Just add ninjas

Because they're adorable

Words: 9318
Plot bunnies killed: 0
Unexpected plot bunnies gained: 1 (Doctor Cormack!)


So, I just read the first Nanowrimo peptalk, and it quoted the wise ol’ Nano-saying, “When in doubt, just add ninjas”

Day one

Words: 3062

Plot bunnies killed: 1

Unexpected extra plot bunnies gained: 0 

Explosions, fire, betrayal! Dark secrets and dark prison cells! All in all, I’m rather pleased with my first 3000 words today :)

How to (not) prepare

It is nearly the start of Nanowrimo. I am excited and also mildly freaking out, because 1) I’ve got a busy month ahead and 2) I haven’t properly started plotting yet.

If my novel were a movie...

…Which, of course, would be one of the highest grossing movies of the year, with great young actors, gorgeous settings and a splendid soundtrack... Well, in the meantime, I’ve been whipping up some promotional posters. And no, none of those photos are actually mine. I used mostly movie screenshots and stock photography, though. But all the editing and photo manipulations are done by me.

Some pre-Nano preparations

Or: a brief update.

So, it’s October – the month before NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. This is usually where I start preparing for my upcoming month of novel-writing. This year, I’m hoping that Nano will give me the much-needed kick in the butt to finally finish the rough draft of my manuscript of Eiland in de Mist. In the meanwhile (well, on and off throughout the year), I’ve been working hard on rewriting the first half of the entire manuscript. It paid off, but it is hard working.

This blog has been very quiet, neglected and unupdated (is that even a word?) as of late. Expect way more activity once November actually starts though. That’s when the real work happens!

Right now, I’m working on getting the middle part of the novel right. I know what has to change, but actually changing it turns out to be a challenge. Because of this, I think it’s unlikely to be finished before the start of Nano, but that’s alright; I’ll just pick up the storyline and after November, I can write backwards. So, who knows? The first draft might actually be finished in two or three months. 

No Mary Sueness

I just did the Mary Sue Test on Nimue and Arthur. They both scored a low 7 points. The test says:

0-16 points

Most likely Not-Sue. Characters at this level could probably take a little spicing up without hurting them any.

Also, Briallen (from Vale of the White Horse, original fiction/ rpg character) scored 20:

17-21

Probably not a Mary Sue, although a character can go either way at this point. Fanfiction writers should pay attention to ensure that their characters aren’t getting too Sue-ish. For an RPG or original fiction character, however, you’re probably perfectly fine.

Cool. The Mary Sues will not get to me!

Fun research

Every person who ever tried to write a story that is not solely based on their own experiences probably knows that research is a must.

Personally, I love doing research. I will admit that mine is usually not as thorough as, say, Juliet Marillier’s…She gets to travel to Transylvania and Ireland and all sorts of nice places… and I don’t travel to a foreign country before I make it my new book’s setting. If I ever get a publisher who pays for such things, I will gladly travel the world!

 And yes, I use a lot of Wikipedia, fully aware that information on the internet is not always a hundred percent accurate.

That being said, I do try to get my information as accurate as possible. The fun about research is that you get to study a wide array of different subjects. A few of my favorite subjects so far:

• The Inuit mythology and culture
• The art of glassblowing (and the more ancient techniques, and how to dye glass)
• Vocabulary and grammar rules of the ancient Goths. It’s sad that the website I used seems to be offline now.
• The tribes of Great Britain, especially during 45 AD and even more specifically about the Dobunni tribe, the Uffington White Horse and Uffington Castle.
• The effects of melting permafrost, acid rain and climate change
• Iron Age skills like baking bread, weaving and the building of roundhouses
• Iron Age environment in the Dutch county Drenthe
• EVERYTHING about the Yde Girl/ Het meisje van Yde. And I mean quite literally, everything that there is to find, from factual information to shady articles on European prehistoric sacrifices and an interesting audio drama. And for this I actually did go to the museum, since I actually live nearby for a change. Het Drents Museum has a lovely collection of prehistoric things, but the actual Yde Girl is the most wondrous of them all.
• Survival skills: how to cross a river, how to build many different kinds of shelter, how to build fire, how to hunt and catch fish, how to prepare or cook caught game/fish. This is really big theme in Island in the Mist (especially in the second book) My favorite site is http://www.wilderness-survival.net/ Bear Grylls was also very helpful.

So, to you, writers…Do you like research? What is or was your favorite subject?

New cover art and other such things

So, a rather productive day today, only not with Het Eiland in de Mist. I decided to FINALLY lulu-fy (new word!) Plain Flowers, as chances are small that I will be doing much revising on that book anyway. 

