“Hi, guys. How would you like to spend a month together?”

What do you get if you import a young European with a university degree in religion and philosophy and a famous, powerful wizard who owes Death a huge favour into a world that has ended a long time ago and yet is still there?
- No, I don’t have the answer. Not yet at least.

57 days until that NaNoWriMo thing starts again. Some participants have been planning all year round. Some wait and see what happens when the fingers touch the keyboard on November 1st. Others have a vague outline of a story or an idea of writing another installment of a story in progress.
A few months ago, I wrote about searching for the perfect story for this year. I think I found it. For me, NaNoWriMo is partly about challenging myself to do something I haven’t previously tried. Having completed NaNoWriMo twice before, I have a list of those things. I’m not just writing for the sake of doing them, of course, but I think November is a playground, a place to see what works for me as a writer and what doesn’t.

This year (unless I change my mind or chicken out), I will be surprised by the story far more than I have previously been during NaNoWriMo. I am not going to plan any details. I have a stage, and I have actors, and I have a few props and a vague idea of a plot, but the actors will have to take it from there on their own.
- Which brings me to the title of this entry. I know two of the protagonists already. Years back, I ran an online comic (no, it is not out there anymore). I was about 250 pages into it before I stopped. I always wanted to finish the story and have more to do with the main character. More recently (in 2006), I was writing a fantasy story. I’m not sure why I never finished it, but I do know that even though I moved on to other genres, I have considered returning to it and its protagonist several times.

So I rounded up those two main characters and explained the matter to them. At first it seemed farfetched, but it turned out that there were very good reasons why they ought to be in a story together and indeed this particular story that I’m setting out to write. I managed to convince them of this. During the last few weeks, I have worked on their respective prequels (they are never going to make it into the story, but I wanted to get into the mood of them) and a short “test run” scene with both of them in it.
I am a little bit nervous about this project, but it feels right, and I am looking so much forward to seeing how it turns out.

Have you ever imported or recycled characters? Do you have beginnings of stories in the desk drawer (or on the hard disk) that you want to return to one day? And if you are doing NaNoWriMo this year, how is planning (or not-planning) going?

“Creative points” and dividing your time between creative outlets

I seem to have an internal creative points system. To function properly, I need to be creative. I have an inner creative-o-meter that needs to be filled up, and there are several ways to do it. – But one is more efficient than the others.

While this blog is focused on writing, and I think of myself mainly as a story writer, I do a number of other creative things. I take pictures, draw, paint a certain kind of hobby dolls, and I sew and used to make elaborate costumes. And I write non-fiction (like blogging).
Is it a blessing or a curse to have several kinds of creative outlets? I tend to think of it as a blessing. If I get stuck with one thing, I can always turn to another and still enjoy creativity. They are all connected somehow, though some more closely than others. Many of them are based on the same stories, or the same people in the stories. I like to draw the characters I write about. I like to take pictures of locations in the stories, and so on. But I must admit that there are days when I think how much I could be doing in one area if I never did anything else.

However, there is an internal hierarchy of how many creative points I get doing various things. It’s a metaphor for how it feels. I don’t actually think in points, but it’s the best way I can think of to explain the feeling.
I drew comics once, but they were slow at getting anywhere, and I wasn’t as good at conveying emotions and development visually as I was in writing. So, in other words, I do get something out of drawing, but not nearly as much as I do out of writing a story.
Say I need ten creative points in a day to feel good (the points are arbitrary, and the following are just examples). I can spend one hour working on a story and get those ten points, or I can spend four hours drawing. If I sew for half an hour, I get one point, but if I write for those 30 minutes, I get five. I get two points for going on a trip to take photos, but I get the same amount from scribbling a few lines in a notebook.

Writing is the one thing I have to get back to quickly. I can go for weeks or even months without one of my other creative outlets. Some of them I will miss, but it will be more of a melancholy feeling or wanting to have fun doing that thing again than a powerful urge or need to do it. But I feel writing tugging at me if I don’t do it even for a few days.
Most of my creative outlets are hobbies that I spend time on because I want to. Writing I do because I need to. – Not that I don’t enjoy it because I certainly do, but it is a passion or a love affair, a fulfilling compulsion, more than a sparetime hobby.

