“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

~ Madeleine L’Engle

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Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time was one of my favourite books as a young reader. I feel this quote captures the flavour of her writing.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Each entry is accompanied by a quote from the books in which the place appears, currently either The Heir Of Night or The Gathering Of The Lost, or both.

The series is currently traversing “W”, the final letter in this series—although fortunately there are many places in the Haarth world beginning with “W”. 😉

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Westgate:  one of the largest islands forming the River city of Ij and the one closest to the western Road Gate; contains several market squares and a large warehouse quarter with headquarters of several major trading houses and embassies from other River cities.
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“The heralds’ Guild House was located on a large island known as Westgate, where the Main Road officially entered the city. For the first time since Terebanth, the main road branched at the foot of the hill where the heralds had drawn rein. One branch ran south to the river port and the Great Southern Gate, while the other led north, toward a smaller gate where red-roofed merchant houses sprawled along the city side of the river. The main, western gate was simply known as the Road Gate and the closer the heralds came to it the busier the road became. Merchants and other long distance travelers were joined by farmers and carters coming and going from the city markets, as well as country families eager for the sights and entertainment of the festival. First hawkers’ booths, and then inns and stables, began to crowd along either side of the road—and the clatter of hooves and jingle of harness, the creak of carts and the cries of the hawkers filled the afternoon air.”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 1 — The Road To Ij
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Yesterday I spoke to the University of Canterbury’s creative writing class about “story” and writing process—which was a lot of fun and I hope at least something in what I had to say was encouraging.

In the susbequent discussion, one of the students asked me why I chose to write Fantasy and although I tried to say something eloquent and inspiring, the gist was, “because I love it.”

But in 2012, I addressed this very question on SF Signal, in what I feel was a reasonably eloquent and slightly fuller manner. So I thought I’d share some of what I said then with you today:

“The reason I want to celebrate epic fantasy is fairly straightforward: I love the genre…I love big, sweeping, adventurous stories where there’s a lot at stake and what’s at stake matters. I love stories of heroism, and friendships that endure in the face of darkness and despair — but sometimes fail, too. I love sword fights, and glorious charges, and forlorn hopes, and “bands of brothers” holding together through the “thick and thin.” I love magic, too, and if comes with a thread of darkness, danger, and the surreal, then all the better. World building is also really important to me, and not just landscapes but cultures as well: I want the world and the societies to be real for me when I’m reading and that’s what I strive for in my own writing. And I like a bit of romance — not big R romance which has it’s own genre, but what I call “little r” romance, which is integral to all our lives and definitely has its place in big book epic. [My books]…may be about magic and danger, roof top pursuits and forced marches by night, tourneys and battles, bands of brothers — and sisters — but [they’re] also about love…So there you have it: epic and adventure and magic, battles and flights, world building and emotional power, friendship and love. If you enjoy any or all of these things in your reading, then you may just find something in…[my storytelling]…that you will like.”

So I guess basically, it still comes down to: “I write Fantasy because I love it.” At the end of the day, what better reason is there to do anything?

Over the last few days I’ve been tweeting about working on a “gnarly” chapter—in the slang derived sense of “difficult.” (Although it may also relate to the more formal “gnarled”, meaning “bumpy” or “twisted”, e.g. often a tree.)

So this particular chapter has difficult aspects, which makes for a bumpy ride for the writer. 😉

Some of those aspects include:

Pacing:

This is  a transitional chapter, so although things need to happen, their chief purpose is to move the story, and the reader, forward into the next section of the story. So part of the gnarliness was:

• Deciding what absolutely needed to be retained, in terms of action, and what could be dispensed with.
• How to keep the action that stayed in taut and lean, so the narrative continued to move right along.

Sequencing:

Transitional or not, the chapter contains both verbal and physical conflict, which is all about sequencing. For example, once the physical action has started, it’s unlikely that the contenders will stop to discuss matters before the dust settles—so if there’s going to be ‘argy-bargy’ and/or taunting, it probably needs to happen early on, or there needs to be a very good reason for the antagonists to break off hostilities for a good old chin-wag.

Continuity:

The decisions characters make, and the actions they take, need to be logical under the particular circumstances and consistent with any ground rules that have  been established previously. For example, if it has been established earlier in the story that it is too dangerous for characters to traverse certain terrain on foot, then they had better send for their horses before attempting it!

Characters’ Behaviour:

With this particular chapter, one of the elements I kept coming back to was whether all the characters were behaving believably, both under the circumstances and consistent with their previously established characters. Just when I thought I’d finally got it right, I realized that one of the character’s behaviour still didn’t quite gel—a “grrgh-aargh” moment! However, it may be that the process of paring back earlier inconsistencies and confusions was what illuminated that fact.

Written down like this, it doesn’t seem that gnarly—but nonetheless, the confluence of all these elements in one small chapter has made for a “bumpy” couple of days.

