My Writing Process and My Muse, or a Starful of Orifices

 “A thousand fucking words on stars. What the ever-living fuck! I guess I can screw around with something and stick the word star into some literary orifice where it doesn’t belong and say: ‘There. I’ve done it.’ or I can try to pull something creative out of my arse and present a thousand words of absolute shit.”

My muse sat on the opposite side of the table, sipping her coffee.

“Well! Come on! What the fuck am I going to do?”

“I’m going to sit here, sipping coffee and amuse myself by watching you rant about writing something, like you always do.” The smarmy bitch sipped again. “What about your white ship idea? Weren’t you going to cleverly twist the story and slip two hundred stars into an obliging literary orifice?”

“Shut up.” I looked around the table. “You could have at least made me one.” I nodded to the cup in muse’s hand. 

“I’m not your bitch,” she scolded.

“That’s patently obvious.”

“Only to me.” She sipped again. “Tell me, what’s so exciting about this white ship story that caused you to research it for two days.”

“I’ll make my own bloody coffee then.” I stood and went to the kitchen.

“Henry the first, William the Atheling.”

I put water in the kettle and started it boiling. “Where’s the fucking coffee?”

“Two hundred members of elite families of Normandy and England.” She called. “Were they going to be the two hundred stars in the orifice?”

“Fuck off!” I abandoned my search for coffee and settled for a teabag instead.

“Were you going to have some kind of divine retribution fall onto the revellers because they told the priests who wanted to bless the boat to fuck off?”

“No!” I waited for the water to boil. For a muse, she was… I don’t know. “Does that coffee cup of yours ever run out?”

“No,” she said and sipped again. “I’ve got three more like it at home.”

“Why?”

“You tell me.” She smiled sweetly.

A pain in the arse. That’s what she was. I took my tea to the table where my computer was open on an empty document.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well what?”

“You had something in mind for that literary orifice full of stars.”

I sighed. “There was one survivor. A butcher who had only gone onto the ship to collect payment for something.”

“What about Stephen of Blois?”

“You read my notes?”

“Well, what about him?”

I sipped my tea.

“Alright, what about the butcher?”

“He was caught on the ship when it disembarked.”

“Disembarked? The ship, disembarked?”

“Whatever! I’ll look up the bloody word if I ever write it.”

“When you write it.”

“Do you want to hear this?”

She nodded as she sipped again.

“Well the ship disembarked at around midnight.”

“What’s this butcher doing on the ship at midnight?”

“That’s what I thought,” I said as I stood. The kids were bloody yelling again.

Muse was looking through my notebook when I returned. “Find anything interesting?” I asked.

“You tell me.” She smiled sweetly.

“Isn’t that your job?”

She sipped her coffee.

I went to make another tea.

“Stephen of Blois?” she asked again.

“He excused himself with a stomach upset,” I told her as I turned the kettle on again. 

“So he was gone before the butcher arrived?” she said. “But you’re not sure of that, are you?”

I shook my head. “I’m thinking the butcher wasn’t what he says he is, that the debt he come to collect wasn’t payment for meat, he was somehow responsible for sending Stephen off the boat, and all this had something to do with their grandfather.”

“William the Bastard?”

“William the Conqueror, yes.”

“So you’re thinking sea-witch again?”

“Something English, something Norman, I don’t know. I want something Saxon that’s still pissed about 1066, something Norman that was responsible for Harrold’s death. The accounts of the battle I’ve read indicated that William the Bastard practically lost more than once, and if it wasn’t for an arrow going into Harrold’s eye at the end of the day the Normans would have been screwed.”

“You checked that?”

“It’s fiction.”

“Do you need English and Norman? If it’s payback for fifty-four years before…?”

“Stephen was William the Conqueror’s grandson too. I’m thinking there was a betrayal.”

“…which sets up the cluster-fuck that was Stephen’s reign as king?” She tilted her head.

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” she said as I returned with my second cup of tea.

“I’ve known you too long enough to believe that ‘it’s nothing’ shit. What’s wrong…? other than a star-full of orifices.”

Coffee spurted through her nose as she laughed.

“What?”

“Star-full of orifices?”

“You know what I meant.”

“You might have a good story here. I don’t like it yet, but I might. Beside the butcher and the future King Stephen, you’ve got the drunken captain and sailors, the ship hitting a rock they’d safely sailed past many times, the brave William who escapes then returns to rescue his drowning sister and then foiled by drowning passengers’ hands pulling him from life boat to death. Creepy as shit, that bit.”

“But?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Who’s the butcher? Who does he betray? Maybe Saxon or Norse mythology might help. What about some Celtic mythology to identify this sea-witch or whatever the hell she is?”

“I’ll just leave those details out. Makes it more mysterious.”

“And confusing as fuck.”

“Alright, what else, Jane Austin?”

She glared at me. “A thousand words?” 

“That’s what I said, a thousand words.”

