Wassail, traveler, and welcome to The Gable Grey -- a place of retreat, of renewal, and of resistance: a tree-shaded refuge in Dark Times. Now pass the threshold, and rest from journeys! For a cold wind is blowing; and here, if you wish, you may hear tidings of the world without...

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Eyeing the saddle, though not back in it yet




Been writing some this week, fleshing out a chapter in my novel The Woodreeve's Tale. The plot grows more complex, despite my initial wish for a simple, straightforward adventure narrative. The Woodreeve's apprentice, the Witch, the thanes, even the Black Paladin are all beginning to demand a more sensitive approach to their motives.


It is becoming the bane of my writing. I can no longer write simple characters. They clamour for my attention (even the undead ones do). But no matter. I'm enjoying myself, and that -- more than any narcissistic need for validation via publication -- is at the moment what's got me writing again.

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Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps --
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now -- and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.

-- William Morris, from
"The Roots of the Mountains"