A Great Convergence

Original rood painting/relief at St Mary's, Breamore

I love this stage of a book so much, when isolated ideas start to attract each other like magnets, and the space between them gets churned up with the movement and exposes new and unexpected ideas. Tuesday was almost a perfect day for me. It started with peanut butter on toast and hot tea for breakfast (okay, that’s what I have every day, but still…), then we drove out to West Kennet long barrow and went inside a neolithic tomb, then we went to Avebury and wandered around standing stones, then just as we pulled up back at our cottage it started snowing (zomg!). This was all followed by an afternoon reading, celebrating my son losing his front tooth, and finally a long writing session where a whole bunch of ideas came together beautifully and I surprised myself by completely changing the direction of my narrative with one small detail and oh oh oh I can’t tell you any more than that save to say I’m pretty bloody excited.

Phew.

The 10th-century Exeter Book, open to the first lines of the poem Widsith

Being here in England has been incredibly inspiring. I have been chasing Anglo-Saxon sites all over the south of England, because that’s roughly the time period my story is drawing ideas from. After the British Museum and Sutton Hoo, I went to the recreated Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow and sat in a little wooden hut with an open hearth pit and no chimney and realised just how smoky life was. On the way down to Rye to meet friends, we detoured to Maldon and sneaked down a muddy side road on somebody’s farm to see the site where the famous battle took place in 991. To see the causeway at low tide, and imagine the vikings just over there on Northey Island while Byrthnot and his army waited, blew my mind. Then I heard about a pre-conquest church at Breamore, just south of Salisbury, so we stopped there on the way up to Wiltshire. It was incredible, with original long-and-short brickwork, splayed windows, an original relief of Christ on his rood, and an Old English inscription above the door. Today, we stopped off in Exeter to view the Exeter Book at the cathedral library (“The Wanderer”, my favourite Old English poem, is in it; along with many other very famous works). We found our way into the bowels of the building and some lovely volunteers got out the keys, with all due gravitas, and unlocked what looked like some kind of nuclear-holocaust-resistant cabinet. Under glass, there it was, open to the front page of “Widsith”.

Can you see how hard I'm working? By the picture window in our cottage in Wiltshire.

And all of it, all of it, seeping into my imagination and making things grow madly like they grow in jungles. Vines. Monkeys. The lot. (Note: the monkeys are metaphorical; there are no monkeys in my book).

Thyrsland isn’t England. I know that now. I am writing fantasy, not historical fiction. I’m not researching for facts, I’m researching for inspiration. Many people have drawn inspiration from medieval things for their fantasy, so my ethics of medieval inspiration is as follows: I promise to use Anglo-Saxon ideas carefully, coherently, and lovingly; while always remembering that a story does not exist to keep finnicky purists from writing letters of complaint. A story exists because a writer got passionate-and-crazy-mad for some wild shit and just couldn’t stop herself from writing about it.

Sutton Woo-Hoo!

I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that I am all the way across the other side of the world. England is damp and green, with layers and layers of history crammed into tiny spaces. It is also hilariously small. Every time I plug an address into the GPS and it tells me I’ll be there in less than an hour, I actually laugh.

This week, I went to Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon burial ground where, 70 years ago, an untouched 7th century ship burial was discovered. The burial ground is covered in grave mounds, and I walked among them trying to feel something. I don’t know what I was trying to feel. I had so much riding on this visit, I was bound to be disappointed. My kids were being noisy, there was a loud tractor hedging nearby, and a big guided tour seemed to get in every photo I took. And then… Mirko took the kids off (there was much talk of impending wees on the video footage when I watched it again this evening), and the tractor faded into the distance, and the guided tour moved away, and there were a few quiet moments: the wind rose off the estuary and shivered across the long grass, and a gull squealed, and my blood sped as if a door had opened and the past was right there with me. Just for a moment. Then the door shut again and the tractor noise was back and I had a family to find, but it was enough.