“You might have a good story, but I don’t think you should tell it in a thousand words. I think it should be a prologue for a larger story. Maybe the cluster fuck that comes later. Reversal of betrayal?”

I hated it when she was right, still do. “Okay, what am I going to write instead?”

“A thousand words.”

“A thousand words of what?”

She sipped her coffee, smiled sweetly and said, “You tell me.”

Writing that Offends

Yeah, I've been slack and haven't put anything here for quite some time. I'm currently in the process of writing a series set on the island of Greantalia, which is to the west of the continent where many of the other stories will be set. I made a comment about one of the protagonists in the current work in progress which seemed to cause some consternation. You see, he's eighteen winters old (which you should know means either seventeen or eighteen years old, depending on the how advanced summer is), and he meets a young woman. I neglected to mention he noticed her breasts and said this was me having forgotten what it was like to be seventeen.

This apparently meant the character was either a misogynist, or a misogynist in training, and the story was misogynistic because it objectified women. That's a lot to glean from the simple statement:

"Tall, thin and small-breasted, she smiled too easily and was everything Lainashael didn’t dream of in a woman. Her smile was delightful though."

I should have left it at that. Instead, I tried to explain the main theme of this character's story and somehow came off as a dick. I'm a writer, so if the misunderstanding was genuine, then it's entirely my fault. I believe it was genuine since I have no reason to believe this person is a troll. I may point her to this post, or just leave her thinking I'm a dick. Probably best leave her thinking I'm a dick.

The story in question is a big story told from multiple points of view. Being third-person limited, the beliefs and values of the point of view character will come through in the writing. They must. If the work is considered misogynistic because one adolescent POV character notices a pair of boobs (and is impressed by her smile), then what about the POV of the main villain? He has a justification for genocide and a way of excusing rape (although he does plan retribution for them once the Landers are no longer useful)? No matter how screwed up his motivations and excuses are, they're what you’re going to find in those chapters. Sadly, Lingen don’t grow facial hair, so he has no moustache to twirl. That means we need to understand why he’s such a dick, and ‘he’s a bad person’ doesn’t cut the mustard. You can pick and choose the POV character and say it’s all about -X-, with X being anything you want to be offended by. That’s the risk of multiple points of view, unless all your characters are Disney princesses that is.

The big issue of this entire series is an insidious form of racism I still come across today, and it’s often prefixed with “I'm not being racist but...” for some reason. It’s wrong to discriminate against the indigenous folk but apparently fine to discriminate against “them half-casts” because “they’re the troublemakers”. Being a WASP, why would I even know about this, or even care? I had a very dear friend a long time ago whose mother was indigenous and whose father was white. She copped it from both sides. Whites who didn’t know her didn’t like her and many indigenous folk hated her because of her father. There was only a small group within her church who accepted her, but she was lovely. Warm, caring and intelligent and incredibly easy to talk to once you got past her defences. No, I wasn’t involved with her, I was dating someone else – in fact she was a girlfriend’s friend which was how I got to meet her.

Alright, let's be fair. Was there some truth about some behaviours of these people? Of course. What would you expect from somebody who is not accepted by, and unacceptable to, the majority of people of both cultures from which they came? Are they going to be saints? Or are they going to be angry because they’ve been treated badly for most of their lives, and frustrated because they see that treatment continuing for the rest of their lives? No, I don't accept we should condone the behaviours, but perhaps extend some empathy toward where those behaviours came from and maybe even do something about the cause.

My story was denigrated as misogynistic based on a single reference to the breasts of a young woman being noticed by a young man, and nothing else. Why should I care? Well, the main theme is more important to me then it probably should be to somebody of non-mixed descent, white or black. It’s something neither of us has had to deal with. We're each accepted by our own people. Truth is, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the issue, nor cared, if not for past friendships. It has been a long time since I moved to Western Australia, but I still get angry when I hear someone going on about “them half-casts”. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe because of my skin colour I have no right to say anything. Maybe, when something is wrong, I should just shut the hell up, and let those affected by it deal with it. Maybe the idea of loyalty to a friendship is an outdated concept. I mean let’s face it, it’s nearly thirty years. She didn’t commit suicide because of the crap she had to put up with, nor anything dramatic like that, in fact, last I heard she was married and working as a teacher. Although a dramatic ending would make this story more poignant, I’m glad she doesn't have one. Perhaps that’s a story for someone to write, I won’t. A white male author with a female main character who’s not white? That’s a mine-field in which I will not tread. The message, if it was to sell, would end up lost in whatever bun-fight emerges because of that.

But I did write a story with offensive content. There are three races with three different cultures. Misogynistic? Yeah, that’s the Theolympian culture which isn't featured. Objectifies women? Well, I haven’t had cause to write a scene where a male Theolympian noble goes to a slave market to buy a female slave, but you can bet your arse any description from his POV is going to objectify every female body he examines, and a lot worse than is apparently here. The same will go for a female noble looking at male slaves. I’ll even go so far as to ask female friends what they would look for when evaluating a near-naked man for a slave. I’ve asked something like this of friends in the past, and used their answers in my narrative.

