Category Archives: Writing

Excerpt 2

Bare feet flat to the padded floor of the practice room, he just brushed 6 feet tall, making him a good hand-span or two taller than the blonde man stretching in preparation across from him. His limbs were long and toughly muscled, as opposed to bulky – built for distance and endurance over brute strength. When not tied back from his high forehead, and matted black with sweat, his shoulder length hair was the dark brown of polished delan wood. Rough chopped ends testified to his impatience with guild rules which dictated hair could be no longer, and with custom which had short hair as the province of the ruling Houses.

“So you’re actually going to take the trip? Sim hadn’t been at the ale after all?” The other man on the mat gripped his practice sword in a two-handed stance and prepared to attack.

Luk shrugged and raised his own sword in defence.

“Seriously? You’re going past the borders?” the blonde shifted forward and then circled before lunging.

This time the only answer Luk gave was a grunt as he easily parried the blow and started an attack of his own.

“But with Tribal guides?” The shorter man stumbled backwards from the force of the attack, but kept up his stream of questions. “And one a woman?!”

“They’re the best”. Luk swung his wooden blade up under the guard of his opponent, twisting it so the other blade flew to the floor with a clatter, and his own ended up resting at the base of the other’s throat. “You weren’t even trying, Jac”.

“I had my mind on other things!” Jac – Pirael Jiacomo, as he was listed on the guild rolls – retorted as he stooped to collect his blade, then made to return it to the racks at the side of the room. “Enough. The only time I ever could best you was when you’d had the hide thrashed off you by a Master and even then you were fighting with your right hand tied behind you in forfeit. I’ve had about all the humiliation I can handle at your hands today. Time we sat down with a brew and you explained to me how the best mercenary on the Guild’s books got himself marked for guide-dogging a merchant through the borders with just the backup from some tribal scurf of dubious descent”.
“And a scholar. Don’t forget there’s a scholar as is one of those I am to guide too”. A tiny grin lifted the edge of Luk’s wide mouth.
“How could I forget the scholar!” Jac threw his hands in the air and pushed his tall companion out the door towards the changing rooms. “Shower – beer – explanation. And in that order. I’ve a feeling I’m going to be needing as much fortification as I can get down my throat to get a handle on this news”.

What’s in a name?

I do keep coming back to the problem of names and identity and authority, so forgive me if I am repeating myself slightly, but it is an issue that continues to run through my head at different angles. (these are just a few times I’ve approached it in the past).

Our names are one of the most intensely personal things about us. They can form the basis for our whole identity and people can get remarkably possessive over them. Names have magic and power. Cultures around the world have traditions of evil powers taking control over people by the use of their name – witches and wizards. Rumpelstiltskin was banished when his true name was revealed. To this day, many modern religions have taboos over the naming of god, thinking his “true name” is too sacred to speak aloud. Some feel it is considered bad luck to name a child before it is born, whilst in Christian traditions, children are baptised and formally made known to their god.

People often say “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”, but really, Romeo is railing against the inevitable: it is Juliet’s “name that is [his] enemy”. No matter how he might wish it otherwise, they cannot be together because of what they are called. (And part of me suspects that she wouldn’t smell so sweet if calling her a rose didn’t make her so unobtainable).

We obsess over genealogy and family trees and our ancestors. We spend our lives with the names our parents give us, some more fortunately than others. I kid you not, I went to school with a Neil Down and a girl called Muffin. All through my childhood I thanked my parents for giving me a name that could not become a nickname, despite people’s best efforts to the contrary. At the same time, part of me does think it would be nice to have a nickname because they are signs of affection. Someone did call me Mercedes and refused to explain when others got confused. It was a joke between me and him and it felt all the more special for that.

In the end, I have given myself a nickname of sorts – Cas. The first few times someone said “do you want a cup of tea Cas?” and used the name to my face, it felt slightly odd, but I like it. What started out as just a way of keeping my ‘real’ identity secret, has become something more. Something I am very, very attached to. It has become a concrete identity in the last few years, crossing over from online mask to reality, and a name with its own weight of Bright Meadow and whatever attached authority has accrued, behind it.

