Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I received a wonderful email today from a Blackstone Academy player today, who is working on a project about influences in a writer's work. My response to the writer (whose name has been redacted) bounced, so I'm posting it here in hopes that they find it. Some of the notes about my inspirations may be interesting to other readers, as well!

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Dear A,

What a wonderful note to receive! I have also been struggling with my love for a certain transphobic author's works (which absolutely did help inspire Blackstone Academy), and to hear from you that the game helped made me tear up. I am so glad that it reached you!

A lot of other works influenced Blackstone Academy, many of which I referenced with little in jokes. In addition to that magic school series, I have absolutely been inspired by Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, as well as Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (one of the Mahwees wears an Unseen University ball cap). I'd be remiss in not mentioning the Narnia books, which I grew up with! They're not quite as direct an inspiration, but the idea of finding a magical world within the real one certainly corresponds to the idea of being able to leave normal school to attend a magic school. All of these are works that shaped me as a reader and a writer. I wouldn't say that my game directly responds to any of them--it was created to stand alone, rather than to comment on those other works--but the inspiration is certainly there.

In addition to other children's and adult fantasies, I also was greatly inspired by my new hometown. I moved to Connecticut as an adult, and the Thimble Islands are a real place off the coast near where I live. I wanted to create a setting based on this part of Connecticut, and I very much wanted to honor the indigenous people who lived here before European settlers. Jules's mother is based on actual scholars I've met at the Pequot Museum on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut. Esme and her parents are Quinnipiac; the Quinnipiac people are the original inhabitants of the New Haven area of Connecticut, and I wanted to make sure they were present in the narrative! Sleeping Giant State Park is a very real place, and stories of Hobbomock were a big inspiration for me; for years I've been wanting to do a project that brings in that mythological figure, because in addition to being the villain in most of the stories I found, there are really old historical records of stories about him being responsible for healing and warding off disease--and the local Quinnipiac organization claims him as a culture hero. That contrast really appeals to me in mythology and religion (figures like Loki, who are tricksters and are frequently the villains, also have stories where they're the heroes), so I wanted to highlight that about Hobbomock.

I'll also say that the setting first started in my head because I had a dream about students at a magic school racing flying sailboats. I'm not sure where that came from, but it became central to this game!

Regarding the discrimination, I wanted to make sure that was focused on supernatural vs. human magicians. In part, I didn't want it to be triggering to readers who are discriminated against in their normal lives, but I wanted to create a scenario where people could strive toward equal rights for a group. I also have to hugely credit Choice of Games for being so dedicated to representation. They encourage their creators to make it possible for players to create a main character of any gender and sexuality combination, and it is one of the things I most love about creating games with them (and playing their games by other authors!).

This ended up being a long response! I hope it's helpful for your project--and I truly thank you for writing. It made my day!

-Alana

I don't know what week it is. I'm beginning to think that will be a condition for the rest of my life as a mom. I do think a lot about how last year at this time, I was falling asleep for hours unintentionally and feeling sick to my stomach, and that my act of creativity was biological. Bug's "story," thus far, has been a delightful one, and I'm looking forward to her becoming a progressively bigger collaborator.

But on to my goals. I said last week: when you leave a story alone that long, is it yours any more? Is it the story you're meant to tell if you can set it down and walk away from it for a full year?

A lot of people had great things to say in the comments on that entry. jeff_duntemann's struck me as particularly poignant:

It may be less fair to ask "Is the story still mine?" in these cases than to ask, "Have I changed too much to remain its author?" Stories are not the only things that may be considered "works in progress."

This is sort of where my thought process has gone. In my questions, which are related but not intimately, I was seeing those two changing factors in two ways:

1) If I've left a story alone for a year, am I still the person who should write it? Does that story, as I would have told it, belong to the writer I am now? To echo Jeff, "Have I changed too much to write this story?"

2) If I've walked away from a story for a year, and wasn't compelled to write any more of it, it may be that the story I was trying to write isn't the one that needed me to write it. I think about that in terms of the Blackstone Academy project a lot. There are elements in that story that came from an earlier story that was also not the story I needed to write. So I think what will be best is leaving that draft, those three chapters I've already written, as scaffolding. I think I should scrap them and start over. And based on where I am in my writing goals these days (inspired largely by slwhitman and her Tu Books project and the entries about the importance of multicultural F/SF over at Genreville), I think that some of those elements will stick around, and others will go by the wayside.

