Sparks

pinterest: tempus regina

Jenny just wrote a post on the elements that have inspired, and continue to inspire, her novel Gingerune.  We both did something like this for our participation in the "next big thing" blog hop back in January, but that was only one question amid several and there was little room for detail; it seemed a good idea to take more space to elaborate.

Since January I have written some 20 or 30k words and I find myself late in the story, staring at what I believe is the descent - ascent, I suppose, but it feels like a descent - to the climactic chapters.  It's altogether mind-boggling.  But at any rate, I am at that thickest of thick parts where just about everything I come across reminds me of the story to a greater or lesser degree.

books

Tempus Regina involves and will involve a great deal of research, since it covers so much time.  One of the earliest to get the story off the ground was, not surprisingly, The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff.  It invoked images of one world I wished to create, giving me the first glimmers of light as I ventured into the writing process, and I would thank Sutcliff for it if I could.  At the other end of the spectrum, Dickens' Bleak House helped sketch the underworld of Victorian London in my mind; I do manage to thank him by letting him make a cameo appearance, albeit not a very flattering one.  And then more recently, and for no particular reason, I found in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew a kindred spirit.

poetry

I don't read a great deal of poetry, but there are a few snatches of verse that fit Tempus Regina: mostly Tennyson, but also Eiluned Lewis' The Birthright and the classic final line from Lord Byron's When We Two Parted:

if I should meet thee

after long years

how should I greet thee?

with silence and tears.

There is also a particular line from Tennyson's Morte D'Arthur that I keep pinned to my corkboard and refer to from time to time:

...the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,

clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd,

larger than human on the frozen hills.

songs

Everywhere I turn, there seems to be a song that fits one part of Tempus Regina or another.  I think in many cases it is wholly my own bias.  The first ever to be connected with the story was Escala's Requiem for a Tower, and then Street of Dreams by Blackmore's Night.  The march style of Sarabande, also by Escala, is appropriate as well.  Andrew Peterson's lovely Carry the Fire makes a wonderful theme for the story as a whole, and several relationships within it in particular; Maire Brennan's Hear My Prayer fits nicely with Regina.  They make sense enough, but other songs are rather crazier - like Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Falcon in the Dive (Chauvelin swears), and Adele's Set Fire to the Rain and Skyfall.  

It's all about the bias, I tell you.

Like Nobody's Reading

pinterest

I read a quote the other day.  It was probably on Pinterest - most quotes are - and I have not the least idea who said it.  (Which is good, because I'm going to disagree with it, and I hate disagreeing with famous people.)  I can't locate the quote now, but in essence it said

write like nobody's reading.

I thought, when I came across it, that is sounded good and pithy and like something we need to hear.  Most of us have had times where we get ourselves into a bind wondering if what we write will be appreciated. I know I've had panicked moments when I think, "What if people think I hate cats because Regina dislikes them?  What if they think I don't like to read because Tip doesn't?  What if people misunderstand these characters' relationships?  What if they twist my words and come out with something horrible?"  The questions range from the petty to the dire, and if allowed to grow, they could quickly become overwhelming.  In one sense, therefore, this "Write like nobody's reading" quote has a point.

But I believe there is another side to the coin, a side I had not particularly noted until reading Dorothy Sayers' book on the Trinity and the creative mind, The Mind of the Maker.  (I wrote something of a synopsis for this after I finished it back in September.)  In her work she draws a parallel between the economy of the Godhead and the economy of the mind of creative man - a reasonable object, seeing as we are made in the Image of God.  The first two "persons" of this imagining, creating mind are simplest to see and to explain; they are the Idea, that thing that exists in our heads before ever we begin to write, and the Energy or Activity, where the Idea is translated into something understandable to others.  But of course the third is rather more elusive, which to me makes Sayers' parallel more credible.

The third "person" deals, in essence, with the power that brings about proper communication and appreciation in the mind of the reader.  It is that thing which conveys the spirit of the Idea as expressed in the Activity.  It is that thing which, when present, creates the vital connection between the reader and the writer through the book.  And it is absolutely necessary.

In her book - which I continue to recommend for all writers - Sayers generally uses the example of a playwright, being one herself (as well as a novelist and an essayist, but that's beside the point).  It is critical, she writes, that when a man is penning his play, he keep in mind the perspective of the audience.  What is the audience going to understand by this wordplay?  How are these props going to appear?  Will the scene be conveyed?  She uses a humorous example of a play that failed to do just this; instead, the writer (who really should have been a novelist instead) substituted a long passage of "stage directions" - those sections in italics at the start of a scene in a Dover Thrift edition of Shakespeare.  Thunder.  Darkness.  Woman in bed, tossing and turning as if in pain.  Woman cries out, twisting sheets in hands.  End of Scene I.

This is an exaggeration, and yet it is an exaggeration that applies to all creative fields: whether you are writing a novel or a play, a failure to figuratively place oneself in the viewer's chair will result in a terrible disconnect.  At the heart of the matter, the fact is that mature writers, the ones not just starting out (and that is an important caveat), must write as though someone is reading.  Because isn't that the very thing we desire?

he that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

- john locke, an essay concerning human understanding

We want to be minded.  We want to be understood.  And in order to do so, we have to be able to have minds in two positions at once: that of the writer, designing and creating; and that of the reader, following and learning.   That is why, while we cannot allow worries about what others will think to paralyze us, we also cannot ignore them.  They have their place in helping us to convey our story, and the vital spirit of that story.