I also decided to finally order a new copy of In Licht en Schaduw, because I have no clue where my old one is, and I really don't want my first book ever to be only a digital file. Luckily for me, the whole package was still stored on my Lulu.com account - and I promptly hated the cover art I had created for it back then. So, not bothering to edit anything of the actual story or chapter layout, I went and painted a new cover art. It was only two hours of work, and still rather rough around the edges, but in general I would say it is an improvement. The backflap text was also made of nonsense, so I blotted down a few different lines about the story altogether.

Als de vijftienjarige Mare een ontmoeting heeft met de mysterieuze Steffan, raakt haar leven in een stroomversnelling.  Herinneringen aan een ander leven steken de kop op, en al snel wordt ze meegezogen in een avontuur dat haar ver van huis brengt. Langzaam ontdekt ze een oude familiegeschiedenis en de donkere geheimen die daarbij horen. Wie is de gemaskerde Vorst, die haar opjaagt? En wat kan zij doen om te voorkomen dat een bloedige oorlog weer opnieuw oplaait?

 (When the fifteen-year old Mara encounters the mysterious Steffan, her life rapidly changes. Memories of a different life begin to pop up, and soon she is pulled into an adventure that takes her far from home. Slowly she discovers an old family history and its dark secrets. Who is this masked Sovereign that is chasing her?  And is there something she can do to prevent a bloody war from rising up once again?)

It sounds so much cooler than it actually is, of course. I'm almost tempted to rewrite the entire book. Almost...XD

Plain Flowers just looks the way I had intended, though I admit I was never eniterly satisfied with the cover art. And yet, I could never be bothered to really work on it, so whatever, haha. And look! I made a logo: Shinyverse Press <3

There are many tales about mysterious travellers.
Many stories of a young hero rising to the throne.
Hundreds of legends about prophesies.
Don't believe a word they say. My name is Daffodil. I'm here to tell the truth.

The outlaw genre of fantasy

Occasionally, I meet writers who write epic fantasy. That is, of course, perfectly fine. I’m more into urban or historical fantasy, but I’ve totally had my share of high fantasy novels. What I don’t understand is the notion that writing epic fantasy is somehow “different” from other genres. During my years of doing Nanowrimo, I’ve spoken to many Dutch participants who were writing their novels in English. Which is cool; I’ve written one novel in English myself and absolutely enjoyed it…However the reason they often give for this is not that they enjoy a challenge, but that “fantasy sounds better in English”.

Huh?

I don’t buy it. English is a little more exotic to us, so “alien” terms may come across as more natural in another language. But I think the reason for feeling that fantasy is better in English, is simply because there is more English fantasy out there. The English speaking world is gigantic, books don’t even have to be translated for other people to read them – English has become the lingua franca for large parts of the western world. As a result of this, Dutch publishers publish a considerable amount of translated work and a relatively small percentage of original Dutch fantasy literature.

Today I read a comment on a writer’s forum stating that “one never has too little substance when writing epic fantasy” – what he meant was that an epic fantasy tale never has the problem of ‘running out of plot.’ And a while ago I read an online discussion where someone said that it was no good sending your fantasy manuscript to a manuscript assessment agency, because fantasy required a different style of writing: an abundance of words, long, descriptive paragraphs of the scenery or battles, or even someone’s attire. 

Again, I say: huh?

Is fantasy really a law to itself? 

Sticking to your novel

So, this school year is wrapped up! My final presentation went very well, but I’m glad that it’s over. Summer vacation at last! I can’t quite comprehend the many days of free time I suddenly have. I have a few projects planned, like my herbal medicine course and doing some exercises to just work on myself. But mainly I want to focus on writing.

I’ve managed to do a lot of necessary rewriting the last two days. I’m glad I finally took the time to just do it, because I had the feeling I wasn’t getting any further. The first few chapters seem rather solid now (and there was much rejoicing). The beauty of rewriting several times is that you can keep adding little layers, until one time you read a scene or two and go, hey, this is getting pretty good!  It may still be the first draft, but at least it’s Draft v.1.2!

That’s a good feeling – like all the hard work and all the struggling is paying off. It gives me the energy to continue, to stick to the novel until it’s finished. I think that’s the most important part of writing a book. Not to have a solid, polished story from the beginning, but sticking to what you do have; writing, deleting and rewriting, adding layers and changing small (or big!) scenes…Because one day you’ll take a look at it and nod to yourself approvingly. (Unless, of course, it’s becoming clear that there is No Future for the story, and the best thing is to bury it and proceed with something else. I’ve done this, too.)

Writers I admire, #2

Joss Whedon – technically not writing novels –is a writer par excellence. I don’t really see how this guy needs an introduction, but summing it up: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. There’s more of course, but this is what I’m familiar with.

Mrghl

Writing simple to read, imaginative sentences that flow well can be bloody hard. Why is it so much easier to create complicated, chunky things? Sigh.