Now, the quantifiables:

Reasonable goal:
* With my cowriter, finish the draft of our serial novel. (We're at chapter 10 of 20 -- halfway there!)
I finally went over lyster's chapter 11, and in response, it's now been made into chapters 11 and 12. My goal is to write chapters 13 and 14 to be ready for his review after his upcoming life event. I've already written 800 words (of the 1500 to 3000 word limit per chapter) of chapter 13, but there's a lot to accomplish in those two chapters, so I'm not sure what percentage I've actually finished. Still, progress is progress, and I revised the outline for the rest of the story, getting some good feedback from Max, so we're solidifying the awesome of here to the end.

* Write one short story.
This one is sneaking up on me fast. I want to have a solid short story ready for a submission deadline on August 1st; my short story writing tends to work in spurts, so there's still hope. I've settled on the idea that I'm going to work on, and if I can get a few hours with no other priorities, I should be able to slam something out in time to actually do revisions before the submission.

* Write multiple book reviews.
Since last week, I've written a PW review, two reviews for Mythprint, and one that will appear here at MtU&E in honor of m_stiefvater's awesome recent release, Linger. I still have more reviews on deck, but I'm actually making progress here.

* Additional contracted work that's come up has been going reasonably well, also. Lots of copyediting, but also some writing -- I finished a short essay on the Harry Potter books and will be writing four more essays this summer about various notable novels.

Extended goal:

* Write three chapters of the YA novel I'm working on.
Well, you already heard about this one above. Scrapping and starting over.

* Write three short stories (including the one above).
When I was looking at my percolating ideas, I came up with a couple that might be worth following up on, besides the one for the deadline. At least one involves giants.

* Restart the adult novel I haltingly began last year now that it's percolated and I have an idea of where it's going.
I think I'm going to reprioritize this -- meaning that I'm unprioritizing it. I'd rather see what the restart on the YA novel becomes.

* Blog at least three times a week
Ha! Well, that may actually happen this week, but I've not established any sort of pattern, have I? :)

So, back at the beginning of January, I posted some goals: one about developing a spiritual practice and one about returning to an actual writing practice. Then devonmonk posted another entry about goals over at Deadline Dames, and I set a couple of mini-goals, mostly about meeting my deadlines (with additional uber-goal of doing actual fiction writing between then and now). How am I doing?

With the spiritual practice, actually pretty well, comparatively. I'd been doing nothing, really, so anything is an improvement! Breakfast with Barfield is going well, and I'm pleasantly pleased with how easy Saving the Appearances is to read this time around. It's not as hard to wrap my brain around the ideas as it was when I first started contemplating them, and I'm glad of that. I've also been back to lighting candles for people with some regularity, which is in part due to the ridiculous number of candles we found when we moved, but largely because I've been thinking about people who need positive spiritual energy sent their way--and even if candles are only a representation, it's a meaningful practice for me.

As for the writing practice, I have say I'm not doing as well as I'd like. This is, in part, because I keep taking more work. I haven't yet gotten up to Jayne-level ("The money was too good. I got stupid."), but I'm keeping myself busy and working. If all goes well, I'll have an adventure gig shortly, and I've been working on Baeg Tobar shorts; I'll soon be starting the long project for them as well. That's definitely good work flexing my writing muscles, and I'm enjoying it. But "Good Company," "Chalice Girl," "Saving Tara," and the Blackstone novel are still just hanging out, waiting for me to pay more attention to them than I've been able to.

What about those mini-goals? I mostly made them. Considering my schedule being shifted some by new work that inserted itself, I think I met them all. Specifically, though, there's one piece that didn't get written that I still need to work on this week, before next week's deadlines catch up with me. To use Devon's technique, I'll put my goals here for my next two week period: one reasonable goal and one completely unreasonable, sky-high goal, and then I'll check back in two weeks from now and see how I did.

Reasonable Goal: Finish the essay that I meant to complete for the last set, complete the first set of copyediting/writing assignments that go with a three-part project, complete one reference writing project, and complete one large review/article project. Blog at least twice a week. Provide good critiques to the Substrate crew. Make progress on either "Good Company" or the Blackstone novel.

Unreasonable Goal: All of that, plus finishing another reference writing assignment early, blogging every day, and completing "Good Company," "Chalice Girl," and several Blackstone chapters.

For those of you who do resolutions, how are you keeping up with your January goals?