Still, I can hope if I’ve negotiated every bump and snarl satisfactorily, the final outcome may also be “gnarly” in the alternate slang sense of “extra good” or even “awesome.”  😉

THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR

One word one word and then another,
one word and another, waiting for the
light to come stealing in, you ask what
is it that love dares the self to do?

All he wanted was to put his shoes out
in the moonlight.  To hear music be the
saint of laughter again.  And all that
time rehearsing his lines in the dark;

the love-mess of it all – when so much
forgetting is always about remembering;
on the long walk backwards to meet
himself coming the other way, but didn’t

It’s just that I’m made of clouds, he said,
so many of my words have lost their
happiness. That endless dream of being
awake forever and there is no one there

How the longest day of the year keeps
getting shorter.  And I am too much alone;
if you love me will I love you too, will you?
It seemed to matter that there was no
marvellous music anymore:  all that he

could hear one word one word and then
another, waiting for the light to come
stealing in, all that he could hear was
how he lives in the buried talk of others;
inside the long history of goodbye

(c) Michael Harlow

~ published in “The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap” (Auckland University Press) 2009

Reproduced here with permission
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Fine poems should be read and heard more than once, so I’m continuing with my series of relooking at poets who have had multiple poems featured here on “…Anything, Really” since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010. Michael Harlow’s The Longest Day Of The Year was posted here on 22 May 2012, at which time Michael offered the following comment:

“Poems that ask what it means, in the face of the absurdities and shadowy things thrown up by life, to ‘risk delight’; and what that might mean when we are looking-out and listening-in for a language to say something about how mysterious we are to ourselves and to the world

Poems that are lyric moments of recognition of what happens when we stand up and speak in front of ourselves and others; you could say a way of ‘being restoried’; a way of letting ‘words dream again’, so that making the ‘invisible, visible’ is at the heart of what the I call the ‘persistent imaginal’.  From this ‘the poem springs’

And there are poems that come calling on and celebrate the ‘privilege of ordinary astonishments’–so that one day ‘a single original carrot shall be pregnant with revolution’ (an echo from the painter Cézanne)

Poems that acknowledge and reflect on how it is always that the ‘light lies down with the dark’, however various the shuffling  weathers of the heart turn up loss and death, time and memory, despair and delight; when ‘forgetting is always about  remembering’

And on those occasions that poems return to that inevitable and archetypal mystérion, what is it ‘that love dares the self to do’?

A poetry that rests on and enacts the belief that we need to ‘see the sounds and hear the words’, so that despite every dark thing there is in the world, there will always be music, when ‘words sing’ poetry makes intimate everything that it touches ( there is always the distinct possibility of romance’, and more); naturally, poetry wants to go to the heart of the matter.”

— Michael Harlow

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Michael Harlow was born in the United States and arrived in New Zealand in 1968. He has published seven poetry collections: Edges (1974), Nothing but Switzerland and Lemonade (1980), Today is the Piano’s Birthday (1981), Vlaminck’s Tie (1985), Giotto’s Elephant (1991), Cassandra’s Daughter (2005, 2006), and The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap (2009, Finalist National Book Awards 2010). He has been poetry editor of Landfall and Robert Burns fellow at the University of Otago. In March 2014 he received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry in New Zealand.

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To check out the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

Nick Hornby’s new novel

Like most—all?—writers, I’m also a reader; in my case, an avid one. 😉

So I read The Telegraph’s recent article on author Nick Hornby’s views on reading with considerable interest. In particular, Nick Hornby was reported as arguing that:

“readers should put down difficult books immediately if they are not enjoying them.”

His reasoning, apparently, is that: “Battling through them, he said, would only condition people to believe reading is a chore, leaving a ‘sense of duty’ about something you ‘should do’ “

I am not entirely unsympathetic to his viewpoint, since I can recall several novels I’ve “battled through”, only to wonder at the end why I bothered.

However, I cannot entirely agree with him either, because a book I regard as one of the best I’ve ever read, Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless In Gaza, is one where I had to struggle to get through the the first half of the book—but I did persevere and when I got to the end I felt so rewarded for the effort and so glad I had stuck with it.

And writing, as I have said recently, in a Supernatural Underground post “The Secret I Didn’t Share…” can be “a long distance endurance event.” So it may be that some reading experiences will also more closely resemble marathons than the 100 metre dash. Both can deliver rewards, but they may be different rewards depending on time and mood.

Sometimes, too, the best course when a book is not “gel-ing”, may not be to give up on it altogether, but to come back to it later, when time and energy levels are more conducive to the style of tale you’re reading. This worked for me with Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand Of Darkness. When I first tried to read it I was working very intensely and so was always very tired. I also only ever had a short period late at night for reading and the read wasn’t gel-ing for me. So I did put the book aside until conditions were more conducive—and with both more time and higher energy levels, I not only got into the story straight away, I again thought it was one of the most interesting and thought provoking novels I had read for some time.

