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narya_flameTaking a quick breather from the festivities (and procrastinating on editing exchange fics) to cross-post some old responses to ask memes on Tumblr.
Writer's Ask Meme
(Happy to answer these on here as well, btw, if anyone is curious or interested.)
11. Books and authors that influence me the most.
Well, we might as well get the obvious one out of the way - I spend a disproportionate amount of my spare time playing in Tolkien’s sandbox ;)
I was 7 or 8 when I first read The Lord of the Rings, but I never thought of trying to write anything like it. It didn’t even feel like a story to me - more of a strange halfway between myth and history, something organic that had been handed down over the years, not a book that a human being had sat down and written. I felt the same thing but even more strongly when I read The Silmarillion years later.
Whether I’m writing in his world or not, he’s influenced how I work. For a recent original fantasy story, I spent far less time writing than I did working out how the migration patterns of my characters’ ancestors would have affected the relationship between the languages of their two nations - and when I write fanfic set in Rohan, I go diving off down Anglo-Saxon rabbit holes for hours on end.
I think it shows thematically too. I tend not to write straight up happy endings; there’s usually a bittersweet note, a sense of something lost or fading, whatever I’m writing about and whenever the story is set. I’m pretty sure that comes from Tolkien.
As for other books and writers…I’ve read and loved so many, but I have to pull out Poison by Chris Wooding, which I read when I was 13 or 14. We were driving down to the south of France. I was stuck in the back of a hot car, utterly engrossed by this weird, dark little book, and feeling this giddy sense of freedom - fantasy didn’t have to be noble kings and epic, sweeping quests and casts of thousands (things I still adore but cannot write). It could be much smaller scale, tightly focused on one girl’s journey to find her sister. It could be an unholy soup of Aesop’s fables and Victorian penny dreadfuls and modern metafiction. I still remember the taut terror of the heroine hiding from a blind witch who could smell her bones, my smug delight as the book went on and it became apparent there was no love interest, the exalted rush when I realised the threads leading to the final twist had been neatly sewn through the book since the first page. It was a carefully structured, thematically consistent, darkly satisfying whole. I’d always written stories, but that was the first book that made me think, “I need to get better. I need to learn how to do that.”
(I’ve never dared to re-read it, in case it isn’t what I remember.)
There have been lots of others. Ian McEwan first got me thinking properly about how I craft prose - I drank Atonement in my last year of school, adoring its lush, vivid imagery and the feverish emotional closeups of Briony, Robbie and Cecilia. I yelped out loud in the sixth form common room during the final chapter, and was teased for weeks afterwards. Meanwhile Angela Carter, Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood felt like my trio of fairy godmothers, patiently instructing me from a distance and shaping me into a feminist.
At university I discovered Neil Gaiman and devoured everything he’d written, fascinated by how he overlapped the mundane with the mythical and magical. I watched the first season of Game of Thrones and then read all the published books in A Song of Ice and Fire, a little late to the party but impressed by the minute, gritty detail George Martin wove into his fantastical world. I studied TS Eliot and come back to his poetry again and again, hunting for the things that hide between the lines on the page, the ghosts that give the words their weight and meaning.
It goes on. After years of struggling to pass my professional exams, I emerged blinking into a world free from textbooks and revision notes and late nights poring over tax regulations. I was terrified that I couldn’t write any more. I read On Writing by Stephen King, which convinced me that I could. And I did. And I still do.
12. Describe your perfect writing space.
I actually have two perfect writing spaces, and which one I need depends on which part of the creative process I’m in.
I prefer to write things in longhand first (usually out of chronological order) and I focus best when I’m out of the house, with a little background noise but nothing too invasive. I like to sit somewhere comfortable, with space to stretch out and sprawl and curl up as I please - I spend all day sitting at a desk, so I prefer not to do that on an evening as well!
Luckily our local pub has a back room with a log burner and armchairs. It’s quieter than around the main bar area, softly lit, with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. It encourages me to write, without the guilt-inducing nag of silence. I will sit there for hours at a time, nursing a pint, scrawling in my notebook with a battered fountain pen my uncle gave me for my 18th.
I do most of my typing up on a weekend, sitting at the writing desk in our study, often scratching my head and trying to work out how the hell I thought all these disparate scenes and bits of dialogue were going to turn into a coherent story. It works because there are no distractions. A manual typewriter sits on top of the desk (it doesn’t work, but I see it as a sort of talisman) and there is a cross-stitch picture of me and my Grandad holding hands in his garden, looking at his fish pond. I used to have an aquarium in there too, occupied by a red betta named Maedhros (he had a bad fin). I enjoyed his company; it was soothing to look up and see him drifting about, or blowing bubbles, or doing the funny little swim-dance he used to do. Unfortunately he passed away, and I won’t get another one because of the cat, but in a perfect world I’d have a finned friend to keep me sane when the creative rush is over and I’m trying to make sense of whatever mess I’ve made lately.
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday period and finding the time to relax.
Writer's Ask Meme
(Happy to answer these on here as well, btw, if anyone is curious or interested.)