Cas and CLK are now firmly linked – google one and you get the other, something which was a semi-conscious decision on my part. As the online became so intertwined with my offline life, it became harder and harder to keep the two separate, so I gave in gracefully and claimed as much of the CLK identity online as I could. It is still something I debate constantly though, and there are instances where I wish it hadn’t happened. There are times I wish my father didn’t read Bright Meadow, but at the same time, I do not like compartmentalising my life to the degree it would have required to keep it all apart.

So I tread a fine line between Cas and CLK, online and offline. Most of the time the two aren’t even distinct entities. Cas wears jeans to the office and has awesome tattoos, but it is CLK who answers the phones, draws up the contracts and is a consummate professional.

Names are important, clearly. Names of people, names of things. Names become brands and authorities and you build trust in a particular name. Which is where I finally get to my (sort of) point:

If, and it is a BIG if, I do ever finish what I am writing and go down the path of publishing, do I want my author-part to be linked to the rest? Do I want the world and their shark to hop from CLK the author, to Cas and Bright Meadow and all the attached kit’n’kaboodle? Or do I want something completely fresh, without a history. Do I want to write under a pseudonym? Is publisher CLK compatible with author X? I can hear a future editor yelling at me for tipping a whole pre-built brand down the toilet here, but is Bright Meadow a legacy an author could be proud of? Note, I am not saying *I* am not proud of it, but would it help or hinder in that sphere?

I stand by everything I have said on this blog, but I can think of more than a few things in the archives which would get one audience or another hot under their conservative collars. As an author, would I not also be entitled to a part of the web where I *could* unload and talk about the price of tea, if I so wished, without feeling the pressure of my audience? If CLK was to get published, Bright Meadow would come out regardless. I am not ready to loose this place as my sanctuary.

But do I want to create a whole NEW identity for my writing? I want to talk about it, god damn it! If it were ever to happen, getting a book published would be like the biggest blog event EVA!!!!! and to not share it with you lot here? Unthinkable. I want to think that one day someone from school might see “CLK” on the spine of a book in a bookshop and be jealous/proud.

For now, my gut reaction is gurgling “pseudonym” but am I right? Am I being silly? Am I being dishonest to my family, denying them seeing Kemp in print, refusing to connect part of my (potential) accomplishment to the name they graced me with when I was brought into this world. To go for a pseudonym, is that not saying “CLK is not good enough”?

Fresh Slate

I just made a very hard decision: I nuked the contents of my “Sunday Roast” bookmarks folder. There was stuff in their going back to last November and I just don’t know if I can weed through it all! Sorry folks.

So this week is going to be a carefully selected bouquet garni of movie trailers and a few choice things that made me LOL or Hmmmmm when I read them the first time around.

Before we get down to that though, let me fill you in with a little that has been going on this past week… Um. The holiday is over and I worked all week? Not really very thrilling, is it? I have, however, finally come to a decision over the story that I have been writing for longer than I care to admit! Not only will the bloody thing get written this year, but I actually know what shape it is going to take. As in, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And something approaching a plot. And a refined character list!

I was just lying there in bed last night mulling things over before I fell asleep and *bam* I saw it all lain out in my mind. Previously, my problem has always been it was just too frelling big and I SERIOUSLY doubt by ability to do justice to the sprawling world in my head. Plus when I am unsure of the ultimate loyalty of one pivotal character, it’s kinda hard to work out the full arc. But something shifted and I saw a natural break I can write to.

So I am going to write it. Why this determination? I will be honest, mainly because I am starting to get just a leetle bit sick of the story after eight-ish years. I want to get this one put to bed, so I can start putting this OTHER idea that has been spawning in the depths of my brain down on the page. Turns out, the beauty, and horror, of having built a whole world is that there is more than one tale to tell…

Gar. So keep prodding me folks. 2009 will be the year I get this bugger written, you see if it isn’t!

9 – I’m not sure how to describe this, but it’s from the minds of some pretty groovy people, so it should rock.

