There was a discussion on sartorias ’ LJ some time ago about Elves in current fantasy. What makes them different than being “ordinary humans with magical powers”? This led to mentions of Elves being immortal. (I'd meant to get this written and posted for weeks, but better late than never.)

Now, one of the things that has always fascinated me is the huge differences between the experiences of immortality and mortality. And certainly, Tolkien’s choices in his works have something to do with my outlook. But I was always left feeling that he had not resolved the matter of what happened when an Elf had his or her body destroyed in some fashion. It wasn’t clear in Tolkien: there apparently was some sort of “reincarnation”, but it was not clear how it worked.

( So what does "Immortality" mean? )

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I got an idea for something coming up in my novel.  I thought, "Oh, hey, that's an interesting idea.  I'll write it down in the morning."  Of course, you don't always remember in the morning things that occured to you late at night, especially just before sleeping.  Happily, I remembered that point too.  I went back into the living room, turned on the light, went to my desk and got out the notebook where I write down the odd out-of-sequence ideas that come to me about the current work.

I have to say that it is really, really tempting to explain the specifics of what this idea is, because the way it fits in with the story is very satisfying.  But, because I think it will make a particular moment in the story even more emotionally powerful, I don't want to spoil the surprise.

But I do want to talk about it generally.

( Read more... )

I recently completed a chapter of The Ring of Adonel that had a goodly share of exposition (this is chapter 14).  Not only that, when I got into the writing, I realized that what on the outline was supposed to be one chapter was going to have to be split into two.  Part of it was that I had underestimated the time it would take the characters to get from Point A to Point B (as in averaging about 25 miles a day), so I had to write in stuff to fill the time (things that would happen anyway, I just thought some of it would be later).

Anyway, after finishing chapter 14, I started feeling anxious about the flow of the story.

You have to understand, most of the first part of the book was written years ago.  Then I got stuck at a major point.  Once I got past that point, I started moving into "new" parts of the story.  New in the sense that I haven't had it on the page before.  I've been thinking about the rest of the story a lot, but that's not the same thing as living with it on the page.

On top of that, it has been quite a while since I read the work straight through, the way a reader would.  I've reread sections, to refresh myself about character attitudes and discussions.  I've reread chapters doing revisions, correcting typos and tweaking sentences.  But all that is not reading the work for the story.

So, I decided that to help me move forward into the next chapter, and to find out if chapter 14 really is as "slow" as I was thinking it was, I needed to reread the whole to myself.  I'm reading it out loud.

The first thing that surprised me was that it really DOES move along nicely.  All these years, I'd been concerned by the first three chapters -- there are a lot of characters and relationships being introduced.  I'd wondered if they were slow.  Happily they are not.  I'm now up to chapter 10.

The main thing that struck me about doing this is how easily I can get removed from a sense of the whole when I'm working on the immediate portion of the story.  Yes, the "Big Picture" of the story sits there in the background, holding everything together.  But the nature and quality of the work previously done becomes almost invisible, because I'm so focused on making the immediate portion work. 

Another thing that struck me is that in the years since I began the story, my skills as a critic and editor have grown a lot.  And it pleases me to exercise those skills on my own work, and find that ... it is not bad stuff.  (Okay, I know every writer thinks that of their own work - we wouldn't be able to do it otherwise.  But I do feel the work is "good enough".)

These are encouraging things to find.  They energize me to keep going. When I have lots of projects on my slate, all in various stages of "production", it is too easy to get discouraged and shift to something else.  And I really want to finish this book at long last.  Reading the work aloud to myself is helping me keep on track for that.

I've been nose-to-grindstone the last couple of weeks, working on getting the manuscript of The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth (plug, plug!) ready for BookSurge to do their magic on it. So, working on my fantasy novel has been simmering quietly on a back burner. And it'll wait a bit longer. I'm almost done with the spell-check on The Guide, and then I need to beef up an outline for another project. But, I'm hoping in a few days to get back to it. 

Still... in the back of my mind, I've been mulling over a minor problem. What shall I call my created world? Tolkien called his "Middle-earth", but mine... isn't "middle" anything.