Courage in the face of darkness

The ripe old smell of humans. You survive. Oh, you might have spent a million years evolving into clouds of gas and another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape. The fundamental human. End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable, that's the word. Indomitable! 
- The Doctor (Doctor Who, Utopia)

So while ago, I came across this article. It states that the current YA literature is growing increasingly dark. This is true. But the author of this article doesn’t like it – oh no, she can’t even buy a decent book for her daughter anymore.

I don’t understand this at all. Do we really want to read something that doesn’t deal with the dark things of life? What kind of book would that be, and how would we benefit from it? Of course, it doesn’t all have to misery and danger. To quote Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy and Firefly (among things):

"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke." 
— Joss Whedon

The Harry Potter books are an excellent example of this. Come to think of it, all the YA books that I’ve enjoyed the most deal with dark themes: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi prominently among them.

Paolo Bacigalupi is also one of the contributors of this excellent discussion about the dark side of young adult fiction: craving truth-telling. He, as well as the other contributors, make some excellent points that absolutely pwn the aforementioned Meghan Cox Gurdon, who feels that “Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity.”

I, too, believe that the darkness of YA fiction is not something to tut at. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Meghan Cox Gurdon seems to believe that it is about abuse, violence and depravity. I disagree. If I may meditate upon the core theme, the undertow if you will, of the dark stories, it is probably this: hope.

“We want to hold on to our individuality, our humanity, our ability to love and connect to others, […] but in today’s global communications network we can’t avoid facing overwhelming obstacles. The more we understand how small and powerless we really are against the immense forces that control our existence, the more we yearn to feel meaningful. And so we read again and again about the child of dystopia who makes us feel hope for humankind.”

– Lisa Rowe Fraustino, The comfort of darkness 

Yes, there is darkness in the books of today. Our world is a dark and frightening place, full of small and gigantic dangers. We need to address depression and suicide. We need to acknowledge death. We need to fantasize about the world of tomorrow, because we are headed into a very uncertain future indeed, and books like Exodus by Julie Bertagna give us an idea of what we might become, but also that even then it might not be too late to rise up and be a hero for many. These stories teach us how to make a stand against the darkness. If the characters we love can summon the courage to do this, then perhaps so can we. This may sound like an optimistic cliché, but it is not. It may be the most important lesson we have to learn, and we have to be reminded of it again and again. Human kind is largely defined by what it believes about itself. We shape our future, we shape our own destinies; we become that which we put our faith in. So if we can learn to make a stand – against injustice, against poverty, against climate change and the abuse of our planet – we will become, in the words of the amazing 10^th Doctor, “brilliant”. 

My book is not my baby

Every so often I come across someone saying that his or her work of fiction is “their baby”. I get it, of course: that piece of literary greatness is something they cherish; they have been working on it until their fingers bled and their brains squeezed out unto the pages. Yes, it is something to take pride in! But goodness me, I do hope that it is not their baby. I don’t have children yet, but if I treated my baby the way I treat my novel, I’d be whipping her, chiseling her, cutting off body parts and replacing them with new ones – I’d be experimenting with size and shape of limbs until I finally found something satisfactory. That’d be a gruesome Frankenstein baby right there.

I like to think of my work as a rough woodcarving. I scrape and vile the wood until I see some sort of basic shape, then I turn it around and work some more on it; in due course the carving will start to resemble something lifelike. When it’s finished, yes, I take great pride in it. Some stories and old books are very dear to me, because they represent a phase of my life that I have fond memories of. But that’s really as far as it goes. And that is why I can handle criticism and also why I think the publisher actually does know best if they were to tell me that certain parts have to be rewritten. So many people go into Self-Publishing because they can’t stand having to change what they feel is already the perfect story. They don’t like being told what their baby should look like. I say pooh to that. A great book is never written by one person alone and it is never entirely right when you’ve finished with it. As a matter of fact, I wish I had a professional editor frowning over Het Eiland in de Mist right now, telling me exactly what does and doesn’t work, and help me get through the parts I get stuck in. That’s be the best help ever. 

The right kind of voice

Since I’ve started writing Het Eiland in de Mist in November, I am nearing the end, but I haven’t finished yet. Instead, I came to a spluttering halt, observed the work in progress like a person walking around a house in scaffolds, and then decided to cut away most of the first scenes. On top of that, I felt that I needed to change from a third person narrative into a first person perspective; somewhat later I decided to also change everything to present tense. Big, big overhaul.

The reason for all this trouble was that I just couldn’t get the narrative right. It was, in turns, too stiff, too distant, too plain, and didn’t seem like the voice of a 16 year old. It turned out to be pretty hard to figure out how Nimue actually talks. I wanted it to be fresh and mature enough, but it just never felt quite right.

In retrospect I think that it was because I couldn’t decide how dark I actually wanted the story to be. As a result, I kept holding back because I thought that maybe certain things were not appropriate for young adults. Eventually I realized that I was making things harder for myself and more boring for the reader. After all, the YA literature out there can handle dark themes and edgy language, no problem! So why couldn’t I write it? Why was I stumbling over all my words, my sentences? Why was I doubting everything I wrote down? Was it too fancy, too matter-of-factly? Did I even know what I wanted it to be?

