In which writing is like a volcano
I don't know how Iceland is going to show up in one of my books someday, but I'll bet you that when it does, it'll be a volcano.
(The first author I ever heard describe writing as volcano-like was Kate Elliot. We were on a panel, and she was describing her writing process as like to the Hawaiian volcano chain. There are the islands we see, but then there are many other below sea level, waiting for the day they get pushed above. Iceland is the only place in the world that is more volcanically active than Hawaii.)
When I talk about That Inevitable Victorian Thing, I usually mention that it began life as a North & South/Pacific Rim fusion AU fanfic, but that isn’t exactly where it started. It’s called Inevitable because, as a friend said, “It was inevitable that you’d write something Victorian someday” which is actually in reference to the TV show Sanctuary. The truth is that I’ve been obsessed with Victoriana for most of my life. It just took 29 years for me to come up with a book for it.
In 1783, a volcano called Skaftáreldar erupted in Iceland. A quarter of the population died (mostly of starvation in the three years following when the sun didn’t come out), and deaths spiked around the world. As far away as India, writers noted that the sun was dimmer. The volcano also hastened along the French Revolution (made it inevitable, you might say).
I like this for writing, because it’s useful to remember that sometimes your Inciting Incident isn’t super close to your protagonist. Or, rather, that there might be several steps involved. In The Hunger Games, for example, the inciting incident in Katniss Everdeen’s life is the death of her father. This event leads to her estrangement with her mother, her partnership with Gale, her meeting and connection with Peeta, her protectiveness of Prim, and her ability to survive in the wild. And it happens way before the book starts. What we read on the pages are the years without sun when everyone is dying from poisoned gas and water; when the guillotine comes down.
This sort of cause and effect isn’t just useful for plotting, it’s handy for making the ideas work too. Often, most noticeably with Exit, I will have an idea for years before it finally bulldozers its way into something meaningful, usually as the result of its collision with something else (in Exit’s case: a running joke that I couldn’t write High School without Shakespeare and a certain amount of fury with a local politician). If an idea grabs hold of you but isn’t entirely useful, that doesn’t mean you should bury it. You just have to hold it like a kite string and wait for the wind to pick up.
When Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010, the resulting ash plume and wind strength disrupted air travel across Europe for several weeks. Eyjafjallajökull is a glacial volcano, which is probably not an actual term, but I’m using it here to mean that the volcano is under a glacier. When it erupts, there are massive accompanying floods, and earth movement, and that’s why there’s so much ash. The kicker is that Eyjafjallajökull is a minor volcano.
I take this to heart when I am writing, too. I prefer to write small stories: specific people at specific times, and even though I have an idea of the bigger world in my head, it doesn’t have to make it on to the page. And that’s okay. Sometimes you have to take something you like and store it away for another book, another time. A Thousand Nights and That Inevitable Victorian Thing are two halves of the same story, each with bits and pieces that didn’t quite work out in one, so I moved them to the other.
Back to Eyjafjallajökull: there is a big volcano. It’s called Katla, and it erupts every hundred years or so. It has been ninety-nine years since it’s last eruption, and each of Eyjafjallajökull’s three recorded eruptions has set it off. Seven years is a long time to wait for us, but volcanoes aren’t really in a hurry, and there’s already seismic activity registered on Katla’s rim, as scientists focus on detecting the eruption as early as possible. The bridges south of Katla are tall and much, much wider than the rivers they cross. Iceland is as ready as it can be. When Katla goes, it won’t be weeks of disruptions. It will be months.
I try to schedule my writing as precisely as possible. I’m not the sort of person who writes every day (though I do think every day, which is just as important). I try to be ready so that, when my window comes, I can write as much as I can in the time I have. I pre-cook all my meals for the week. I clear my calendar of other events. I make sure my day-pyjamas have all been laundered.
You might be wondering how people live so close to that many volcanoes. Part of it is, I think, sheer stubbornness, but another part is pure ingenuity. Icelanders don’t have hot water heaters in their homes. They don’t need them. Their hot water comes straight out of a volcano. It’s piped from the mountainside to their houses, and comes out of the tap at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The radiators are always on. Icelanders will open the windows rather than turn them off. Then the water is piped out of the house at about 65 under the driveways and sidewalks. Because that makes them easier to keep snow free.
Sometimes I schedule a week to write even if I don’t have anything to do, just because something might come up (there’s a lot of waiting in publishing, it turns out). If I’m not writing, I’ll have space to read, at least, but my time almost always fills up. It's my system: fragile and necessary, effective and possibly efficient. I've already reconstructed it once (after my spine injury, when I could no longer sit at Starbucks), and if I had to, I'd do it again. You plan and you prep, and you watch the edge of the volcano, waiting for the signs that something is coming.
You learn to write with the window open, letting go of what you don’t need.
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This week in Product Reviews No One Asked For, what I think is Icelandic orange soda.
Review: so it turns out that this is not a screw off lid and I couldn’t get the cap off. Mostly I am disappointed with myself.