Good

The Ugly Truth – it had me giggling, so it stays, ok?

Terminator Salvation *tingles*

Nothing but the Truth

New in Town – so I have a thing for Harry Connick Jr.

Duplicity

Watchmen *tingles* *tingles* I’m re-reading the graphic novel and this could be very, very good. Or awful. Because I recognised some scenes in the trailer as lifted DIRECTLY from the comic. Recent horrendous experiences from The Spirit have only reinforced my concerns over such slavish adaptations. We’ll see.

The Proposal – predictable cheesy chick-flick. We all need a weakness, and these are mine!

And before I head out into the chilly, sunny Sunday afternoon for a nice walk, I would like you to turn your attention to The Guild, a hilarous independent sitcom webisode about a group of online gamers. It is written for gamers, about gamers by a gamer. Episodes vary from 3-6 minutes in length, and follow the Guild members’ lives online and offline. It is funnier than it has any right to be and hooked me from the first episode. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find this!

Just a thousand words

The third night out their pattern changed. They drew up to camp, aways back from the road, shortly before dusk as usual, but Rofan was edgy. Lukam watched as he muttered something to his brother and then approached Jariel Janir where she stood watching the campfire catch on the tinder.

“You sure?” her low voice carried to where he stood with the horses.
“I am sure, my lady” Rofan growled back. Jariel nodded, then stared at the ground for a moment, stiring the dust with her boot toe. Satisfied with something, she stooped down and picked up six, no seven, objects from the ground. Lukam would swear later they were just pebbles like the countless others scattered around the clearing. Next he watched as Jariel walked slowly round their burgeoning camp at the limits of the firelight, bending down at intervals to place a pebble on the ground.

“Ei, doi, kay, hir, vir, lar-tei” she muttered one word with each stone. Back at the fire, she raised the last and seventh pebble to her forehead, muttered “sai” and placed it in the pouch that hung from her belt. Lukam felt as if someone was watching over his shoulder, but as he made to turn, Jariel knotted the pouch shut and the feeling was gone. He shook himself slightly, shivering at the cool night air. Jariel then continued her preparations for their dinner as if nothing out the way had happened.

“What was that?” He queried Kriss as he neared the fire himself.
“What was what, mercenary?”
“With the pebbles? What LeiLei – he had slipped into the habit of calling her the Chalman for lady as all the others did early on – was doing?”
“Oh. The lady was just casting the boundaries”. Kriss caught his puzzlement. “More’n that, you need ask the lady your questions yourself”. Kriss turned away to check on their guests, effectively closing the conversation.

Nothing loath, Lukam approached Jariel at the cookpot.

“Jariel Janir? May I talk with you?”
“Of course mercenary. Sit. You can peel those roots whilst you’re at it”. Grey eyes smiles over her saibu. Recognising a superior authority, Lukam grinned in return, admitted defeat, and set to work on the mound of tubers.
“What did you do just then? With the pebbles?”
“I cast the boundaries” she spoke as if that was all he needed to hear.
“And that means?”
“Ai, I forget at times you are Nation-born, mercenary” she settled back on her heels and looked afresh at him.

“The taught you of Toth, in the village where you were born?”
“I was raised to follow Toth, yes”.
“I sense something else though, in your tone. I would guess you spent time with the Sisters?”
“Eh, yes. Now you ask, the Sisters had the raising of me and my brother for a year or so after my mother took sick. Then I started Layishan and that side of thing sort of took the hind step”.
“So your understanding is of the Nation world. You know of this world and the next that follows. You were raised in a land where death follows birth and Spirit follows death in a clear line”.
“Yes”.
“In Chalman we see things a mite differently. Our lives are more… ‘circular’ – I use that Nation word, but it does not translate direct. For our purposes now it will serve. We acknowledge something beyond Spirit. Our name for it is ‘Sula’, which is closest to your ‘power’ I would think. Ah, I see from your eyes you have heard of Sula. From a Healer, perhaps?”
“Our healer for a term at Layishan was Chalman trained. His reputation was formidable”.
“I am not surprised. Not for nothing, the best healers on Kenmarkiu come out of the sands. But I stray from our point. Sula, power, ties us all to this world. It turns through us all, to differing degrees. It lets us do things your Nation tutors would have slandered as ‘magic’. Casting the boundaries like I just did is simply that. I set the limits to our camp. Oh, it will not be some impenetrable barrier, so hide your skeptiscm Rikart Lukam. It will simply let us know if people approach”.
“The words? You spoke… it sounded like a chant to me”.

