Positive Thinking and the Impossible

  So, big month coming up, I've entered NaNoWriMo.

  For those who don't know, that's National Novel Writing Month. It started in the USA but is global now, so I suppose it should be called InNoWriMo, but that's even worse. Anyway, it's a challenge to write a novel in one month, November, of at least 50,000 words.

  It's impossible, really. Occasionally a blitz writer might be able to do it, but nobody else: all we mortals can manage is to put together a decent first draft, and go over the edit later. But that's OK, because the point is just to motivate authors into spending time at the writing desk instead of getting distracted all the time. Finding the space to write can be difficult because life keeps getting in the way. NaNoWriMo gives you a reason to push all that aside, just for a month, and get a good chunk of work done instead of just dribs and drabs.

  So I'm doing my Troy story that I mentioned last time. The amount of research and background work has been astonishing: I have dozens of pages of notes now. I also have the basis for how I want to tell the story. Partly that will involve ordinary people, not just the heroes and kings who dominate the Homeric myth. I'm going to add in a chariot builder in Troy, and a painter who came to the city to make his fortune. From Greece there will be a farmer caught up in the war too. All these guys just want to live through it, but they suffer loss and hope as the struggle goes on.

  Can I do 50,000 words in a month? Probably not, and even if I do it won't finish the story: I'll need 80,000 at least, and that's too many. But I'll give it a bash. Besides the discipline, there's another advantage to NaNo, which is the community of writers who are involved. People in the Devon area meet up sometimes in Barnstaple, which I'm looking forward to already. A chance to exchange troubles and triumphs is always good, and we can discuss the relative merits of similes and metaphors over a mug of mocha too.

  Yes, I know, my idea of fun is dreadfully sad.

  At any rate, this means my blogs might come a bit more often in November, as I post updates on how things are going. I have a horrible feeling I may have bitten off more than I can chew here, but we'll see. Positive thinking, that's the trick. Wish me luck!

The Best Fantasy Ever Written

  I recently had a bit of a setback. Having rewritten Starfire, I published chapter one in a couple of my circles on Google+, only to be told by a few people that it read like an info dump. Which is a wee problem, because that was my way of getting around other tricksy bits in the story. So now Starfire is on the back burner again (i.e. I'm flummoxed and my poor weary brain needs pondering time).

  Normally 'pondering time' means me sitting at my desk and staring out of the window, thinking vaguely about this and that before popping down the pub for a soother. I get a lot of good thinking done at the pub, don'cha know. But not this time.

   I'm taking on a large project indeed, one that other writers have tackled but none to my own satisfaction. It's the Trojan War, to my mind not just the best fantasy tale but the finest story ever told. It has everything; love and revenge, pride, honour, and broader ideas like the clash and change of cultures. We see the idealised warriors fall, while less martial but more thoughtful men triumph, as Odysseus does. It's just a hypnotic saga, so brilliantly brought to life by Homer that it still fascinates us three thousand years on.

  It presents challenges I've never faced. One is that we all know what happens at Troy, we know the fate of the main players. The interest has to lie not in 'what happens next?' but in how it happens, and why. I think I'll also introduce lesser characters, people not mentioned in The Iliad at all - a farmer from Sparta maybe, sucked into a war he doesn't understand or care about: and a horse whisperer who came to Troy to make his fortune and instead has found conflict. There'll be others too, I'm sure. Troy isn't a new story so I have to make it feel new, and this might be how I can.

  Another challenge is the sheer scale of the story. Google 'The Catalogue of Ships' if you like, and look at the sheer number of captains, kings and countries involved. And that's just the Greek side! So far I've got nearly 30 sheets of typed notes, and I'm not nearly done; I'm still reading two different reference books and one other fictional version of the war. To be honest it's pretty scary. I've no idea whether I have the skills to manage a novel (or trilogy, most likely) of this size. But you know, that's part of writing. The day it no longer excites you, it's time to stop.

  So here it goes. Volume one is tentatively called The Long-Haired Kings, by the way, meaning the Greeks, but I have no real idea what to put on the cover except vague thoughts about Greek art. If you know of any painting or fresco that might suit, or where I can see a selection of such art, let me know, eh? I could just do with a bit more research to tackle,

Questions and Reflections

  Recently I filled out a set questionnaire on Smashwords, a site which publishes e-books at various sites around the web. I even added a question of my own at the end (I was feeling brave). So I thought I'd use this blog to show you some of them, as a sort of insight into how my mind works, how I write and why. The questions are below, and if you want to read the full interview you can do so at https://www.smashwords.com/interview/Benblake.

How do you approach cover design?

I have a friend, Mark Watts, who's a graphic artist. He and I have a chat about the book and come up with an idea, which Mark then creates.

The only time I've decided on my own was for Blood and Gold, which most people seem to think is the worst of the covers so far. So I'll take a hint and stick to the writing from now on, and let Mark do the covers.

What are your five favorite books, and why?