I figured maybe it was simply that I had forgotten what the voice of a young adult really sounds like. I have been sixteen of course, but oddly enough it’s hard to recall what I would talk like back then, or how I would think. Knowing very little teenagers, my best bet was simply to search for things I wrote back then. Good thing that I used to have a livejournal. My first entries are from 2003, making me around fifteen.

I scavenged the archive. Most of it was pretty silly; certainly not how I think Nimue would talk. But I did find some bits and pieces that possessed the right kind of grit, especially when I was touching on darker subjects in my own life. So that is what I want, and what I need, for Nimue: a voice that is real, raw and intimate.

After a few attempts to rework the initial first scenes, I finally gave up and decided that the plot wasn’t going to work that way, however much I kept altering it. Sometimes it’s just best to hit delete and start over from scratch. What I wrote instead is so much better for the story on so many levels, that Nimue’s voice feels much less like extracting blood from stones and much more like a natural thing.

How is this for you guys? When you’re writing, do you always get the voice right at once, or is it hard?  If so, how do you work on it?

A closer look at Het Eiland in de Mist

I realized that it might be somewhat odd to have a whole blog dedicated (mostly) to the writing of this book, but not introducing it properly. So here I present a painfully long overview of my Big Masterpiece. Or something.

Why I want to get published

An interesting question in W.I.P It: what’s your reason for wanting to get published? An excellent thing to think about. These are my primary reasons:

1.   To tell stories to a larger public. For years I’ve been posting my work on writer’s sites, especially De Verhalensite. Stick long enough and you’ll get a more or less steady circle of readers, but still only a select few members of the website. I want to give what my favourite writers have given me –  inspiration, motivation, courage, growth, but most of all:  something to disappear into for a little while. To offer them adventures and tests where they cannot actually go out and save the world themselves.

       To make me feel that I am actually good at this. To be published by a real (non-POD) publisher tells you that you have skills, that your stories are worth getting invested in and paid for.  To be able to say: “I am a professional writer. It is my job to tell stories. I have the best job in the world.”

          To fill a gap in the market, more or less. I have a great admiration for YA literature in the English speaking world; I think they have a freshness and depth that the Dutch market still sort of lacks. That is to say, most books do get translated – for example, The Hunger Games, Exodus, The Forest of Hands and Teeth - so there’s definitely an interest in the mature, somewhat larger-than-life themes so commonly found in YA lit nowadays, but Dutch writers haven’t really picked up on this yet.  There are exceptions of course; De Gevleugelde Kat by Isabel Hoving is by all degrees quite extraordinary (and, to my delight, actually translated into English as The Dream Merchant.)

Where stories come from

Sometimes people ask me where I get my ideas from. The truth is, I really have no clue at all; mostly, they just sort of happen.

Quick wisps of ideas come and go almost daily. I encounter something – a news article, a snippet of conversation, a song or maybe just cup of tea – and my head goes: “Oh, wouldn’t it be totally cool if……happened?!” Such ideas are usually immediately dismissed because they’re pretty silly.

There’s never really an absence of stories in my head. My first ever “novel” (In licht en schaduw) came to be because it was my own private bed time story first. And I still do that, making up stories before I fall asleep. Sometimes they’re just fragmentary, but usually they’re episodic, with a cast of characters and different locations and even a more-or-less coherent plot. Most of these stories are still not ready to be novelized, but I often pick a few small things to mix and match. Het Eiland in de Mist has come about this way, although most of those elements are reserved for the second volume.

This is more or less how Het Eiland in de Mist was thought into existence: before it was time to start thinking about my upcoming NaNo-plot, my bedtime story was based on the concept of a girl fleeing into the untamed wilderness with an escaped prisoner. They have all reason to believe that the authorities are chasing him, but along the way they find out that the real target is the girl. Who is she? What is she capable of that the government fears her even more than him?

After many thorough alterations, the girl became Nimue and the guy turned into Wolf. But I needed a reason as to why they were running, and from whom, what she was doing with a man like that and how he had managed to escape the Institution (The Asklepios Congregation, as they’re officially called). All of this slowly turned into the first book of the series, the one that I am currently writing. I also found that there was no room for Wolf in there at all, though Nimue will briefly spot him as an unknown figure in the shadows once she’s inside the Institution and trying to save Arthur. The absence of Wolf left me in need of a charismatic counterpart however, so I created Will, the character who will be key in the unfolding events.

How it all started! Creativity is a weird, weird process.

Fun fact: the whole idea of a dangerous runaway criminal happened because I had watched Kung Fu Panda. The antagonist Tai Lung is kept chained up in a highly secured prison prior to his escape, and I had some sympathy for him (though I thought the rest of the movie was mediocre at best).