Is it odd that I gave blogging a category of its own in the beginning of this entry? I know blogging is writing, but the kind of writing that I need is fiction writing, story writing. I enjoy blogging, I really do. But if I had to choose between writing stories and non-fiction, the stories would win without hesitation.

I imagine that it is the same for people who have an other creative main outlet. If I were actually a photographer, the perspective would be different. Taking pictures would be the most satisfying thing to me, and I would like dabbling in writing or knitting or putting together miniature racing cars or something else once in a while as a hobby.

Do you have more than one creative hobby? How do you divide your time between them? And do you feel that one is more fulfilling or important than others?

Webly Wednesday: Online collaboration

This time, the theme of Webly Wednesday is online tools for doing collaborative writing.

• BabelStory
  Science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery stories. Members can add 100 words to the end of a selected story.
• Chainbooks
  This site won’t launch until September, but apparently you can start a novel and let others continue it – or vice versa.
• Plotbot
  Free screenwriting software. Sign up and form a group with others to work on scripts together.
• Protagonize
  Create or continue stories and discuss writing with other members. I found this link (as well as the one for Chainbooks) on Maggie’s blog.

I’m not a member of all these, but they seem to be different and have some nice features, so if you’re looking for writing partners or collaboration groups, you may find something that suits your needs.

Do you know any collaboration sites? Please share them with us if you do.

Waterproof ideas and how to avoid running wet and naked through your home

If there is one lesson to be learnt from this entry, it may be that muses don’t mind getting wet with you, but they do mind having to work when they’re just trying to take a nice shower.

I tend to have quality time with my muses in the shower like Jami Gold does. Perhaps it is because my head is not busy with anything else and the most interesting thing for me to do is trying to decipher the Finnish text on the shampoo bottles that makes creativity flow freely then. Whatever the reason, I have small conferences with my main characters and mull over new ideas while I am in the bath. Sometimes I will rush through the flat in only a towel to write down a dialogue or a plot twist or an idea for a piece of short fiction.

Some time ago, I discovered one fabulous invention. It would help me creatively and go well with the way I already work. A waterproof notepad (and I have Jami Gold to thank for the link). How brilliant is that? I got one, put it up in the shower and looked forward to writing if not the first draft of a masterpiece, then at least a couple of funny little ideas.
Then the idea backfired. I didn’t get anything. I was standing there, and … nothing happened. All right, I thought, I don’t get an idea every single time I shower. It just happens very often. So I waited. Several showers later, however, I still hadn’t gotten anything.

But why? I tend to get ideas that really, really need writing down when I am busy with something else. Is that simply how creativity is? I generally don’t sit around and wait for inspiration to hit me. I’m usually working on something, several things at the time. But the showerly conferences somehow changed from inspiration to smalltalk.
So what happened really? I don’t think the notepad is an evil idea-sucking entity. I believe that one or several of the following things happened: I don’t get ideas every time I shower, but the presence of the notepad makes me think that I should. I get a bit of stage fright because now I can write down my ideas right away, so I pay too much attention to whether I’m getting ideas to actually get them. My muses work at their own pace – no notepad is going to dictate to them when to tell me a story (They still do. Just not so much in the shower).

Am I going to get rid of the notepad? No. It’s a nice notepad, and I like the idea of being able to write things down in the shower. And I have a feeling that once I’m used to the presence of it, I’ll get back to my normal ideas-in-the-shower routine. But we will see.

Have you ever done something to help your creativity that turned out to backfire? Do you get ideas in the shower? And do you have any experience with waterproof paper?

A Hero’s Ordeal (flash fiction)

 

Not All Who Wander are Lost hosts a monthly writing challenge. This month’s subject is to include a mythical creature in a story of 500 words or less. I decided to play along and hope to entertain you with this rather silly tale.