Blimey.
"IT" (Stephen King) - the best evocation of childhood I've ever read.
"The Awakeners" (Sheri S Tepper) - a brilliant critique of zealotry, told in a thrilling Fantasy tale.
"The Lions of al-Rassan" (Guy Gavriel Kay) - friendship between supposed enemies, in the midst of war.
"Against a Dark Background" (Iain M Banks) - an SF carnival of hopes in a disintegrating world.
"The Silence of the Lambs" (Thomas Harris) - just a fabulous thriller.

Sorry there's no Tolkien here. Don't hold it against me.

What do you read for pleasure?

Anything. I have books on SF&F, thrillers and horror. I have some on alternate history, scientific inquiry, philosophy, climate change, religion, authorship, and of course a stack of dictionaries and thesauri. I've also got a lot on history and myth, as reference books for my own writing.

If it's made of paper I'll probably try to read it. But I don't usually stick with a novel unless it catches my attention: I don't see the point. There are so many books; why would I waste time finishing one I don't like?

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?

I was raised in Somerset, England, in a tiny village miles from the nearest shop. My school friends all lived miles away too, which probably helped push me towards books. There's only so much fun you can have playing frisbee on your own.

I didn't enjoy my childhood much, in many ways. That might be why I write Fantasy - if reading is an escape into another world, then Fantasy is the same thing with bells on.

When did you first start writing?

I can't remember, I've always written. I know I first finished a novel when I was 10. It was rubbish - some old toot set in ancient Greece - but still it was finished, and that's no small feat for a child.

What is your writing process?

My process is simple - get an idea, flesh it out, start writing.

That's really it. I'm sure a lot of people will talk about preparation and habit, but the best habit of all is to write. Just sit down and write. You can't learn your craft by plotting a story, or drawing a map, or producing reams of detail on every character. You learn the craft by writing. That's all.

PS

  I think every writer has a different way of doing things. What I've said here - or on the other questions at Smashwords - is just mine: I'm not suggesting anyone else follows the same path. All that matters is your path works for you.

The Romance of Shining Armour

  In my novel Black Lord of Eagles, as yet unpublished, I try to show war as realistically as I can. Fantasy often shows it as an idealised thing, all shining swords and noble combat, and sometimes that annoys me. War is not a game. It's brutal, and ugly, and good people are killed and maimed for a cause they hardly care about.

  No author can show war in all its horror. We only have to look at Syria to realise that. But writers and film makers so often portray warfare as a heroic thing that it's easy for politicians, and the public, to believe it. The French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery said "War is not an adventure. It is a disease", and he's right.

  We need to intervene in Syria, we're told, because Assad has used chemical weapons, which is illegal under international law. And yet the USA, Britain, and others openly state that if attacked, they reserve the right to retaliate with nuclear warheads. I can't understand why one of these weapons is illegal and the other not. Is it more horrible to be gassed than irradiated?

  We make all these rules - you can't attack without declaring war, can't use chemical or biological weapons, can't use landmines or cluster bombs - when we know perfectly well that when someone is driven into a corner, he'll break them. And besides, the deadliest weapons ever made are rifles, swords and spears. Over a million people were killed in Rwanda in the 1990's with blades and clubs. Twice as many - at least - have been killed across the border in DR Congo, almost all of them with nothing more complex than a bullet. And yet somehow we see this as being acceptable, a agreed-upon method of waging war, so we send a couple of peacekeepers (maybe) and then think about other things.

  Authors aren't to blame for this. But we can help to change perceptions, to take the romance out of war, if we stop portraying it as something romantic. We need to get away from the idea of the knight in shining armour, and see him instead smeared with mud and the blood of his friends and foes alike. No more female warriors in moulded breastplates, who look so sexy and imply that battle is the same.

  I know, I know - in Fantasy, people want escapism, not hard reality. Which is why I said at the top that I've tried to show war "as realistically as I can." I have to balance it within the story, and not nauseate people so badly that they stop reading. I don't, by the way, it isn't that graphic. But I did want to show that people die in war, some of them in ugly ways. I can say it no better than William T Sherman;

  "I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine... war is hell."

On a Moonlit Night

  You'll know, I hope, that I recently put all my books on a free offer from Kindle for three days. I'm happy to say that hundreds were taken in that time, of all three novels, so it went quite well. Of course I get no money for any of them, but with any luck it will raise awareness, bring in more reviews and so on, so in time it should work out. Big thanks to everyone who picked up a copy, then, and one more request; please, if you can, leave a review on my Amazon author page!

  Social media work is taking up as much time as writing itself does, now. I've always tried to write for a minimum of an hour a day, at the least, though on some days that's mostly spent staring out of the window and thinking. Sometimes even about whatever it is I'm writing. But that's working too, so it's OK. Now though, it's harder to find that time because I have to check my blog, and review a piece or two on the Google+ author pages, and check my Facebook page, and the Kindle store, and CreateSpace and Book Blogs and Feed-A-Read and....

  I'm not really au fait with social media. For all I know I might be going about this all wrong. Writers are sometimes quite introverted people, you might catch a glimpse of one on a moonlit night if you're very, very quiet, but you likely won't spot us chuntering away on social media sites, or playing MMORPG's ten hours a day. So we don't know how to use the online system properly - or I don't, anyway: I might be over-generalising here. For me, it means I spend two hours doing what might take someone else thirty minutes, and with the best will in the world, it cuts into my writing time.