Does anyone recognize this at all? Or am I the only one whose mind is a jumble of half-finished ideas, characters and not-quite-useable storylines?  

INJECTABLE CAFFEINE: WALKING THE WALK WHEN YOU WRITE

INJECTABLE CAFFEINE: WALKING THE WALK WHEN YOU WRITE

This is what I get told each year when I participate NaNoWriMo. Be loyal to your book; one day it's going to be worth it :) And I know one day I'll get it done - I'll get published. Maybe not with Het Eiland in de Mist, but I'm young and patient and totally in love with writing. Though sometimes it sucks, haha. I think it was Willem Elsschot  who said "Writing well is damn hard". 

Writers I admire, #1

Juliet Marillier is a fantasy writer from New Zealand. I got to know her years back, when her first novel, Daughter of the Forest, was translated in Dutch. By now I can proudly say that I have read all her books, most of them more than once. She distinguishes herself by a profound understanding of European folklore, which she weaves into her stories so skillfully that the magical elements appear quite as natural as breathing. Marillier describes herself as a writer of “historical fantasy”, and while her research is thorough, especially in her later works, she sometimes treats the historical parts with some flexibility in favour of the fantasy.

She has a website and a facebook page, where she is very approachable. I really like that you can actually communicate with her and receive speedy replies. She's also a regular contributor on Writer Unboxed, where she blogs about different aspects of her books and writing in general. Very insightful and fun for aspiring writers! Her most recent works are: Seer of Sevenwaters and an upcoming new series called Shadowfell.

What you should read at least:

It’s pretty hard picking just one book, especially considering that most of her works are trilogies. For everyone unfamiliar with her work, I would suggest Daughter of the Forest, the first book of the original Sevenwaters Trilogy. Though my personal favourite of the three is the second book (Son of the Shadows), Daughter of the Forest is an excellent introduction to what you might expect of every Marillier book: a rich and present sense of the Otherworld, though described in such a way that it feels less like fantasy and more like what the ancient people of Ireland might indeed have believed; a main character with a beautiful growing arc, romance that doesn’t suck, an exciting plot and most of all, feminism. But not in a butt-kicking Xena the Warrior Princess way. No, that’s not her style. Sorcha, and every other main character Marillier has created, is very much a girl of her time and culture, but that doesn’t mean she is weak. Just like in the following books, most of the time, things only work out because the heroine is strong and brave.

Ironically, one of my favourite books
should be rewared with
 Worst Cover Art Ever....

My favourite book:
Geez, that’s like deciding whether I enjoy chocolate or cheese more. For a long time I’ve considered Wolfskin to be my favourite (funnily enough one of the few books that doesn’t have a female main character and isn’t written from a first person perspective), but I am also hugely fond of Heir to Sevenwaters – which came out years after the original trilogy had concluded – and also Heart’s Blood. I think Heart’s Blood is one of the most exciting of her books, since it is so full of mystery and ghosts. I’m deducting some points because I think the title is way too cheesy. I mean, doesn’t Heart’s Blood give you the impression that you’re about to read either a Candlelight/Harlequin or a regional novel? Speaking about titles, I have to admit that I’m not always very fond of the ones used for Marillier’s novels. For example, I recently learned that the working titles for Daughter of the Forest and Son of the Shadows respectively were The Oak and the Owl and The Painted Man. Of course, publishers decide what they think sells best, but personally I like the working titles a lot more. But I digress. When it comes to my favourites, I guess it’s a tie between Son of the Shadows and Heir to Sevenwaters. Son of the Shadows is the story of the daughter of Daughter of the Forest’s main character, Liadan. Liadan is a skilled healer, and therefore rather forcibly hauled in by a band of renegade warriors, a group loosely based on the mythical Irish fianna. They want Liadan to take care of one of their mortally wounded comrades, even though the group’s leader – known as the Painted Man for his many tattoos – is initially very distrustful. I’m really not going to spoil all the things that are set into motion then, but I’ve always felt that Liadan went through a lot more growing up than characters from the other books.

...whereas the cover for Foxmask
is undoubtedly one of the most
gorgeous covers arts I've ever come across!

Heir to Sevenwaters is the story of Clodagh, the next generation of children born in the chieftaincy of Sevenwaters. When the story begins, her mother is about to give birth to the long-desired male heir. Even though the child is delivered in safety, disaster strikes soon enough when the newborn babe disappears and the family is left with a bunch of sticks vaguely resembling a baby. Only Clodagh sees how the changeling is an actual living, breathing being. The rest of the book is about her deciding to journey into the dangerous and unpredictable Otherworld to trade the changeling baby for her real brother. And also save the love of her life from eternal imprisonment, I might add.

