Category Issues of Craft

The Writing Environment – Pick What’s Best For You!

Gary Nilsen Leave a comment

(A video version of this post can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdMz2ypBcxF/ )

There are a lot of jokes about what, where, and how writers write. I’ve heard that Stephen King works 24/7/365 and listens to loud music. I read that both Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf stood in front of their elevated desks and Roald Dahl sat in a backyard shed. I like the shed idea. One of the writers I personally know does something similar up in New Hampshire and another takes a long, quite walk through the woods before settling down with a clear head.

Whatever the routine…and it’s different for everyone, the setting and the prep are crucial to getting words to pour out of their heads. It’s not as simple as sitting in front of a laptop and doing word crunches. Some of the jokes I mentioned is often of writers doing anything other than writing – they’ll clean the kitchen, do the laundry, toss a ball across the living room for the dog to fetch, write social media posts about writing instead of actually writing. Or we’ll just stare off into space looking like someone who’d just had a lobotomy.

I’m sure many writers are like me. Once the flow begins and you hit that zone where the outside world no longer exists because you’ve managed to achieve the Vulcan mind-meld with your characters, the slightest interruption – you’re wife telling you she’s going to the store or someone choosing that moment to call on your cell, even a TV playing in the background are sure to turn a mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll into a raging Mr. Hyde. AND, that slight hiccup will cost another 20 minutes before you get back to where you were.

Then there is the writing environment. Everyone has heard the cliché of the writer’s garret – the small space which occupies the top floor or the attic of someone’s house. I’d kill for one of those. I don’t know how some manage to create sitting in a Starbucks.

When I was writing my novel Alfheim, I rented a cubicle in The Writers Room – a space just off Broadway in lower Manhattan in New York City for some solitude, but for this book I needed mood enhancers. I didn’t have a quiet forest to clear my head, and I was dealing with fae creatures and elves who existed in a woodland realm. I was trying to conjure episodes of fairy magic and build a world that grew from Celtic mythology and settings.

Music and fantasy art took the place of a forest. My go to was Enya and Loreena McKennitt – from the opening bars of their music to the closing notes, pieces such as Enya’s May it Be or McKennitt’s The Mummers Dance and The Mystic’s Dream transported me instantly to the place where my characters were. And the visuals from a host of talented graphic artists displaying their work on DeviantArt.com helped me with the brushstrokes of my world-building.

For you fantasy writers, you don’t have to be a member of DeviantArt, just go to the site and hit the button for Fantasy and you can plunge down the rabbit hole of imagination from the sheer amount of talent out there.

And, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Writers are thievish. We don’t plagiarize, but we do steal…well, let’s just call it borrowing. We find things that work for other writers and artists and we “borrow” their “tech” and put our own spin on things. Think of it as the Sword of Gryffindor – it only takes in that which makes it stronger. It’s about creating a flavor.

If you have a notion of writing a story, I urge you to find the place and mood that puts you where you’re ready to set words on paper. If you are a writer share some of your techniques and go-to’s in the comments.

Happy reading…or writing…

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Producing a Book Cover – No AI Added

Gary Nilsen Leave a comment

For my debut novel, Alfheim, I wanted control of my cover, so I decided to produce it myself. I don’t think AI was actually a choice back then, but this process felt organic, and I would choose it again – using professional artists to pull my ideas together. It can certainly be more costly, but I felt it was worth it in the end. The total cost at the time came to $1,400.

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Thank you Rocketman!

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For the past couple of years I’ve spent so much time feeling nothing that when I finally did, it meant something. I recently saw Rocketman, the biopic about Elton John. The film reconnected me to his music in ways I’d never experienced. My attraction to music has always been more about the sound, its harmonies and melodies, a to-die-for guitar riff, or a head-banging beat more than the content of its lyrics. That changed with Rocketman.

Essentially, the film is a Broadway musical captured on film. The scenes of his life are tethered to the poetry – words and music welded together – that infuse a non-reader of poetry with an appreciation of its power. I will never take lyrics for granted again. Of course, this paring of music and narrative have been done for a hundred years, but it took this movie to bring it home for me.