  I'm starting to think that mastery of social media might be as unlikely as mastery of writing. Hemingway once said that every writer is an apprentice in a craft in which no one ever becomes a master, and with the way internet sites change and evolve, the web is probably the same. That's why computer wizards are always young; by the time they hit thirty, everything's changed and they're old news. But writers start later (usually) and have a longer career arc, so we're inevitably going to spend time goggling at the screen while spluttering, "What the hell is that?"

  Well, nothing worth having ever comes easy, or so I'm told. Still, if anyone has any advice, I'm listening.

  

Utterly Alien

  I've been thinking recently (for some reason) about the writing tips that we bump into every few days. You know the sort of thing: Show, Don't Tell is a common one, and Avoid Adverbs pops up all the time. It seems as though half the authors and most of the critics in the world just can't wait to share their wisdom in yet another Top 10 Hints.

  The one I've been thinking about is Write What You Know.

  There's truth in it, of course. Every author draws on his or her own experiences, the things we've done and felt and seen. Otherwise our work would be no more involving than a shopping list. But there are limits. This is Fantasy, after all. Robert Jordan never travelled with Loial in Andor, and I'm very nearly certain that JRR Tolkien didn't stop by Bag End for a crumpet and tea with Bilbo Baggins. Part of Fantasy is writing about things we don't know.

  It's also about things we've invented, preferably ourselves, rather than borrowed wholesale from someone else's work (see my blog Ditching the Light Sabres for a rant about that, if you like). Our job is to create and invent a new world, people it with strange and wonderful beings, and then take the reader by the hand and lead him to explore. None of that can possibly come from writing what we know.

  I suspect this is why so many aliens aren't alien at all, but humans in different skin. Star Trek is especially guilty on this - again, see an earlier blog - because it takes humans and gives them pointy ears, or ridged brows, and calls them alien. It's very hard to conceive of a non-human species which thinks in a different way to us. It's then even harder to convey that to the reader in an interesting and engaging way. How can we empathise with a species that doesn't have the concept of love? Or a race that has no children, no young, but like Celtic elves builds bodies out of forest matter and quickens them with life?

  That's utterly alien, a people with which we struggle to find a common frame of reference. In writing I think it's very nearly impossible to do. The closest I can think of would be the Martians in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", or perhaps the Fithp in Niven and Pournelle's "Footfall". Both are SF books, not Fantasy, but the principle is the same. I'm sure there are others, and if so I'd like to take a look at them, so suggestions are more than welcome.

  I might be thinking about all this because I'm writing Starfire, which depends heavily on several different patterns of thought. Mostly that's indirect, but it's still tricky. I feel as though I'm wrestling with an oiled snake in a mudbath. But it's working, slowly - at least I think it is - I hope it is. And perhaps I'll be a little slower to criticise in future, when someone chooses to go for funny-looking humans again, because trying the other way is really hard.

PS - all my books are FREE from August 20th to 22nd on Amazon Kindle. Two are also free via coupon on Smashwords; the codes are SX99K for Risen King, and SU58A for Blood and Gold. Pick them up, hope you enjoy them, and spread the word!

Apologies and a New Story

  Well, apologies first of all, because it's been over a month since my last blog. I moved house and found the wifi at my new place was down, so I've been running back and forth to the library to use the PCs there, getting the new novel published and trying to keep up with emails and so on without paying so much that I can't afford biscuits (a disaster, that). So I'm sorry I've been missing, I'll try not to let it happen again.

  The good news is that The Gate of Angels is now published, available on Kindle as an e-book and soon in print via CreateSpace too. This finishes the Songs of Sorrow duology, picking up where Blood and Gold left off and taking the story to its conclusion. It's a story I needed to tell, I think. Religion was a large factor in ancient societies, so it's hard for a Fantasy author to ignore the subject. My problem was that I kept returning to a sort of quasi-Christian belief system - one God, one Heaven and so on - even in stories that didn't need it.

  So I decided to deal with that by writing a story that was all about such a belief system. I hoped doing so would scratch my itch, if you like, and mean the theme would stop worming its way into other things; which it has, now. I don't know - it's a guess - but I think a lot of writers probably encounter something like this, a topic that lodges in their mind and won't be shaken loose. People often say they have a story that they need to tell, and maybe this is what they mean. Anyway, it's done, so I hope you enjoy the book.

  I'm now back writing Starfire, which has given me such trouble before, but I think I might have cracked it now (famous last words, eh?). I've shuffled the events around so they're told in a different order, and I've expanded the early sub-plot until it fills almost the whole of volume one. I think it'll work. And wondering about it's half the fun, after all. Probably the story will wriggle about as I write it, wanting to take a different shape to the one I had in mind... and that's good, it shows the tale has some life in it, and isn't just a cardboard pastiche.

  That's it for now. I just hope when I do the next blog, I'm not muttering about how Starfire doesn't want to be written.