P.S. Congrats to devonmonk on getting contracted for six Allie Beckstrom books! I really enjoyed Magic to the Bone, and I'm thrilled that there will be that many in the series!

First item of business, Steampunk Musha RPG, the Iron Gauntlets version, got a review! It's been out for awhile now, so I'm pleased to see that people are still finding it--and even more pleased that people are enjoying it when they do. The d20 version is still planned to be out there some time, and hopefully more folks will find it then, as well. (And heck, maybe we'll get back to the comic eventually, and I'll get to tell Hiroko's story...)

In other news, I've been doing pretty well with my new commitment to spend time each day working on writing projects that aren't specifically freelance work. I've spent more time on "Rodeo at Area 51," and I think I'm probably only two scenes from the end, but they're pivotal scenes, and I'm not sure how well they'll gel together. I haven't worked on the Blackstone Academy novel since Friday, but I think that'll be on my plate again next week, as well as getting started on the vampire story, since that's what Arielle and I agreed I'd send to her for our next "deadline." I also got the final edits back on "Head above Water," the Living Forgotten Realms module that I wrote earlier this fall, and I after seeing the last set of edits, I really think it's a good strong adventure. (I hope the players agree!)

I also got started on a fun, ongoing freelance project that just came back to me. (The last time I worked on it was in 2004.) It's always been a fun project, and if I can get permission to mention it here, I'll talk a bit more about it. It's on the editorial side of the creative writing road, and being back on that side of the process renews my perspective. I don't think it's good to try to be my own editor when I'm writing drafts, but I think it's good to remember what the editorial process is, so that when I'm working with other editors, I can see more clearly from their point of view.

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Quick note: Lora Innes's The Dreamer is out in print today! Ask your Friendly Local Comic Shop for issue #1. You may remember Lora from a guest blog entry she did back in April. Check her out!

A fun thing happened while I was in Greece--I received an invitation to submit a biography to the French roleplaying site, GROG: Guide du Roliste Galactique. Of course, I was a bit busy to fill out their questionnaire at the time. Yesterday, I finally got back to the site editor and contributed my biography, which he has already translated and placed here. My photo will be up shortly as well. How fun is that?

(I've been instructed to encourage other game writers, artists, designers, etc. to contribute as well. If you're interested, shoot me a note at alanajoli at virgilandbeatrice dot com and I'll forward on the information!)

In other news, the senryu contest on Spacewesterns.com finished up yesterday, so I'm expecting to start reading a lot of great Senryu in the next few days! I'm also working on another short story, which I should have started much earlier, in hopes of finishing it to my satisfaction in time to submit to the Lace and Blade volume 2 open call for Norilana books. I've been reading through the first volume and am very much enjoying the stories--so here's hoping mine will reach the bar that's been set. Given that I've now done a few stories on the Isle of Man, I thought I'd turn to Glastonbury, England, my favorite place in the whole world (despite hefty competition from Ephesus, Naxos, Port St. Erin, South Haven, MI, and the Thimbles). To start heading in the right direction, I've been reading The Avalonians by Patrick Benham, which tells the story of a group of young men and women involved in some of the physchical activities (including the finding of something like a holy grail) at the turn of the 20th Century. My short piece, which I'm calling "The Chalice Girl" for now, is only going to touch on that very tangentially, as it's also going to be part of a piece building into the universe of the Blackstone WIP. ("Don't Let Go" also takes place in that universe. Probably.)

That said, I'd better get back to it!

I was having a conversation with my chiropractor yesterday and talking about my writing. In response to my saying something about how I was delaying on a project, she made the comment, "Well, don't be your own worst enemy."

This struck me as pretty sage advice. There are a lot of moments when I'm the only person standing in my way--and yet, I still stand there, just hanging out on the path to success and not going anywhere. (Or, at least, the path to accomplishing something with my day. Success is subjective, after all.) I've been trying really hard to follow amieroserotruck's excellent example, which I blogged about last week, in writing at least one sentence a day. To be honest, it's not a fun way to write. But rather than sit down and write more than a sentence or two, I read books I've been meaning to read, work on other projects, and generally do other things that get in the way of my progress. It's not that any of these are bad decisions--and everyone deserves a little time off now and again--but they are decisions that keep me in the struggling stage with the new WIP.

At any rate, today I'm going to start trying to stop being my own worst enemy, starting with getting on top of that project I talked to my chiropractor about. And who knows? Maybe tomorrow I'll write a whole page. ;)