A Hero’s Ordeal

It had been a long trek through acres of dull meadows and fields. The hero wiped sweat from his brow and narrowed his eyes against the sun. ”Hello, good lady!” he called out to the old woman tending her vegetable patch.
She sized up the stranger for a moment. ”Good day to you, sir,” she replied and stepped closer.
”How far to the shore?” he asked.
”Oh, not so far. Continue down this road, through the forest, and then you will see the ocean.”
”Splendid. Thank you, and have a nice day,” replied the hero, picking up his backpack and his sword.
”Wait,” called the old lady. ”The forest is dark and damp and full of vile creatures.”
The hero smiled grandly at her. She must not know of him. ”Thank you, my good lady, but I have crossed the snowcapped mountains and fought the giants of the Dark Realms.”
”Wait!” repeated the old lady, wringing her hands. ”Before you reach the shore, you must go through the Gate of the Sphinx. Many have died trying to pass. The sphinx will tell you …”
”Don’t you worry,” the hero told her, ”I’ve dealt with sphinxes before. There is no riddle that I can’t guess.”

The forest was indeed a perilous place, but he had braved unspeakable dangers before and was out before nightfall. He reached a long wall with just one gate, and on top of it perched a creature with the body of a predator, the wings of a bird and the head of a man.
The hero stopped in front of it. ”Good evening,” he called, ”I should like to pass.”
The sphinx was roused. ”Certainly,” it said smugly. ”But first, you must listen to this.”
”So be it,” the hero replied, preparing for the question.
The sphinx drew its breath, rustled its feathers, and then began to speak, ”A man walks into a bar. ‘Can I have a beer and some peanuts?’ he says. ‘Sure,’ replies the bartender. He gives the man a pint and waits for him to finish drinking. Afterwards the man asks for a loo. ‘We don’t have a loo,’ replies the bartender, ‘but you can use this,’ and hands the man a bag half full of nuts. ‘What’s this?’ asks the man. ‘In a moment, it will be your peenuts,’ replies the bartender.”
The hero’s face fell. It wasn’t a riddle. It was a joke. He began laughing so hard that he had to clutch his stomach and wipe away tears from his face.
The sphinx stared at him for a moment. Humans. What silly creatures. It wasn’t even a good joke. And he was so caught up in his laughing fit that he didn’t even seem to notice the sphinx jumping off the gate. It swooped down with a flourish of its wings and caught the hero in the chest with its talons.

How low can you go? Tweet your fiction!

A while ago, I heard about the concept Twitter fiction. I went, “Huh.” Then, “A story in 140 characters? How is that possible?” And after that, I came to the conclusion, “Why not?”

I mostly write novel length stories and dabble in flash fiction of less than 1.000 words. When I started writing short fiction, I thought that it would be difficult to fit a whole narrative with character development and a point to it into such a short piece. But I discovered that I tend to get ideas that fit exactly that length alone (or have to be worked into a novel as a single scene or a minor character’s storyline).

140 characters, though? What could people possibly say in 140 characters? Can you even call something that short a story? Well, I looked into it and discovered that people could in fact say a whole lot. It’s a very concise form of course, but it is possible to hint at a larger story or to deliver a complete piece with  punchline. Nathan E. Lilly explains the concept quite well, I think, by comparing Twitter fiction to jokes with a set-up, a climax and a resolution. Indeed, a lot of the Twitter stories that I’ve come across are funny, but it’s far from all of them. Obviously Twitter fiction doesn’t have the complexity of other genres (or lengths, rather), but I think it can be quite interesting.

Right, so you can write a story in 140 characters. But what could I possibly say in 140 characters? Describing my novels in 140 characters was not exactly easy. It didn’t keep me from trying my hand at Twitter fiction, though. I haven’t done more than a few so far, but I just received an acceptance of one of them from Seedpod Publishing today. Or should I say @seedpodpub? They will publish my story on July 2nd. I hope you’ll drop by to read it (I promise it’s not very long. Obviously.).

There are a few other Twitter fiction publishers out there such as Nanoism and One Forty Fiction if you’re interested in having a look.