“Counting words only, mercenary”. She raised a reassuring hand. “Worry not, I will try to refrain from corrupting you with my desert magic till we are well beyond the reach of Frenan witch hunters”.
“Why do you tell me this so freely?”
“You asked”. She smiled again over her saibu. “I am a Healer, Rikart Lukam. Part of the reasoning for my very existence is to impart knowledge. If a savage Northern blademan is all Ruad presents me with then, by the six tribes, I shall make the most of the opportunity”. She held her arms wide to the night sky for a moment then dropped, the moment of levity passed.

“Get some rest, mercenary. The boundaries are cast and are as safe as we can make them. Ne’el has first watch, then Rofan. You have third, so I suggest you sleep while you can. From here out our journeying is going to get a little more exciting. I would rather we had been further on our way, but we deal with the hand the fates have given us”. She rose to her feet gracefully, patted him on the shoulder, and took the basket of tubers to Kriss at the other side of the large fire.

What makes a good writer?

People I respect, trust and love in differing proportions have told me, many times, that they like how I write. I have a style, it seems, that is “lyrical, easy and a joy to read” (a direct quote from an essay/short story I wrote a year or so back). Welcoming; funny, others have said when grades weren’t riding on the product.

My own writing aside, for it is phenomenally hard to judge your own worth, I know that in turn there are writers who I like and writers who I don’t. I seem to innately know what makes a good sentence, though I am often times hard pushed to articulate and analyse precisely what grabs me about certain writers.

As an aside, given my line of work, I am fortunately getting rapidly better at this!

At a stab I would say it is the voice and personality good authors bring across the page. Words should flow easily and be a joy to read to the point you don’t know you are reading. Rather you are watching the story unfold in your mind with no conscious effort. Great authors take words and ideas and play with them till they make your brain sing. Each time you read them you get something different from the piece. From the comfort-blanket-fluffy of a decent chick lit, to the tense suspense (can I DO that to the English language?!) of a brilliantly plotted thriller…

There is no excuse for bad writing, as I frequently yell at a book or the TV screen at yet another awful offering with wooden dialogue and paint by numbers plotting.

People think it is hard, but it is not, is it? I just write down the words I hear spoken in my head. I speak, so I write. Moose mumbled that she couldn’t write like me. Who would want to? Surely it is better to write like yourself? In my last job I was the proof reader and copy editor of choice for the whole office, and a few heads of service from the next office over as well. I never quite understood why people felt they needed my help, but clearly the words just fit together for me.

But I am still not sure what makes a good writer.

It is not a strong adherence to grammar or rigid sentence structure; I certainly couldn’t pick an adverb out of a police line up. It isn’t even a varied vocabulary, though it certainly doesn’t do any damage. When I helped people do rewrites of their work, the first thing I always did was get them to put the pen and paper away and just talk to me. Tell me what they wanted to say. Once freed from the idea they had to sound “impressive” on the page, or be the next incarnation of Shakespeare, they would find their own voice. Their own pattern and what they then wrote invariably sounded true. My job was then nothing more than acting like a spell-checker with legs and a cute smile.

Maybe then it is the sense of flow and rhythm and a pattern to the words. I repeat: if you can speak, you can write.

I’ve been vocal in the past, and was vocal just last night, about my loathing for Dan Brown (he of Da Vinci Code fame). I shall stress once more for readers newer to Bright Meadow that I have no problem with what he wrote (unlike my Renaissance Historian landlord), rather my hatred is reserved for how he wrote. Or more precisely, for the execrable excuse for prose he vomited onto the page. Certain people should never be let in front of the word processor, let alone find an editor to take them onto their list. His writing is just so stilted, with a jerky rhythm, and dialogue that is the literary equivalent to badly dubbed Japanese samurai movies.

