Desolation

Grim, unproductive days for this writer. Happy times otherwise; good times, noodle salad. But no writing, nothing. Can't even be inspired to fill in a blank Word page. ZERO desire to work on the novella. Less than zero desire to work on Book II of the fantasy epic. It'll never get either of them done at this rate.

There's been so much going on lately. Both the wife and daughter had birthdays last week, as did my stepmother. My brother's birthday was the week before. My dad & stepmom's anniversary, the same week. My brother-in-law and his wife had their first child that week. One of my wife's stepsisters had a baby last week, 2 months premature (little girl weighs 1 pound). Then Adrienne had Lasik surgery on her good eye yesterday; still kind of waiting for her vision to really clear up, although she drove to work today without her glasses for the first time, EVER. That's a really big deal for her. Tomorrow, one of my off days, my brother and I are helping my mom finish putting skirting around her trailer, which she had moved earlier in the summer.

I have no creative energy, unless it is to give some thought to future arrangements in the yard, or to organize new displays of my Star Wars collection. Is this what being a writer is like? Getting no work done, and feeling bad about it most of my waking hours? How do I get past this? How do I get back to the "salad days" of writing, before my daughter was born, before we bought the house, before three dogs and two cats and a tank of fish and relatives lurking about and a video rental business to manage? I miss the feeling of finishing a troublesome chapter, of being able to talk about finishing a troublesome chapter, even of lying awake at night wondering how the hell my characters are going to get from point D to point E. I miss just talking about it with other writers. But there's no one in this small Mississippi town I can really talk to about it. There are no real novelists here; one old man I know writes novellas of "local color" that cater mainly to the locals, but he is old, fairly well-to-do and has little to no interest in sharing in the struggles of a young-ish writer of Fantasy fiction.

I've tried rereading Tolkien to jumpstart my creative battery, to little effect. So, I am going to try and get hold of some Gardner again, including a book I only recently discovered on Amazon: On the Moral Novel or something to that effect. If that doesn't do it, I don't know what will. Aside from my various petty material collections, and my daughter, I don't know that I will leave any other lasting ("lasting" being a bit relative) legacy. Not that having a legacy is that important to me, per se, but I guess simply for once I want to finish something big that I started. Too many times in my life I've left things unfinished -- relationships, graduate school, jobs, little hobbies that spring up like lightning-sparked fires in the wilderness, only to get doused by a passing thunderstorm a few days later.

I'm such a self-important bastard sometimes. Maybe I've thought about this business too much; maybe there's not enough mystery in it for me any more. Too much thinking about anything can lead to a deadly boredom, I suppose. Have I wrung the last drop of good stuff from this writing business, sucked the last bit of marrow out of the bone of this art? I tend to do that with things I am passionate about. Perhaps I've ruined it for myself for ever.

I will write some more on The Woodreeve's Tale before I return to these pages, at least. I have to get something done.

...and then there is The Map

Right, then. I've had a few beers in me tonight, and I actually feel like blogging a little. Been doing some writing; managed to get some rebuilding/editing done on The Woodreeve's Tale. I remembered the name of the dragon in the story, which for me is a big deal, since it is a very good dragonish name and I came up with it almost all by myself, with only a little help from Lord Dunsany.

Anyway: The Map. I capitalize it to help emphasize the importance of maps in any fantasy story. You may not know this, but Robert Louis Stevenson drew his famous Map well before he wrote Treasure Island. I read that in a book about a map thief (I disremember the title, though it was an entertaining true story). Any student of Tolkien knows well (and probably loves, if they are true fans) his various maps in The Silmarillion and The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and knows also that those works of art evolved over time, as author and publisher errors were corrected (and as Tolkien's storyline evolved). What is probably true of both Stevenson and JRRT is that their Maps came first. They may change as the needs of the story dictate, but a Map is indespensible to the writer of a fantasy story that takes place over a large geographical area of their own creation. It reins the writer in, as needed; gives them a bit of grounding in reality that their readers will appreciate later. My own fantasy world of Enea works the same for me: the Map came first. It was always so; the stories of Ramandyra and Kuronia and their surrounding Frontier Realms only came later.

Fine. A Map is a necessary first step towards great epic fantasy. (I have not really proved this, I know; but I believe it.) There have been many imitators of Tolkien's maps over the years. What keeps these imitators from approaching the grandness, the fullness, the wonder of JRRT's rendering of Wilderland, or the West of Middle-earth in the Third Age, of Beleriand? Lack of imagination, mostly. Am I the only potential reader of fantasy who picks up a volume off a bookstore shelf and turns almost immediately to the Map, if there is one (the latter being almost a sure requisite for purchase and/or further reading in said volume)? Only to be disappointed upon being presented with yet another view (often with a strangely familiar Western orientation) of a "Sea of Storms" or "Dragon Mountain" or some other such uninspired drivel? (The latter was a sentence fragment, I know. I offer no apology. Blame the Guinness.) The Map must be original both in its nomenclature and in its geographical orientation. The latter is often accomplished; the former, not so much.

My own Map faces East. My names are not particularly imaginative; but a greater command of archaic geographical nomenclature has helped, as well as a willingness to go beyond my own language and to utilize the tongues of my imagined world. (Which, admittedly, do not approach Tolkien's linguistic accomplishment on any scale.) You would have to see it to understand... and I am not yet willing to let it be seen by the world without; not without compensation, at any rate. Too much imagination has gone into it; things that have crept into my mind over the past twenty years have found their way to the plains, forests, mountains, rivers, and seas of the east of Enea: my own world, my Creation.

Jeez, writing this while slightly inebriated has been easier than I thought. I doubt it will hold up under scrutiny later. But there you have it, and I am done talking about Fantasy for a while. I am mad about other things at present, mad about the felling of trees and the general ruin of the natural world that comes in this latter age of foolish desires and misguided mores. And I am nearly drunk, and the wife does not know it yet. She may be disappointed, but will love me all the same, bless her! Her birthday is this week, and our daughter's, too. Blessed days for them, and for me. The mornings are cooler now with the advent of autumn. I am writing again, some. Life is good here in my little Angle; but the world without darkens still, and I worry.