Rocketman, written by Lee Hall and directed by Dexter Fletcher, offered a road map as to how life’s experiences – in this case, those of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, were and are translated into lyrics and melodies. For example, my personal favorite, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, became so much clearer once you understand the point of view is mostly Bernie’s and displayed against the arc of Elton’s life. The emotional impact of Someone Saved My Life Tonight becomes an anthem to those moments that, in retrospect, are life altering.

I know I’m late to the game in terms of appreciating all this which is why I’m grateful for having seen the film. As writers, we are thankful for opportunities that offer inspiration and teach us new ways and means of expressing our own thoughts and ideas. I’ve never been adept at reading and understanding poetry, and certainly talent-less at writing it, but I found if I set my thoughts down as if destined for transformation into a piece of music, they flowed readily.

I just might have to torture my friends and family with my nascent attempts to try out this new (to me) art form.

 

 

Game of Thrones: Some Final Thoughts and Questions…

Gary Nilsen 4 Comments

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Spoiler Alerts

It was only this past March that I started binge-watching Game of Thrones in preparation for the launch of Season 8. My hat goes off to the legion of fans who tenaciously worked their way through the show over the better part of a decade. I don’t think I would have weathered all the waiting in-between. The good thing is that all the story and character arcs were still fresh in my mind as the series wound down.

That being said, I was able to buy into many of the developments that most fans seemed to hate. Yes, Daenerys went bad all of a sudden in reaction to the brutal loss of people closest to her, but the seeds of her destructive nature took root little by little over many years. She was the daughter of an insane king and as they say, the apple falls close to the base of its tree, just as Jon reflected the benevolent nature of who his father truly was.

I think Cersei’s death was metaphorically satisfying with the weight of her transgressions raining down on her. It also saved any other character from being labeled a baby killer. I can even buy Jaime holding true to his warped sense of love and going against all the years’ worth of hard earned redemption. People do that sort of thing, it’s human nature.

A couple of the things I had hoped to see in the end were the knowledge of Jon’s true identity becoming common knowledge. Who was Varys sending those letters to? Had all the other kingdoms’ representatives understood Jon had the clearest claim to the throne (Gendry Baratheon notwithstanding), it might have ended differently? And then there is “Chekov’s Gun” principle. Why did they concentrate on Varys removing his rings and placing them in a cup, what was that all about?

I have to concur with so many fans in my disappointment that Bran became king of the now six kingdoms. Brava to Sansa for withholding her consent to remain part of the larger realm. The thing is, I don’t see how Bran as a character earned the right to be elected. To my mind, Tyrion would have been the correct choice. The roles should have been reversed. Bran would have made an excellent hand given his vast knowledge of the past and his ability to warg his way into seeing what everyone else was up to. Also, I think the collective voices voted in the affirmative for Bran way too easily – most of the time, these people can’t agree what day of the week it is.

It was difficult to swallow Jon’s banishment to Castle Black. What purpose does the Night’s Watch even have at this point? Surely they could have found a better way to deal with him. Regardless of his true parentage, Ned Stark’s sense of honor shines through Jon and you would hope he might pass that along to his own children. Jon did the world a favor and is being punished for it, why, because a newly insane leader of the unsullied needs justice? Grey Worm’s uncompromising devotion to follow madness, up to and including slitting the throats of prisoners, should deny him the right to call for anyone else to pay a price.

And Drogon, how do you not love that beast? I had hoped in some way the one remaining dragon and Jon would develop a relationship in the end. They’re first cousins after all. I know Jon killed his mother, but I think Drogon understood. It’s why he melted the Iron Throne and left Jon uncrispy.

Regardless of the pitfalls faced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in concluding this body of work, I must applaud them for creating the stunning visual representation of George R.R. Martin’s incredible stories. As a writer of fantasy, I am inspired and further educated in the art of good storytelling. Yes, there are areas that might have been better written. I think HBO should have allowed for a couple more episodes to flesh out the events taking place in the final season. Looking back, however, we have 73 episodes of jaw-dropping production quality and sublime acting from one of the largest casts of any show in the history of television. I’m pretty sure I’ll never see anything quite like this again.