*shudder*

In contrast, a book I started reading last night: Crowboy by David Calcutt. From the first line I was hooked. I found myself speaking aloud in the character’s accent.

    “So I’m outside the city one evening on me usual rounds, sorting through the leftovers and picking me way through the day’s dead. Not that there’s much to be took. The best of the fighting’s over now. That all happened in the first few weeks after the soldiers come, and what with the city having took a good battering and the best of its people dead or run off, everybody’s got themselves settled down not to a good long siege”

Whole chapters, the whole book, written in the accents, the very voices, of the characters themselves. That is hard to do. It is tricky enough to find your own voice in writing. It is that much harder to be consistent with the voices of others, especially in varied and non-standard dialects.

Maybe this need for a coherent voice is partly why I dislike so many first-person narratives. So few writers can pull it off, most of the time it just jars as I read.

I am becoming something of a writing snob. There are so many great authors out there, but they are drowning under the weight of the mediocre. Why should I waste my precious time on a sub-standard product? Quality speaks over quantity every time, or at least it should. I know a book is good when I find myself slowing down from my usual break-neck reading pace, to savour what is written. When I get to the end of the book and instantly go looking to see what else the author has written. When people have to throw things at me to get my attention. When I miss my bus stop because I am engrossed.

That is the sign of a good writer.

I just wish I could pin down exactly what they did and how they did it. Because it is more than just a “voice”, I know it is. It has to be. It can’t be that simple?

To the different ones

She sat at the computer and stared at the screen in front of her. Who to make the hero this time, who the villain? What meagre aspect of her normal life could she twist out of all resemblance to reality. What curl of drudgery could she wow them with this time? She was fed up with it, sick and bone tired, of being always expected to come out with something new. Or with something old, just dressed over to look different. How much of her life could she stand to see put down in print on a page, how much of her past pain would these people swallow before they realised that it was all false?

There was only so many times she could see the look in her friend’s eyes as they read her words. She didn’t want to watch any more. The thrill of seeing tears brim had faded quickly to revolt that she was shaming them so. What right did she, to tell of the pain so publicly? The days of wishing she could stand and scream on the rooftops had gone, along with the days of waiting on a miracle to end it all.

She did it by stealth, let little bits of her truth filter out, hidden in a flood of fiction. Those that cared, knew; knew what she did. She shamed them by revealing in public all those little failures that had built up into the biggest of all. Her failure to be what they had wanted her to be.

She didn’t want it any more, that knowledge of what she was doing to them, those she loved. She couldn’t even love them enough to stop, because she kept going. After all, her public expected it, waited for it. The days when she could be silent for months at a time, her fingers moving over the keyboard for nothing but work were gone. This was her work now. Now she spent her days using her pen to dig away at the scabs of normalcy, till her full strangeness lay revealed for those who chose to see it.

What had turned her down this path? No therapy had spawned this version. No guidance counsellor suggested the pen as alternative to the razor. When had the sweet girl become bitter? Her cynicism – British humour, or neurochemical glitch? Whatever had happened, this wasn’t the truth or the reality, no matter how many journalists she told it was.

It was a fine line, the distinction between author-public, and suicide-private, but it was there if you took the care, and just enough people were left to know where to look. In the past she’d tried for a full-scale abandonment, but one or two had clung on, like so many barnacles. Unnoticeable till she tried to run, and then they caused enough drag to make the difference between clear get away, and guilt-ridden confrontation.

She kept saying to them, telling them to back away, that she didn’t want them around. But still, no matter what her desires, they knew best. It actually made them proud to read her latest work. Thrilled them a little bit when they could trace the arc of reality through the space-battles, or relate a minor character to some mundane feature of a life she no longer wanted.

Tell me what to do to make it right. Tell me what to do to make the voices stop, to make the pain go away, to make it all clear.