Why she inspires me:

Throughout my own writing career (if that is not too much of an overstatement) I have been inspired and influenced by many writers, but none quite so prominently as Juliet Marillier. This influence first manifested when I was writing Moon Daughter (see my first post). Of course in retrospect I believe that I was copying Marillier’s style a little too much, but I was still trying to develop my own voice. Now I have found my own style and preferred themes, but I wonder if they had been quite the same if I had never picked up Daughter of the Forest that one day. Marillier writes about things that really work for me: folkloristic elements, especially the celtic folkore, that I have been interested in for as long as I can remember. I’m not so hot on the so-called “high fantasy” genre – with some exceptions, I usually feel that it’s a bit too much of a stretch to remain believable. Her approach is way more subtle, almost animistic in worldview. I also like it that she loosely adapts fairytales and legends. Daughter of the Forest, for example, is clearly based on the fairytale of the Seven Swans, which in turn originates from the old Irish tale The Children of Llyr.

Her main characters are another reason I favour this writer above many others. They’re always both very ordinary and domestic and at the same time quite extraordinary for their courage and willingness to plunge themselves into danger. They never seek the danger, but find that they are resourceful enough to face whatever comes their way. And of course, a theme that resonates within me very deeply: they know how to make their own choices.

In conclusion, I don’t think that Marillier’s books are always literary the deepest, artistically rendered or with the most variety, but I’ll always have a satisfactory read. And isn’t that what really matters the most, in the end?

My theme in storytelling

I’ve been thinking about themes a while ago. All stories have one or two themes and they are especially present in the young adult literature. Working on Het Eiland in de Mist has made me wonder occasionally what the theme for that story is. The more I wondered, the more I felt lost. What’s the message I really want to convey? I kept asking myself. It was something I had to figure out,  if I were going to really get a grip on that novel, but it was turning out to be harder than I’d thought.

By the way, I distinguish theme from story and plot. This was a bit confusing for me in the beginning, but Regina Brooks’ Writing Great Books For Young Adults helped me to understand the differences. The story is what’s going on in a linear direction, the plot is what the story comes down to and the theme is what has been silently going on all along: the core truth of the novel.

Getting back to Het Eiland in de Mist. I knew a few things that I wanted in there; environmental awareness, for example. Something to do with, uh, we have to be good for the earth or else we’ll ruin it for ourselves? That was really as close as I could get before I went blank. Since writing a novel is so much easier if you know what you want to be talking about, I decided to sit down and figure it out real and proper before writing another sentence.

And then I had a small epiphany.

You see, it wasn’t about environmental awareness and it wasn’t about finding out who you really are. Sure, both things are in there like the walls of a house, but they aren’t the house. I realized that my theme is in every story I write. What it boils down to is this: decision-making. Making your own choices. Becoming strong in your own mind – becoming free in your mind. For some reason, I always pick out (young) girls to explore this. I could argue that girls are simply easier to write, myself being a female. But that’s not entirely the whole truth, because I have had male main characters, and enjoyed writing them. So why, then? Has it something to do with feminism? Could it even be something spiritual? Maybe, maybe even both. And that is funny, because I have never actually considered myself to be a feminist. I wouldn’t even oppose much to a fairly more traditional male/female relationship, if I had the chance. But I’m hitting the essential part right away: I wouldn’t oppose, suggesting at once that I have a choice in the matter. And knowing your own mind and acting on it, well, that seems to me one of the scariest challenges in life. Because it is all too easy to behave in conformation of society. It’s easier to go with the flow, and live in a machinery structure that the generations before you have set up – school, study, then a job, hobbies and probably some family life; all rooted in a certain quality of living, because that’s what our western society provides. It’s nice, mostly.

And yet sometimes I feel that this whole pattern makes things fake – as though it’s hard to see and feel what real life, real living, is about, because I’m so embedded in a well-oiled machine that is the western civilization. It makes me wonder: who am I? Am I real, am I strong? Could I lead or follow? I don’t mean in a business-like structure. I sometimes have dreams where I am tested to the full limits of my human abilities. Could I lead and follow when lives depended on it? Have I lost the resourcefulness that made human kind what it is now? They are very primal things that I sometimes feel we  have lost.

And here is where writing comes into it again. Because I need to explore such things and when I’m writing, I can. Call it escapism if you want, and maybe it is – but telling stories is my one way of discovering everything I have inside of me…My hidden fears, my inner strengths, my bad and redeeming qualities.

Obviously, I never really write about me. I do not want to create characters that have too much in common with myself, because where would the excitement be in that? But I have discovered a certain pattern in my characters…things that are about me, essentially – about who I am and who I’d like to be.