So how low can you  go? And how low do you want to go? Have you written a story in 140 characters or less? Do you think it’s hard or easy?

Webly Wednesday: Fictional maps

Ever invented a world and needed maps for it? Ever been fascinated by fictional maps in your favourite fantasy novel? Here are some links for you.

Landscaping From Lantern Hollow Press’ blog. Lots of tips for building the geography of a fictional world.

The Map Room: Imaginary Places Resources and information about everything from comic book cartography to Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to Star Wars.

Urban Geofiction Cities that are not set in a fantasy or science fiction world. Very down to Earth stuff – but fictional.

Strange Maps Not fictional ones, but if you want to see some creative takes on maps, this is a good place to start.

Imagined Cartography Quiz And now that you’ve learnt so much about maps … Can you identify ten different maps from books?

It’s been years since I made an actual map for a story, but I have done layouts of houses and  the like and I’ve been using resources such as Google Maps for planning when distance and real locations are important to the story. What about you? Have you ever drawn a map for something you wrote?

Dealing with distance in fiction

If there had been an airport just around the corner from the Shire and one in Mordor, The Lord of the Rings would have been a pamphlet.

I am actually typing this entry on a train. I travel 170 km (around 105 miles if you’re so inclined) in less than three hours, stops and changes between means of public transport included. Imagine if I had had to make the journey on a horse. Or if I’d had to walk.

Working on a novel (or a trilogy) spanning over a century and a half with a protagonist who travels Europe and later to the USA, I have thought a lot about distance. Although the 1850s aren’t exactly the distant past, a lot has happened since then. The journey between towns or villages in England at that time weren’t quickly undertaken. As a child, my main character’s brother has a friend who has been to the Great Exhibition in London, and to him it seems a fairytale land far, far away.

Nowadays most of us have been abroad (well, at least where I live – it’s a very small country) or at least if you’re in the USA visited a different state. It is possible to be a commuter, we can easily connect with people in other countries all thanks to the internet, and news travel almost at lightning speed. If a war breaks out on the other side of the globe right now, I am likely to know in a few hours at the most. Imagine centuries (or less) ago when it could take days or weeks for news to reach people in other countries.
With stories set in a contemporary society, I can estimate travelling quite well. It will take half an hour to get from this station to that. It will take around 12 hours to get to Tokyo. And if I want to check, it’s pretty easy. I can go online and look at timetables. But I have no instinctive idea of “how long it takes to get from X to Y” when it comes to the past. What means of transport were invented at a given point? How fast did cars actually go in the 1930s? There weren’t any trains going from this town to this, were there? It takes research.

There is also the matter of pacing. If you have someone in a story set in the past (or in a fantasy world, or in a post-apocaplyptic world) undertaking a long journey, is the story going to be about the trip and what happens along the way? Or is it going to be a sort of, “And then they walked for many days and nights until they reached …”?
We can turn that question around, of course. If you have someone in a contemporary story (or a science fiction with even faster means of transport) travelling from one place to the other and it takes only 30 minutes, is the journey itself not important then? Or it is going to be a description in minute detail of what the protagonist is thinking and looking at out of the window?

So maybe Lord of the Rings wouldn’t have been a pamphlet after all. The plane could have crashed in Isengard or hijacked by Uruk-hai. There could have been waiting time in the airport, customs could have been hell. Or Frodo could have fallen asleep on the way and dreamt a whole lot of things. But if the distance of the journey itself hadn’t been as huge a deal as it was, the story would have been quite different.

How does distance affect your writing? Does your fantasy world have instant travel magic because you can’t be bothered to write long journeys? Do you find it hard to really grasp the long distances when writing  historical fiction? Or do you constantly strand your characters in stations waiting for the train to slow down the pacing?

Awarding

A few days ago, I had a curious comment. It was from another blogger, and she was handing me an award. Can you imagine my surprise and glee?

I’ve seen them floating around out there in the blogosphere. Awards. Mysterious objects of appreciation. And now I have one. Thank you very much to S. J. Wist who passed on The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award to me! Her blog has a guide on how to be a pro geek, book reviews, a comparison between writer’s block and World of Warcraft just to mention a few things.