As to the content present in the story, is it offensive? Absolutely. Uncomfortable? I bloody hope so. For me, the most offensive and uncomfortable line in literature goes like this: “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” It doesn't let me feel comfortable with complacency. I’m no George Orwell, but I won’t want to write nice, comfortable little stories that don’t have uncomfortable elements. There's no need for a hero to make you aspire to be a better man or woman. I don't want anything like that in my fantasy world, Gardijon.

Notes on Sauilin Sets

This is a thousand words written for a book with the working title "Blutling Prince of the Darklands". I'm not up to this portion yet, but it is part of the story that needs to be there, so I wrote it - a bit like most of chapter 10, which was written long before I'd finalized what was going to happen in Chapter 1.

I won't go into the story except to tell you it has two characters from another story, but you can read it for yourself, but I will give you a little bit of the story about Sauilin and her compatriots.

Sauilin is what we would call the Sun. It is the Darklander name for the star the planet orbits and is universally accepted as its name. It is referred to as the loving mother who nurtures the land, unlike our own mythos that has the sun as a male character.

Thiuhian, on the other hand, is the King of the night. It is the greater of the two moons, has a circular orbit about the equator.

Saldra, the Jester of Joker, is the lesser of the two moons. She has an elliptical orbit about the poles and causes havoc in the southern hemisphere two or three times a year, about every seven and a half cycles of Thiuhian. She is the wayward daughter of Sauilin and Thiuhian in the old stories.

Gardijon is the name of the planet or the lands. He is the wayward son of Sauilin and Thiuhian, the warrior who is constantly warring with his sister Saldra. It seems the union of the sun and moon only ever produced troublesome offspring.

The Darkland Universe.

I had the idea of putting short stories up here from the Darkland Universe. I'm currently in the throes of putting together the first story, which is currently called Gods of the Darklands. It is proving to be very unusual as the world becomes clearer in my mind. The Otherlander culture is becoming more interesting and the various Darklander cultures are becoming more complicated, but they make sense. I'm planning on putting a couple of stories soon, since I want to explore one of the other tribes. If you have any interest in Landers, Lingen, Blutten and Ringen, than watch this space.

Three Hundred Words

Write a story he said. Three hundred words he said. Should be easy I said. Yeah right.

What sort of a story can you write in three hundred words? Well, fascinations that open questions the reader must answer. Hints that promise what three hundred words can't deliver but cause the dreams that do. Enticements to indulgence in hidden pleasures of fancy, the kind that nobody else sees...

Try a four-hundred and thirty something word narrative leading nowhere. I didn't believe it could be so difficult. It's easy to say nothing in three hundred words, it's even easy to say something, but telling a story?...

Yeah OK. Davo got maggoty drunk and got picked up by the cops... Yeah that sort of story can be told in about three hundred words. A man walks into a bar… Yeah that can dragged out to three hundred words. But something with more substance?

Then it occurred to me. First person. The day after saying to somebody I don’t write first person, first person. You can get all chummy with first person, so I gave it a go.

The page titled Northern Certainty is that story.

And this is exactly two hundred words now.

Theolmympus

Well I thought I'd let you know the purpose of this Blog. It's so I can upload short stories from this strange place that I've started gathering stories from.

The Darklands however isn't really a fantasy world in the more traditional sense. It's a series of musings that I've been developing for a while now that begins with "What if some people from a technologically advanced culture suddenly found themselves in the situation where all their technology no longer works?"

The short answer is "They'd be screwed." The much longer and easier answer is "They'd found a new empire." This is what the first story that I've been developing has been about, but in the meantime, I've been exploring this strange place. It's a planet, slightly larger than Earth, tilted a bit more than Earth and has two moons unlike Earth. It also has something strange about it that doesn't allow what we think of as technology to work. Nobody knows what it is, but it has something to do with the intense magnetic field about the planet and the strange shape of that field.

And then there are the inhabitants...

Another time.

Welcome

Welcome to the Dark Lands. Well, not the Dark Lands really. More like the countries to the south of the Dark Lands, the Empires of Theolympus and the Lands north of the Great Rivers. Here you will meet with the Dark Landers, Other Landers and perhaps some of the mysterious Lingen.

No, there is no magic here, although some things seem like it. Instead it’s just a reality. Not anything mystical; a technology, not a ritual. This is a place of perpetual strangeness, but that’s anywhere until the strange becomes mundane. Old earthers would have called the inhabitants “Iron Age”, but as you will see, it really can’t be because Iron behaves differently here.

You may want to be careful though. Are they birds up there on the right, or are they mustringen? You really won’t know until it's too late, unless of course you're a Dark Land Inhabitant too.

Enjoy these tales then...


[Constructive Feed Back is always welcome, and no, I haven't given up my day job.]