don’t describe a room or a city or a natural scene with the average or predictable. Gloss over those aspects. If you mention them, do it in passing, or if it is relevant to an upcoming action. Otherwise let the reader assume. You don’t need to do all the work for them – let your readers put their own ideas and expectations into your work and personalise it.

Instead, mention what is different about the scene. What is memorable. The why of including this scene in your writing at all.

Each scene should be unusual, or a usual setting for an unusual happenstance, or a normal setting that contrasts with something horrible, amazing, fantastic that is occurring to the character.

Preaching

Writing is hard. This is an oft repeated claim, or statement, or warning. And it is true for me, presumably for most. Writing is hard not because I have no ideas, or can’t find the words or have doubts about my ability and my prose. Writing is difficult and challenging because of all of these issues, but it is hard because in everyday life’s endless events and potential distractions, forcing myself to sit down regularly and just write is a constant struggle.

For some, I understand it may be easy to do this, to sit and want to write and then do so. At times it is, when the words flow, the ideas lurk in the background just waiting to be given form, but in general writing is a discipline and a habit that requires constant vigilance and constant tending. Finding the time isn’t hard. I am a father of two young children and I work full-time and I don’t leave the household chores to my wife, but I can easily, easily find time. There’s at least a half hour every day I could write. In half an hour I can write a page; a page a day is a novel a year. Writing is hard because I have to summon the will to sit myself down in that chair and let the words come. I have to turn off the TV, or close the book, or turn off the computer game, or any other easy ‘I’ve-just-worked-all-day-and-want-to-relax’ activity and write.

For some, it might be relaxing to write. It isn’t for me. It isn’t a chore, though it can feel like it. But it is a challenge and it requires discipline, not least because writing a novel is such a long-term project. There is nothing more insidious than the thought that not writing today doesn’t matter, not writing that page is irrelevant when it’s taken three years to get this far.

Writing is hard, and like any other discipline, if you do it anyway, the reward for achieving and completing that story, whether or not it ever makes its way out into the world, is that much greater.

Lazy sentences (lazy author?)

When editing my own work, the following words keep popping up and are almost always indicators of a sentence that just isn’t right or is carrying a few too many kilos:
- here
- there
- though
- now
These are worse than adverbs for me and deserving of instant death.
I blame the sentences. Tisn’t my fault.

raison d'ecrire

I’ve finished my first (and second and third) draft of my novel. The first draft took me about 3 years, the next two a few months, and I know I’m not there yet, I’m not at that finished product that I would feel confident in submitting. In fact, I may not be able to get there at all.

I’ve written YA novels before and found that, right or wrong at the time, I didn’t need to redraft a lot. I wrote them, I sent them off soon after, worked with an editor and they were done. Short, sharp, satisfying. For a while. Now, I look back and wonder if I spent enough time on them, if I couldn’t have worked harder on redrafting to a standard that will keep me content to look back at those books and be happy with them. Or is that a pipe dream? Am I always going to look back and see the errors, inconsistencies and literary solecisms in my work ?

This time around, with a manuscript the same length as my previous three novels combined, redrafting is essential. Quite frankly, I’ve overwritten the beginning and underwritten the ending in my rush to finish it. I know what the problems are, I’ve had some feedback from readers that ranges the gamut from compelling mastery (yes, that was from family) to finding it difficult to read (someone more objective). The problem is, and will always be, resisting that intense urge to finish it, wrap it up in a bow and send it off right now. Common advice publishers, agents and established authors give aspiring writers is to rewrite more; you’ve spent all that time writing the first draft, so why not spend a little bit more and polish it up?

So, looking down the barrel of three years of working on a single project, I start to wonder if it’s even of a standard that will be acceptable in a professional market, even after the rewrites. What if it isn’t? Can I accept that it was something that I used to further hone my skills? Can it be a stepping stone to (fingers crossed) future success? To be honest, that’s bloody hard to accept. I don’t have that many books in me and this one took a lot out. To think that all those hours won’t result in a shiny new novel in my hands is very hard to take. And I’m not talking about money (not only). I’m talking about the recognition and reinforcement and validation that comes from having your work accepted by other professionals. It’s easy to say that I write for writing’s sake, for the story, for the act of creation, for the achievement, but I don’t. I write to create stories that others will enjoy. Money may follow, but it hasn’t yet, and may never, so I can dream of it, but I think I have proven to myself that I’m not writing for money.