But perhaps that is where Nick Hornby and I diverge in our approach—because for me reading is rarely “just” about entertainment. I read for pleasure, so I do want to be entertained, but part of that pleasure comes from encountering ideas and points of view that illuminate and challenge. I certainly don’t think a book has to be “difficult” to be “good”, but sometimes good or very good books aren’t immediately accessible—so that can mean a long distance read rather than just a quick 100 m dash. And in the case of both Eyeless In Gaza and The Left Hand Of Darkness, although I enjoyed both books very much, neither was a book I “raced through”: there was far too much going on for that.

UK/AU/NZ mass market paperback

Don’t get me wrong, there are many fun aspects to the writing life. 😉

But one of the most fun, to my way of thinking, is when you’ve grafted away on a manuscript for what feels like for-ev-er, and although it’s finished publication day is still somewhere off in the vast-y distance—but then you get your first sneak preview of the cover concept for the book.

What was once only a story in your mind has already become a manuscript, but when you get that first exciting glimmer of what the cover could look like, somehow the whole process starts to feel like: Yup, this is definitely a book.

UK/AU/NZ Cover

So-o, the other day I got my first sneak peek at the cover concept for the UK edition of Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three (the same cover ‘family’ as those featured today)—and that felt pretty cool.

It’s still only a concept, so no piccies yet—but “in due course”, for sure!

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For a little bit more re Daughter Of Blood, you can also check out these posts:

Sneak Preview: A Synopsis For “Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three”

Some Very Good News For “Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three”

I think a writer is often like a jigsaw puzzle afficionado, with a whole array of diverse pieces that have to be fitted together to make the final picture—but it really helps if first, first, one can define the frame.
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The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Each entry is accompanied by a quote from the books in which the place appears, currently either The Heir Of Night or The Gathering Of The Lost, or both.

The series is currently traversing “W”—which will be its final instalment.

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Western Mountains:  the range that forms the western border of Emer
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“The company halted just inside the treeline, studying the open land. Banks of mist rolled out from either side of the Rindle, which had dwindled to a small stream here as it purled from wooded hills. More ranges rose behind them, blue and wild, until they reached the jagged heights of the Western Mountains. The peaks were tipped with dawn as Carick turned to look back the way they had come. The ridge they had crossed swept up and away, still drowned in shadow that was broken only by jagged outcrops and sheer cliffs of pale stone. He found it hard to believe that they had made their way down in darkness and remained unscathed.”
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~  from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 20 — The Leas
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One can barely go on the internet or pick up a print journal these days without reading a new gloom-and-doom prognosis about books and writers, and by implication the process of reading and writing.

Over the weekend I read another variant on the “writing and reading as we know it is dead” theme, from Guardian columnist, Will Self. Titled “The Fate Of Our Literary Culture Is Sealed“, the article (although he terms it a “provocation”) culminated in this quote:

‘I began this provocation by describing what I think of deep reading – the kind of reading that serious books demand, and I promised that I would also discuss writing, the kind of writing that’s intended to be read deeply. But really, there’s no point in this, because such writing depends for its existence on deep readers, and in the near future such deep readers will be in very short supply.’

Now he may well be right, but in reflecting on his thesis (or “provocation” 😉 ) I juxtapose his concluding thoughts with another excerpt from the Murakami interview:

‘How long does Murakami think the game of literature can last? “I think serious readers of books are 5% of the population,” he says. “If there are good TV shows or a World Cup or anything, that 5% will keep on reading books very seriously, enthusiastically. And if a society banned books, they would go into the forest and remember all the books. So I trust in their existence. I have confidence.” ‘

I would not like to argue that one or the other is right: I think we are living a huge technological change and the jury is very much out as to what we see around us once we—and it—reach the high tide line.

But as one reader and author on the sidelines, endeavouring to decipher the entrails and determine the portents inherent in such provocations, speculations, and reflections, I believe there are intriguing trends within the change we’re currently living that don’t always marry up neatly.

For example, I am often told that modern readers have short attention spans and think in sound bytes. Yet in an Kissmetrics’ article that featured research by viral-marketing scientist Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, who analyzed 12,000 articles shared to Facebook, one key finding was that:

“Shareable posts are longer than 1k words.”

In fact, the optimum size suggested was between 1000-1500 words: not exactly soundbyte length.

With respect to reading fiction, in particular, I note one other trend of interest: that in Fantasy-SF at least, the trend appears to be toward larger and more indepth storytelling, as evidenced by series such as George RR Martin’s “A Game Of Thrones”, Robin Hobb’s “Assassin/Fool” and “Rain/Wild” novels, and Robert Jordan’s “A Wheel Of Time.”

It’s not restricted to SFF though: Booker winners Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel) and The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton) both fit the trend as well.

A blip in terms of Self’s premise? Perhaps, but it also makes for interesting observation amidst the currents of change swirling all around.