She was tired, shattered, beaten, worn down, and they didn’t even see. Those who professed to love her best didn’t see that she was being slowly buried alive under their expectations. She knew what they wanted for her, and it was so simple, which made it so much worse. She couldn’t even live up to their one simple request. Be happy. Two words, three syllables, a rush of endorphins…

The crucial switch in her head was stuck on “off”.

Long ago she had taken to writing it down because, on the page, or on the screen, something of the incomprehensibility faded, and she was able to see patterns. She had discovered her gift at the same time as the assorted transmitters in her brain had decided to take a few decades in vacation. Her gift, when she chose to look at it like that, was that she could also make other people see the patterns. There was something wonderfully gothic about the way that she could make other people understand what was going on in her head better than she herself could.

All they had ever wanted for her and she’d failed at it. But she was good at things, good at this. So she somehow managed to translate the randomness in her head into prose people enjoyed, but that wasn’t living. She made money, but so did street-sweepers. Not everyone could write the shit they saw behind their eyes, and not, it seemed, everyone, could be happy.

Tell me what to say and I will say it to you, I will do it for you, I will burn this house down. I will burn us to the ground.

Excerpt 1

Because he asked so nicely, this is for Josh. It’s unfinished. I’m still not sure where it fits into the whole picture (though from the character interaction we’re talking later on in the story) and I’m still not totally convinced I’ve separated the two world-views out enough, but enjoy…
p.s. – any comments on how art mirrors life, and I will take my revenge by eviscerating you in fiction. I know that I use my writing to work things through. I don’t need my nose rubbed in it :p

She sat there, watching quietly as Luk stirred the fire, making the coals collapse against one another and give out more heat in preference to light. She loved how the amber glinted off his bones, spare with decades of fighting, making them softer; the bones he would have had had fate not stepped in.

“What is it, mei sa?” Luke turned to look at her over his shoulder. “You’re quiet tonight, quiet even for you”.
“Just thinking, ma sona. Thinking what life would have been”.
“Deep thoughts, Je-Je, but why think them? Life is as it is. We have nothing to gain by pondering on how it might have been different”.
“Now who sounds like a Healer, hey?” Jariel grinned. “I know thinking this line won’t get the horses watered, but it intrigues me. How much of life comes because of our actions and responses to situations, and how much was predestined for us. Would I be here to today, the person I am, if a Healer two centuries ago had not fore-spoken my birth and my actions? Or of if the Shantarican had not ordered the death of the Kainapas because of prophecy — would I still be Saiauri? Jariel Janir?”
“You would be who you are”.

Luk got to his feet and walked over to where their saddle packs were slung on a high branch against night-crawlers. He rummaged for a pack of trail bread and split it as he came back to the blankets. He tossed half over to her and flopped back to the ground. “There is no point in wondering what this alternate Jariel would be like because you are here. Those things did happen. The result is the lady who sits beside me, chewing her thumbnail, worrying about things even she lacks the Power to change. You are Saiauri. There is no changing that. You are Fomori and Kainapas. You are respected. You are feared. You are loved. You just are”.

“I worry you miss my point, Rikart Lukam. I am not saying I want to change the me I am now. I am just wondering if an alternate route would still have brought us to this point in time. Fireside conjecture, but I am too much a guide not to wonder about shortcuts and the paths not taken”.
“Mei sa, I am a mercenary, a fighting man. I deal with the enemy and the life I see before me. More than that I cannot manage. I leave the deep thinking and route finding to those better trained for it. But I will say this – I am here with this Saiauri, with this Jariel Janir. I know that it is the she who sits beside me, and she alone who could have brought me over to the Tribes. Factor that into your thinking, dear Guide of my life. If you look at an alternate you, you need to look at alternates of everyone else, and personally? I like the version we are today”.

On that, Luke turned back to the fire, carefully adjusting the pot so it sat in the best cooking coals. Jariel sat and watched him for a long time. Could the mercenary be right with his Northern pragmatism? She was trained to look for the complexities in every argument. Could it really be as simple as making the decision to be the person you saw in the mirror each day and to ignore the “what if’s”?