Now I’m sitting here in a warm little cottage on a wet Suffolk evening, drinking a glass of wine and listening to Hammock and working on my story. A thousand words came out without my really intending to write anything, so that’s a good sign. I’ve been stuck with this story for a while. Expectations too high. But there’s something about paying thousands of dollars for a research trip that galvanises you. That and the occasional door opening somewhere, and letting a little bit of mystery through. Hu seo þrag gewat, agenap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.

I love my boss

My boss is so cool. She sent me on this all-expenses paid trip to England to come up with ideas for my new fantasy series. I love her so much. Look where she sent me today! “Go see the Staffordshire hoard,” she insisted. “Get some ideas.” Sure, she’s a slave driver the rest of the year, demanding I meet deadlines, expecting way too much of me, always being overly picky. Nothing’s ever quite perfect enough for her, and she gets me to work at all hours of the day and night. But when you’re in lovely, rainy, Christmassy London looking at Anglo-Saxon treasures, it’s easy to forgive her.

An uneasy traveller

I have a love hate relationship with travel. On the one hand, I love seeing new things and soaking up new places. I love the way travelling makes you think and feel differently, if only for a little while. But I also hate travelling. I hate the organisation, the packing, the remembering of a billion little things and knowing I’ll inevitably forget something, the rushing to airports worrying about traffic and the sitting around waiting for delayed flights. I’m writing this from the departure lounge of Melbourne airport (I’ve been down here for a medievalism conference), waiting for a delayed flight, and contemplating the preparations for my trip to the UK in a couple of days. I do believe it’s my particular curse to experience excitement as a form of dread. As my friend Charlotte said, it’s like the blue wire gets hooked up to the red wire.

Thing is, I haven’t done a research trip since 2001, when I went to Germany, Norway, and Russia to research for my Europa suite (ie. The Autumn Castle, Giants of the Frost, Rosa and the Veil of Gold). Then I had children, and they kind of cramp your travel style unless you’re super-bold (which I am not). But my mad love for Anglo-Saxon stuff has a hold on me, and we’re off to see Sutton Hoo with our very own eyes. Kids love ancient burial grounds that look like big empty fields! Honest! They’re mad keen for them! And they’ll totally love that Santa won’t come to Oxford and will leave their presents at home instead. Kids and delayed gratification are practically synonymous!

But I need this fuel for my creative fire (sorry, should have issued a wankery alert before that sentence). I’m both dying to be in England and also dying from the anxiety of going to England. Either way I die, so I may as well go and take this damned book seriously.

Parallel importation restrictions happily ever after

Today the government rejected the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to scrap PIRs. In plain terms, this means:

Evil “coalition for cheaper books”: you have been owned
Barely disguised right-wing naysayers on limp blogs: you have been owned
Barely disguised right-wing media outlets: you have been owned
Dozens of people who can’t spell or punctuate who say provocative things in comments sections of newspaper articles: you have been owned
Authors: epic dropz for you

Thank you and good night.

Don’t be a cry baby

Are you being a sook? Are you agonising over writing something when you should just be putting the words down?

The other night, I was asked to be “captain” at the Queensland Writers Centre’s first real-life writing race. We all sat around with our laptops and wrote to a timer. Between us, this group of about 20 people wrote nearly 50 000 words over 90 minutes. I had a captain hat, as you can see, but only later did I realise that I didn’t take my duties as a quasi-military leader nearly seriously enough. We’re all terribly gentle with artists but, in the spirit of NaNoWriMo (where you try to write 50 000 words in the month of November) here are some words to pin up near your computer for when the writing is just too hard.

 

Cowboy the f*** up.

What, you think you’re curing  cancer? You think people are going to die if the metaphor isn’t just perfect? You know what? If you don’t write your book, nobody will ever know. Nobody will ever miss it. But if you do write it, many many cool things could happen. Your family, friends, and crit group will read it: and they might love it. Or they might suggest a billion things to make it better. And it would grow and be better and come close to the original potential you imagined for it. Hey, it might even get published one day. As a rule, though, publishing houses aren’t putting out books full of blank pages. Any schmuck can come up with one of those.

