{"id":29661,"date":"2015-07-24T10:47:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T22:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=29661"},"modified":"2015-07-24T10:47:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T22:47:34","slug":"and-so-it-begins-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/07\/24\/and-so-it-begins-again\/","title":{"rendered":"And so it begins—again."},"content":{"rendered":"

Yep, you’ll recall that last week when I finished the copyedit<\/a> I also reminded you of an earlier post’s observation that:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026the copyedit is also the milestone after which I really feel freed up \u2014 to concentrate fully on the next book. In this case \u2026 that book is The Chaos Gate<\/strong> (working title), otherwise known as <\/em>The Wall Of Night<\/a>, Book Four.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And as we all know, <\/em>The Wall Of Night Book Four<\/strong> is also the final book in the WALL series.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A statement that is both exciting and<\/em> daunting, because a book constitutes a mighty voyage and although one may always hope for fair conditions and a steady following breeze, one may also have to weather squalls, languish in the doldrums, or even round the authorial equivalent of Cape Horn before finally making safe harbour.<\/p>\n

And, of course, although I have obviously been working on The Chaos Gate<\/strong> <\/em>(GATE for short—not least because there’s NO WAY I want to invoke chaos right now \ud83d\ude09 ) between the various edit and copyedit stages of Daughter Of Blood<\/em><\/strong>, some character storyboarding, detailed plotting, background research, and passages of exploratory writing, are not the same thing as pulling out the (albeit metaphorical these days) blank page and saying: “Yup, this is it. The beginning.”<\/p>\n

Isn’t that magical, though, just saying it: the beginning<\/em>?!<\/p>\n

I love it!<\/p>\n

So think of me, like Masefield’s mariner in Sea Fever<\/em>, as the craft of story* slips its moorings and turns ocean-ward to:<\/p>\n

“…the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking<\/em>
\nAnd a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking…<\/em><\/p>\n

…for the call of the running tide<\/em>
\nIs a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied…”<\/em><\/p>\n

And bid me “godspeed” & wish me those fair, following winds as you wave from the auld grey shore. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

*alludes to Ursula Le Guin's wonderful book on writing, Steering The Craft<\/strong><\/em><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yep, you’ll recall that last week when I finished the copyedit I also reminded you of an earlier post’s observation that: \u201c\u2026the copyedit is also the milestone after which I really feel freed up \u2014 to concentrate fully on the next book. In this case \u2026 that book is The Chaos Gate (working title), otherwise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-what-im-doing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29664,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29661\/revisions\/29664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}