11. Books and authors that influence me the most.
Well, we might as well get the obvious one out of the way - I spend a disproportionate amount of my spare time playing in Tolkien’s sandbox ;)
I was 7 or 8 when I first read The Lord of the Rings, but I never thought of trying to write anything like it. It didn’t even feel like a story to me - more of a strange halfway between myth and history, something organic that had been handed down over the years, not a book that a human being had sat down and written. I felt the same thing but even more strongly when I read The Silmarillion years later.
Whether I’m writing in his world or not, he’s influenced how I work. For a recent original fantasy story, I spent far less time writing than I did working out how the migration patterns of my characters’ ancestors would have affected the relationship between the languages of their two nations - and when I write fanfic set in Rohan, I go diving off down Anglo-Saxon rabbit holes for hours on end.
I think it shows thematically too. I tend not to write straight up happy endings; there’s usually a bittersweet note, a sense of something lost or fading, whatever I’m writing about and whenever the story is set. I’m pretty sure that comes from Tolkien.
As for other books and writers…I’ve read and loved so many, but I have to pull out Poison by Chris Wooding, which I read when I was 13 or 14. We were driving down to the south of France. I was stuck in the back of a hot car, utterly engrossed by this weird, dark little book, and feeling this giddy sense of freedom - fantasy didn’t have to be noble kings and epic, sweeping quests and casts of thousands (things I still adore but cannot write). It could be much smaller scale, tightly focused on one girl’s journey to find her sister. It could be an unholy soup of Aesop’s fables and Victorian penny dreadfuls and modern metafiction. I still remember the taut terror of the heroine hiding from a blind witch who could smell her bones, my smug delight as the book went on and it became apparent there was no love interest, the exalted rush when I realised the threads leading to the final twist had been neatly sewn through the book since the first page. It was a carefully structured, thematically consistent, darkly satisfying whole. I’d always written stories, but that was the first book that made me think, “I need to get better. I need to learn how to do that.”
(I’ve never dared to re-read it, in case it isn’t what I remember.)
There have been lots of others. Ian McEwan first got me thinking properly about how I craft prose - I drank Atonement in my last year of school, adoring its lush, vivid imagery and the feverish emotional closeups of Briony, Robbie and Cecilia. I yelped out loud in the sixth form common room during the final chapter, and was teased for weeks afterwards. Meanwhile Angela Carter, Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood felt like my trio of fairy godmothers, patiently instructing me from a distance and shaping me into a feminist.
At university I discovered Neil Gaiman and devoured everything he’d written, fascinated by how he overlapped the mundane with the mythical and magical. I watched the first season of Game of Thrones and then read all the published books in A Song of Ice and Fire, a little late to the party but impressed by the minute, gritty detail George Martin wove into his fantastical world. I studied TS Eliot and come back to his poetry again and again, hunting for the things that hide between the lines on the page, the ghosts that give the words their weight and meaning.
It goes on. After years of struggling to pass my professional exams, I emerged blinking into a world free from textbooks and revision notes and late nights poring over tax regulations. I was terrified that I couldn’t write any more. I read On Writing by Stephen King, which convinced me that I could. And I did. And I still do.
12. Describe your perfect writing space.
I actually have two perfect writing spaces, and which one I need depends on which part of the creative process I’m in.
I prefer to write things in longhand first (usually out of chronological order) and I focus best when I’m out of the house, with a little background noise but nothing too invasive. I like to sit somewhere comfortable, with space to stretch out and sprawl and curl up as I please - I spend all day sitting at a desk, so I prefer not to do that on an evening as well!
Luckily our local pub has a back room with a log burner and armchairs. It’s quieter than around the main bar area, softly lit, with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. It encourages me to write, without the guilt-inducing nag of silence. I will sit there for hours at a time, nursing a pint, scrawling in my notebook with a battered fountain pen my uncle gave me for my 18th.
I do most of my typing up on a weekend, sitting at the writing desk in our study, often scratching my head and trying to work out how the hell I thought all these disparate scenes and bits of dialogue were going to turn into a coherent story. It works because there are no distractions. A manual typewriter sits on top of the desk (it doesn’t work, but I see it as a sort of talisman) and there is a cross-stitch picture of me and my Grandad holding hands in his garden, looking at his fish pond. I used to have an aquarium in there too, occupied by a red betta named Maedhros (he had a bad fin). I enjoyed his company; it was soothing to look up and see him drifting about, or blowing bubbles, or doing the funny little swim-dance he used to do. Unfortunately he passed away, and I won’t get another one because of the cat, but in a perfect world I’d have a finned friend to keep me sane when the creative rush is over and I’m trying to make sense of whatever mess I’ve made lately.
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday period and finding the time to relax.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-22 07:52 pm (UTC)THIS. This is exactly what I thought! I thought, I know this, this is historic, something that happened. I felt like I already knew it, both for LOTR and the Silmarillion.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 12:41 pm (UTC)I thought, I know this
Yes - absolutely. Both wondrous and wondrously familiar.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 04:35 pm (UTC)