  

I think Jia (from Jia and the Cat Riders/ Jia en de Kattenrijders) is one of the earliest characters with such a specific growing arc. Jia en de Kattenrijders was primarily a coming-of-age story. (As James Marsters once put it when he was being interviewed about Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “All the vampires and demons are just the window dressing”. I feel this is true about most fantasy stories). Coming of age, the graduation from “childish” fears and apprehensions, is something that happens to us all in very many shapes. Jia discovered something about responsibility and social engagement. To be more precise: it was me who discovered this, along the way. When I started writing the book, I had no intentions of removing her from her parallel world. After all, in the world of Lynesse she was much braver, more successful; altogether a better version of herself. Given the chance, I probably would have swapped places with her at that time in my life. So why did I end the novel with her never going back? Because towards the ending of the story, I had started to realize that Jia had to face up to her own life, which is probably a parallel to my own coming-of-agey stuff. I mean, I was 17 or 18 at the time and I had to make some choices in life myself, while I had much rather hidden somewhere in a closet. So I made Jia do the responsible thing. I’m not even sure if I would have made that same decision, but I made her decide this because I knew that it was the Right Thing To Do. So in the end, my character Jia found that she was strong enough to make her own choices.

Another character of mine is not from any novel or short story, but from this roleplay that I used to enjoy with one of my friends. Jana was a second character that allowed me to explore what I might call it the “inner strength of girls”. Girl power! So perhaps this is about feminism after all? There certainly is a reason why I enjoy Juliet Marillier’s books so much, and why I’m such a big fan of the Buffy the Vampire series.

Jana was so sure of herself all along. She probably would have killed somebody if she had to, she was that kind of girl – yet on the other hand, she was so domestic. I always felt that she had this sense to always be correct, to be proper. She was incredibly pragmatic at times, and often even plain rigid. I realized that it was my own strictness there. I would almost say I’ve never had a character that I’ve liked so much as I like Jana – but then there are Briallen and Essylt, two characters from a current roleplaying game (rpg). I realize that they are pretty minor in terms of importance; especially since they’re not part of the novel that this blog should be about. I mention them because the theme of making your own choices is important with them. They are so different, but I can never make up my mind about which one I like best. Perhaps I might even go as far as suggest that both represent a different part of myself. Briallen is mature, earthy and very aware of herself. She embraces her responsibilities and she is, most of all, a little bit regal and proud. Not vain, just proud. Essylt, on the other hand, is far more insecure, much younger in behavior and probably more spoiled (I accidentally wrote spoilt there – that’d be just the exact opposite of the pristine girl that she is, haha). She wants the male protagonist for the way he makes her feel, but never musters enough bravery to take the leap of getting into an actual relationship with him. She’s been protected her whole life, she’s been lived her entire life, and only now has to face up to it on her own. Who will she become? Because with all that fairy power running through her body, making an actual decision will be vital. Deciding her own fate will matter. And she is scared to death.

But, as with all my characters, she is getting there. Because making your own decisions matters. It matters so much that I cannot stop writing about it. When you really make a choice based on your own mind, in absence of fear, is that not the moment where you become free? Isn’t that what freedom comes down to, in the end?

Not all my characters are in doubt of what they want. 

This girl sees, wants, and takes .(from my fairytale, 

The Wooden Heart)

Knowing what you want is a pretty daunting task. It means you’ll have to figure out who you actually are, on the inside of your existence. And that’s what I want Nimue to explore in Het Eiland in the Mist and the following two volumes; who she is, what her values are, how strong she can be in the face of danger and which decisions she is going to make when it comes to morally grey areas. This is not about my own psychology, though I can never shut myself out completely. Nimue isn’t even like me. But if I manage to get this theme running beneath the story that I have set out for her, I’m in for a very exciting adventure. 

 Next post might be about the stories in my head that will never come out. I like writing about writing and storytelling. But it does feel a bit like stalling from the actual work of getting that manuscript out of my brain and into the empty pages of word.

Now I'm going to end this very long post with an appropriate quote from my current favourite show Buffy, brought to you by Spike: 

"The day you suss out what you do want, there’ll probably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones."

An introduction and wee history of myself

Hello.

Introductions can be kind of awkward.

What you should probably know about me:

I’m a girl.

I’m a student.

I have two cats

I have recently started a course in herbal medicine.

I drink a lot of tea but never drink coffee.

I want to write young adult novels.

So why a blog?

I’ve been writing for a long time, but last November marked the beginning of my most ambitious project to date – a story that spans three novels. Knowing, of course, that finishing even one novel is one hell of a job. I’m working on the manuscript for the first book, called Het Eiland in de Mist (The Island in the Mist). And I have been struggling! At the same time I realized just how much I love this – writing, the craft, the plotting and squeezing your brain for inspiration, for the right words.

 I want to be published. I really want to walk into a bookshop one day, and see my own book on the shelves. So, I said to myself, why not try to keep a diary of your process? See where this takes you. Who knows, maybe I will actually make it to that publisher.

