The People You Dragonmeet
Hello from a very warm house in a seasonably chilly Cork.
Remember, remember November... actually, I really don't. November's been a hideous collision of deadlines. One of the greatest lessons you can learn as a freelancer is saying 'no', but something's that doesn't help. You say 'yes' to three things, in the belief that they'll all line up nicely, and then Thing 1 gets delayed into the time you'd blocked out for Thing 2, and Thing 3 goes from 'nebulous future project' to alarming emails with charts and timelines and then you're writing all three Things at once and going a bit mad.
One day I will have one thing to work on at a time.
As opposed to:
Sword [SOMETHING]: Lands of the Firstborn III (120,000 words done and still steaming along, due May)
Trail of Cthulhu 2nd edition (in progress)
Unannounced One Ring Thing (in progress)
Unannounced Other Thing (one done, another due next month)
Unannounced Other Other Thing (milestone due next month)
Edits on [WHATEVER THE HEART CAMPAIGN IS CALLED] (due next month)
Part of the stress was trying to write an introductory scenario for Trail 2nd edition. One would think I would be ideally suited for this task; I have, in my time, written a downright unhealthy number of Cthulhu scenarios. I still haven't gotten it right, though, still haven't hit that perfect archetype. It may be unwritable.
There was a passage in the Letters of Tolkien that I spotted while reading the new edition that really resonated with me: "There are two quit diff. emotions: one that moves me supremely and I find small difficulty in evoking: the heart-racking sense of the vanished past (best expressed by Gandalf's words about the Palantir); and the other the more 'ordinary' emotion, triumph, pathos, tragedy of the characters. That I am learning to do, as I get to know my people, but it is not really so near my heart, and is forced on me by the fundamental literary dilemma. A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle's) never to be approached."
There's a related dilemma for the scenario writer. Imagine a great statue, surrounded by scaffolding. You want to remove as much scaffolding as possible, so the statue can be admired, but - and here the metaphor gets truly stupid - the statue is going to be installed on a large number of planets simultaneously, with each with different gravities and environmental conditions, so you don't know how much scaffolding can be safely removed. (And then you start thinking about just sending them moulds of the statue in inverse, or blocks of marble with chisels sellotaped to them, or a photograph of the statue with LIKE THIS scrawled across it.)
Ludothurgy? Is this anything?
All the talk of moulds and statues puts me in mind of this month's Thing I Keep Showing Everyone - to wit, Bobby Finger's Jeff Bezos Head Boat. It's 30 minutes long, and very strange, and you should watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGhcSupkNs8
Current reading: I finished The Hood, the sequel to By Force Alone (Lavie Tidhar), and took a day off to blaze through Looking Glass Sound (Catriona Ward). Currently supposed to be reading The Hexologists (Josiah Bancroft), although my brain's so fried I'm not sure I'm doing it justice. Also reread The Elements of Eloquence (Mark Forsythe) and trying to make my way through The Anatomy of Story (Trudy).
More links: I was part of the Orbit Books Write Your Novel event, doing a panel on Magic Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHLqa-V-yv0
And I shall be at Dragonmeet next weekend, time and tide and flights permitting.
If you're at the con, please say hello.
To me, or to others, as you see fit. It's good to be polite, regardless of the recipient.
As always, thanks for reading.
Gareth