These are common themes for authors, I would guess. And for artists of all kinds. They are the core of why writing novels can be so demanding. It’s easy to see the final version of a story and be in awe of an author being able to write something so good. In reality, he or she probably didn’t. It was built up, a layer cake of work that resulted in the final version.

So, on that note, in an attempt to aspire to a certain level of quality, I redraft.  

Diffuse(d) intensity

I’m now in the final stages of redrafting my fourth novel, tentatively titled “The Bhel Sea”. I previously wrote a YA trilogy squarely based on Nordic mythology, but for this latest story, I wanted to create my own world, own peoples and histories. A big ask, and overwhelming at times, but satisfying when little parts of this new world become filled in, bit by bit. On the other hand, this has been the source of a universe of frustration for one (or actually two) big reasons*: my wife and I had a baby just after I started planning the novel. Then two years later we had another one. All of a sudden, my consistency in producing a novel a year nose-dived. I’m absolutely sure this is the same for most people, if not with kids popping out, maybe with other life distractions and interludes and events. But for me, having now finally completed this new, longer work of fiction, I can look back and see just how amazingly difficult it can be to adjust a writing habit around family. And that’s how I thought of it, which already shows the difficulties I had. You don’t adjust anything around family, not when it arrives in the form of newborns. Family was it. Basta. Period. At least at first. Gradually, over weeks and months I found time around work and home to plan some more, write some more, create my world some more. But it’s tough, and frustrating (really? only 30 minutes this week?), and guilt-inducing (shouldn’t I be spending time with daughters/wife/parents instead? shouldn’t I be working on my novel instead of just spending time with daughters/wife/parents?) and the fear of failure and of writing drivel and of never improving sufficiently is ever-present. I guess I had to learn a new way of finding time. I call it “diffuse intensity”.

- think about the story most days, particularly while commuting to generic office job that isn’t particularly fulfilling
- take notes and record ideas at spare moments
- wait days, sometimes weeks
- then write your butt off when you get half a day or even a few hours.

It still adds up. It still got me to the end. Maybe half an hour every day of the week would have been better, but for me it just wasn’t possible.

Most of all, I learned something about what realistic expectations were. Maybe 500 words in a weekend was all that I could do and not the 2000 words I expected. Maybe the final chapters wouldn’t be done in 3 weeks, but would need 12 weeks. In fact, I originally hoped to have the story written in just under 2 years. It’s now almost 3 and a half. And all of it is OK. It really isn’t a race.

Let’s have another list and call them rules. Here’s my five for writing with a young family:

1. Don’t start. Quit now.
2. If you do start, don’t expect to get anything more than an hour or two clear in any day week.
3. Don’t insist on a certain start or finish time. (You won’t get them. If you get a finish time, your 1 year old will bring it forward to 2 minutes after your start time.)
4. Don’t think you can have special music, or quiet time. (You’ll almost certainly have Dora the Explorer, The Wiggles or Play School on in the background. These can all add flavour to that fight scene you’re writing.)
5. Be grateful if your partner understands what you are doing, but don’t expect him/her to. Don’t expect him/her to read what you write straight away, or to even like what you have written. (Raising one child is a full-time job. Add more jobs for more kids. Reading a 145,000 word fantasy epic might be one job too many.)

Or just break all these rules, like I did.

*For the record, my kids are each worth a best-seller to me (i.e. true love). This isn’t a “oh-poor-me-who-has-a-family-whinge” but it might sound mighty close to it…. Maybe not three best-sellers though.

Change of scenery

I’ve been working on an adult spec fiction novel for a few years now and finally have a completed first draft… and a list of intended changes almost as long. Redrafting is hard. Editing is hard. New words are much easier, much more attractive. Maybe that’s why I’m a writer, not an editor?

Getting motivated is the key. One trick that works for me is simply moving to another room without all the books, references, maps, notes cluttering up the workspace. Staring at a different patch of wall. Sitting in a different chair. Tis simple, but gets me out of the long write and into a different (and hopefully shorter) mode. Change the font size of your work, change the font, stick the words in a text reader program, and of course, print them out on paper (coloured?) and the words look different without being different. All helps. Can’t really hurt anyway.