So it’s hard to get to the time to write? I see: so from the moment you wake in the morning until the moment you go to bed at night, there’s not a single ten-minute block in which to get out your notebook and have a think about where your story’s going? You must live in a freakin’ gulag. Or when you say you don’t have time, do you actually mean “I don’t feel like it” (please imagine whiny voice). I’m so damned pleased that you don’t feel like it! God knows it’s a crowded market, and if you never write that novel then I don’t ever have to compete with you. Sweet as. Don’t write; I’ll celebrate.

Look, if you don’t want to do the work, then stop whining about it and go do something else. Or are you still battling those teenagey feelings that you were formed for greatness? Well, you know what, greatness is not inherent. It’s in actions. It’s in doing the freakin’ work.

So do the freakin’ work. And don’t come crying to me.

The QWC is a wonderful resource. They run virtual writing races via the Australian Writers Marketplace online every Tuesday (and I’m often there). Well worth joining the organisation and paying a little extra for the AWM subscription.  Hope to see you at the races one night. No more QQ.

 

Why I hate sports

I’m just going to come right out and say it. I hate all sports. Even the ones I sometimes like. Now this is, of course, downright unAustralian of me so I’m going to try to defend my position.

First of all, you need to know that I am not opposed to physical activity. I’m a relatively fit and healthy individual. My cholesterol is freakishly low, as is my blood pressure. I go for walks pretty regularly and take the stairs instead of the lift most of the time. So this isn’t about me feeling all threatened by people with hard bodies (I tend to think women look better with soft bodies anyway).

What I hate most of all is the brittle rhetoric that surrounds almost all sporting endeavour. The bullshit about “teamwork” and “sportsmanship” and “giving it your best”. Everybody knows that sport is all about winning. Even when they say, “it’s not about winning” it’s about winning. The forum I in which I resent this rhetoric the most is children’s sports.

Imagine, if you will, an eight-year-old who reads poorly. Nothing stupid about her: just a combination of sluggish genetics and indifferent parents and she’s behind the rest of the class. Now, let’s give her a book and make her read in front of the whole school community. “Come on,” they’ll say, “give it a go. It’s not about being the best.” Her vision tunnels, her ears start to ring, she struggles through aware everyone is looking at her. How do you think she’d feel? I tend to think her self-esteem would be crushed and she’d probably develop hard feelings towards reading for life.

So why the hell do we make children who aren’t naturally good at sport race their classmates in front of huge audiences? “It’s not whether you win or lose,” they say. But it is. Because the kid who comes last, she doesn’t get a trophy on parade, she sits in the great silent stillness of the non-winner. Because she lost and everyone saw it. And if she’s the best reader in her class, there’s no trophy.

Luckily, though, there’s the wonderful consolation of a lifetime of books.

Where have you been all my life?

Falling in love with a new book is a billion different kinds of magic. I have cracked open that door and got my foot in the world and, even though I’m still suffering through the usual challenges, I have a lovely sense of rightness that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

As you’ve no doubt gathered, I’m basing many of my ideas for this book on Anglo-Saxon England, and one thing I’m really getting caught up in at the moment is the poetry of the time. You must understand, I had my first exposure to Anglo-Saxon poetry (sometimes called Old English poetry) 12 or 13 years ago in my undergraduate medieval studies minor. At the time, my response was “meh”. I mean, I liked Beowulf (there are monsters: what’s not to like?). But in general it seemed a little plain, even mundane. Then, while doing my master’s, I was part of an Anglo-Saxon reading group who spent months translating parts of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and The Battle of Maldon. Again, meh.

So imagine my surprise, on revisiting it this time, to find all the meh gone. Where I thought there was kind of a detached bluntness, I now found a weighty strangeness. The split alliterative line… oh, my! What drama and measure there is in it! Discovering the beauty in it is like having a platonic relationship with someone your whole life, then suddenly looking at them and realising they are made of awesome. And falling hard, hard, hard in love. At the moment, my favourite poem is The Wanderer (click here if you want to hear it read to you in Anglo-Saxon). I must have read it ten times this week alone. Tolkien fans my recognise the adapted lines from it: “Where is the horse and where the rider?” (Aragorn sings it in The Two Towers, Theoden says it in the movie version).