A brief history of my writery stuff

I can’t honestly tell when I first started to write stories. There’s one memory I have of me sitting in the back of the car with my sister. She was writing on a small note block, I was dictating the words because I couldn’t read or write yet.

But I guess my first real attempt at writing something like a book began when I was 14 years old. I had the whole story in my head; it was, in fact, some kind of bedtime story that I told myself every night before I went to sleep. I wrote it in first person, like a diary, but all that stagnated after a couple of short chapters.

One year later, I decided that I would write a book. A proper one- one to be published. I took the diary fragments and reworked them into a novel initially called The Light of the Shadow (Het licht van de schaduw in Dutch). The story follows a normal girl who one night is awakened by Steffan. Turns out she was a princess in another dimension in her past life. Once she gets her memories back, she's dragged into a rather dangerous adventure, including a magical pendant, an evil cousin and some dark family history.  I worked on this story for maybe four years and then rewrote most of it when it was finished (and I was a bit older and saner). The title then changed into In light and Shadow (In licht and schaduw).

Remeber, princes: when taking your princess on your first romantic horse-back riding stroll, DO NOT let the lady slip off into a nearby stream!  Lucia and Steffan, an early illustration.

Chandra after her first fall from grace.
Also an illustration from my earlier days.

By then I had given up on the idea that this would ever be fit for publishing, and happily moved on the my next project. I should mention that by then I had discovered the wonderful event that is NaNoWriMo. My first attempt to participate stagnated around 7 pages in word, but by the time I was ready to let go of In Light and Shadow, I had grown significantly. My second novel would be a prequel to In Light and Shadow, and it would be completely different. I finished the 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo (or Nano, for short) easily and felt really good about the whole thing. 

Moon Daughter, as it was called, takes place some thousands of years before the first book. Main character is Chandra, an orphan girl raised by priestesses in the great city of Damáris. As it turns out, the moon goddess has a nasty kind of surprise for her. And then there's Raven, with whom Chandra falls desperately in love. Unfortunately, I never finished the novel. It’s too long ago and entirely not my taste anymore, otherwise I still would. The important thing is that I learned a lot about planning a story.

An illustration for chapter 10 of
  Jia en de Kattenrijders.

So, not at all discouraged, I was ready to rock another novel by the time November came rolling about once more. This time, the story was tight-knitted, my characters were fleshed out, I knew where I wanted to head and what themes I wanted to cover. Jia, the main character, was a fresh and feisty girl whom I could relate to, but she wasn’t ME. For a long time I have considered Jia and the Cat Riders (Jia en de Kattenrijders) to be my best work. Jia can travel to and from a land called Lynesse. She joins the Cat Riders Guard, a special unit for the protection of the young and insecure reiks (sort of a prince). This leads her to get involved in the affairs of the country –a country plunged into war by a 
very dangerous opponent.

School life prevented me from joining Nano for another year, but a little while after I had edited Jia and the Cat Riders, I wanted something less fantasy. The next novel was a sort of post-apocalyptic/dystopian thing set in the near future. It was called Till Human Voices Wake Us (Tot mensenstemmen ons weer wekken) which actually sounds better in English, because it was named after the final line of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. By that time I had gained some popularity with Jia and the Cat Riders on my favorite writing site, and people were even more enthusiastic about Till human voices wake us. Suddenly I found myself struggling with every other sentence. I had raised the bar too high for myself, and the whole thing just came to a screeching halt.  This is what happens when you try too hard.

Daffodil. Our hero, much against
her wish.

Millie: a girl with a quest to
become a princess.

Needing some lighter material to work with, and never able to resist the temptations of NaNoWriMo, I wrote a novel called Plain Flowers – in English, because what the heck, it felt like an English Kind Of Novel. Plain Flowers began, and mostly finished, as a sort of parody on the classical coming-of-age fantasy book wherein a young hero(ine) tumbles into another (wannabe-medieval) world and there discovers his or her grand destiny to free the land of evil…things. My story was about the sidekick Daffodil; just a modest shepherd living in the hamlet Low-of-the-Road. She has never heard of a place called America, nor does she particularly believe in its existence – or, for that matter, in the prophecy that this strange girl Millie is supposed to become their princess and defeat the evil tyrant princess Merope. The Nano of 2009 was used to actually finish the book, focusing on fairy folklore and Daffodil’s own weird heritage – which was quite the ordeal for poor Daffodil, since she insisted on not believing in fairies at all.

In the months following, I sometimes wrote a short story and finished two novellas. And finally, then, we arrive at the November of 2010, where I felt I needed to challenge myself. I wanted to write something better, more adventurous and dramatic, more solid and darker than ever before. It is the reason for setting up this blog.

Nimue.

This is the story of Nimue, who loses everything except her younger brother Arthur when a tidal wave erases her home and village. With nothing left to lose and strange powers following them, brother and sister start a journey to find their long lost mother. And that is, as they say, only the beginning.

Dun dun dun.