The instructions, as they were passed on to me, are these:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 deserving blog buddies.
4. Contact those buddies to congratulate them.

And so I shall. I would like to pass on the award to 15 people whose blogs all focus on reading and writing: CMStewart, Cam, Maggie, Alannah Murphy, Christi Corbett, Jami Gold, Catana, N. M. Martinez, Limr, Sonia G Medeiros, Ava Jae, Alice M., Monica-Marie, Liz Hellebuyck, and Erin Brambilla.
They are all unique and interesting and will treat you to either flash fiction, writer quotes, linguistic articles, writing tips, book reviews, or inspiration (or a bit of several things).

Now, seven random facts about me …

1: My cat (Reid) is named after a Scottish protagonist of mine who used it as an alias for a period of time. Like my cat, he is a redhead.
2: The first story I ever wrote for a class in elementary school had a pet spider as its narrator.
3: I once made an amateur film with a friend that we wrote ourselves, played all the parts in, and filmed.
4: I know most of my protagonists’ shoe sizes.
5: I practically never watch the telly, but I do keep up with two tv series: Doctor Who and Supernatural.
6: I honestly think that strawberries with milk, sugar and a wee bit of Jack Daniel’s are delicious.
7: I have co-written and illustrated a non-fiction book that was published in my country under a different name.

Also, thank you for reading my blog. Or stumbling upon it by accident and running away again, but I like to think that some of you read it on purpose.

A lot of plan Bs: The search for the perfect NaNoWriMo story

There are five months left before NaNoWriMo takes off, and that is still a lot of time for planning, but which idea to pick? It’s not that I don’t have any ideas. Maybe I have too many. Or maybe I don’t have the one idea yet.

When I joined the November mayhem in 2009, I had a story. I had known the protagonist for a few years, had written short fiction about him, and knew that I had material enough for a trilogy of novels. Before November I had a plan. I had a timeline to work with and folders on my harddrive with reference photos, lists of things I needed to research, and so on. Although I was surprised by some of the turns the story took on the way, I had a clear idea where I was going. At the end of November, I had the first draft of the first book of the trilogy.

Last year I wanted to try a different approach. I knew what characters were going to be in my story, I knew how it was going to end, and I had a rough idea for a number of scenes that I wanted to be in the story. I only wrote a few notes and then wrote a couple of testruns of the style I wanted to write in (I rarely do present tense for longer stories, but I thought it would work best for this particular one). I did some research, but nothing as extensive was needed as the year before. This approach worked fine as well, because I finished the story.

Okay, so far so good. But what now? I have lot of plan Bs.
There’s a story I’ve been semi-working on for a while and there is a second part of it which I haven’t started writing yet, but I have the outline of it, so it would be easy to jump into.
One of the characters in the (second part of) my first NaNoWriMo novel has his own story, and it would be fun to explore his past and see exactly how he fits into my other narratives.
I could also write the third part of the trilogy mentioned above (I am well into the second part). And there is a couple of people I’ve written short fiction about already that would be great as main characters.
But none of these ideas make me (figuratively) jump up and down in anticipation and excitement. It may be because I haven’t explored them fully yet, but although I am confident that I could pick any one of them, I am looking for something else. I think I want to try something new. Just like my second NaNoWriMo was very different from the first one (the narrative style as well as the way I worked and the genre), I am looking for something that will make my third year experimental as well. I am considering a different genre (fantasy? Post-apocalysm?), a different narrator (omniscient? Or several characters’ point of view?), and a tale that focusses less on a few individuals and more on a whole group. There is one story that springs to mind, one that has been around for nearly a decade, but I am still not sure if it is the one.
- I think I am waiting for my muses to give me a small story epiphany. They are usually kind like that.

What about you? Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? Have you already decided on a project if you plan on doing it this year? How did you pick it? Or will you start from scratch on November 1st?

PS: I changed the layout of my blog to include a moose (in the role of a muse). I hope you like it!