So what is a girl loved up on Anglo-Saxon culture to do? Well, head off to England of course! I am dragging my family off to face a northern winter and investigate various sites and monuments (that’s the Sutton Hoo mounds in the picture). Oh, the kids are going to love it. That was irony.

Plot versus Character

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for the Queensland Writers Centre’s magazine Writing Queensland. I thought it might be useful to others here who aren’t members (and if you’re not a member WHY NOT?)

From time to time, aspiring writers ask me what is the best kind of story: one that is plot-driven or one that is character-driven? Somehow the idea that the two are distinct and one can be privileged over the other persists. “Character-driven” is usually seen as the mark of serious writing, while “plot-driven” is understood to be written by hacks pandering to the marketplace. This is a false distinction, and a potentially dangerous one at that. No writer can afford to overlook one or the other: a good story is driven by both good plot ideas and good characters. The trick is managing them right.

1. A story isn’t a story until it has people and problems. These two things (character and plot) cannot in any way be conceived outside of each other. An idea for a fascinating character means little until that character is challenged in some way; and a high-stakes plot idea means little if it isn’t focalised through three-dimensional people whose thoughts and feelings can be communicated to the reader.

2. What the writer must know first and foremost is the relationship between the people and the problems. Why is this person involved in this problem? Is it random? Or is it a function of the very person they are? What kind of attempts do they make to solve the problem, and where do those attempted solutions lead them? You must always think of the problem as belonging to somebody: a story describes that relationship between people and their problems.

3. Use the problems to create the narrative steps. How is your character going to get out of their predicament? What new problems can arise? The problems create the horizontal movement of the story, from beginning, through middle, and to the end; the movement that sustains narrative interest and keeps your reader turning pages. In some respects, the plot is driven by character: it evolves uniquely from the people and their responses to the problem they were given on page one.

4. Use the people to create the emotional connection. How does it feel to experience this problem? What history of acts and ideas does the character bring to the problem at hand? What do they think of their problem? This creates the vertical depth of your story; the depth that makes the story emotionally meaningful to your reader. In some respects, the characters are driven by the plot: they evolve uniquely from the narrative trajectory, which brings about their transformation from the person they were on page one, to the person they are when you write “the end”.

Read What You Damn Well Please

Okay, so while it may look as though this post is in defence of Dan Brown–an author who has sold a bazillion books and could probably buy a gold-plated helicopter–in fact it’s in defence of democratic principles. You may be aware that Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol is out in the US today, about six years since he published The Da Vinci Code. This book is the very definition of “long-awaited”: both by readers and by snarky reviewers.

So it was with yawn-inducing predictability that this article warned readers not to be the kind of semi-literature lemmings who are “tempted” to buy it as there are so many books by “better writers” out there. The article then goes on to suggest a number of alternatives. Some of them look good; some of them, I’m certain, Dan Brown readers will have already found (Stieg Larsson’s for example). But some of them belong to the School of Wha…? Imagine this exchange in a book store:

CUSTOMER: Excuse me, I am looking for the new Dan Brown novel.
SALES ASSISTANT: I’m sorry, but we’re fresh out. However, I do have many copies of Paradise Lost still in stock.
CUSTOMER: Wonderful. I will take a copy as I am sure they will provide a similar reading experience.

Seriously: opinionated tosspots need to stop (a) bagging the common reader’s tastes, (b) assuming incorrectly that they know why the common reader reads the books they do, and (c) suggesting that the common reader read something a little less common as it would be Improving. I am reminded of the shoutline that appears on Umberto Eco’s official website regarding his book Foucualt’s Pendulum: it’s “a thinking man’s Da Vinci Code.” G’on admit it: you’re an unthinking woman aren’t you? You haven’t a clue what the Foucault a “Foucault” is and you quite like Dan Brown. For shame!

My point is this: read what you like and have your own opinions. And let’s take the guilt out of “guilty pleasures”.