shoreless seas and stars uncounted

My hiatus from this page is due, in large part, to wrangling with the fifth Abyss novel, which I blogged about restarting a few months ago.

Thankfully, I’ve landed this one at last, which is the longest I’ve worked on a novel, or about eighteen months, if you count the false starts and the rewrites. All but one of my other novels were written in a month or less, and while I would like to blame that on the expanding setting, the truth is that I am more interested in rewriting than writing, and I find myself developing the bad habits of my younger days, such as continually stopping to rewrite and rephrase, and not being able to pass even so much as a stray typo without fluttering over the arrow keys to correct it.

I haven’t done Nanowrimo in three years, and I may do it this year to go back to basics in terms of discipline. I.e., being able to write a fast first draft, being able to skip over typos and other errors in order to keep my eye on the big picture, the beginning, middle, and end. Turning off my inner critic, and so forth.

As for the novel, it’s shaky, but I’m happy it’s finished. I wrote an epilogue to it about a month ago in the hope that it would serve as guiderails or a target to get me to the end, and much of that will have to be revised, but I’m glad to say that the trick worked. It may actually be the first chapter of a subsequent novel?

What also helped me get to the finish line was stepping away from two other novels, the long-stalled sequel to The Eye of Wysaerie, and the fourth novel in the Alsantia series. The Alsantia novels, my latest series, still have tons of momentum and are basically writing themselves, so that two weeks ago, when I focused on finishing my fifth Abyss novel, I was writing about 1600 words for Alsantia and about 100 each in the other two, just to keep my hand in. Suddenly it felt immensely important to me that I finish the fifth Abyss novel, bringing a conclusion to the first series in that setting, and opening a door to a subsequent series. So I just put the blinders on and headed for the finish line, which works. What an immensely satisfying feeling to complete a series! I’ve never finished a series before.

While working on multiple palettes is great for revising novels, it’s not good, at least for me, for producing first drafts. Going forward, I may continue writing one first draft at a time.

Having restarted my fifth Abyss novel, I’ve come to a point in the narrative where I’d like to reuse some description. While I’ve already stocked this setting with fauna and flora in the previous version, and I’m very happy with those scenes, I’m finding them unusable for my new version of the novel. As it’s an interesting problem that may be instructive to other authors, I’ve tried to describe it here.

In the original version of the novel, the scene is quite shocking to my protagonist, as he’s just traveled through a Doorway from one world to another world. My new novel begins in media res, with him already there, so any astonishment is muted. Just as those living near giant redwood trees see them differently than those who see them for the first time, in my new novel the setting seems more backdrop, and less foreground. While I’d very much like to translate that vibrant foreground into the new version of the novel, I’m finding that perspective alters description.

While you may already know this if you’ve tried to describe a single scene from two different points of view, making a Rashomon sandwich if you will, what you may not know is that this also holds true if you attempt to describe the same scene when your point-of-view protagonist is in two different moods. This is true in real life, as well—the same scene, described at two different times in your life, will have differing details.

That setting has its subjective side should not surprise us, not when a petty argument can taint what should be the joy of leaving for vacation. It should come as no surprise that a vulture might see abundance in a desert, whereas a staggering, thirsty human will be scrounging for water.

While setting is extremely important to me, and I’m fascinated by fantastic scenes, I haven’t struggled to build a setting since I began to focus on character. Similarly, if you’re having trouble in worldbuilding, or simply in staging a scene, ask yourself who is seeing this? What is their mindset, and why are they there? Perhaps your struggle in building that scene is that no one is there.

Rationalizing, as opposed to actual rationality and reasonableness, is the process by which you suggest that what is evil and wrong is good and right. While the need to persuade yourself that you’re doing the right thing should be a clear sign that you’re doing the wrong thing, rationalizers become addicted to rationalizing because it feels like freedom.

“He’s dieting, so I’ll eat this slice.”

“He doesn’t like to socialize as much as I do, so he’s not missing out if I lie about where I’m going.”

While rationalizing is evil, it is not an unnatural process. It stems from the desire to be good. All of us wish to be good. We so wish to be good, even when we know we’re being bad, that our first impulse is to persuade ourselves that we are actually being good. “It isn’t hurting him if he doesn’t know,” they say, denying that lies are a pernicious and grievous disloyalty that attack the root of a relationship, and hence are the most profound hurt of all. Gluttony will masquerade as charity (“I’m doing him a favor by eating this…”), selfishness will masquerade as selflessness (“…he doesn’t like X, Y, or Z, so I’m saving him from this…”), and so forth. Rationalizing is a sign that your demons have the keys to the asylum. You’re not only bending over backwards for the disgusting parts of yourself, you’re listening to their excuses.

Just as rationalization is persuading yourself that evil is good, persuasion is rationalization for others, an attack on the morals of the persuaded. Why does the persuader want your agreement? They want you to do as they do. Often the persuaded doesn’t know they were persuaded. Just as you rationalize to persuade yourself, persuaders so rationalize to you that you think you thought of it. They suggest their ideas to you in such a tailored way that you take ownership of those ideas.

Ironically, by adopting those ideas, you become an extension of the persuader’s personality. You lose much of what makes you you. Deep down, you still know what is bad, and what is good. After all, you needed to be convinced by this wicked person. But by giving into the temptation, you stopped thinking for yourself. If you stopped thinking for yourself, who’s thinking for you? The persuader is thinking for you. As I’m not suggesting telepathy, only salesmanship, this is not a metaphor. When Jim Jones persuaded his followers to drink the kool-aid, their mental processes could no longer be honestly called thinking. Following, believing, yes, but not thinking. They weren’t holding the reins, having handed the cult leader their heads. Just as rationalizing feels like freedom, so does persuasion feel like truth, so many of these people (the ones not persuaded at gunpoint) were no doubt euphoric about their choice.

Not only is the persuader thinking for you, but you’re no longer thinking your own thoughts. If you’re no longer thinking your own thoughts, how can you hear your conscience? The persuader is not only living their evil desires through you, they’re no doubt laughing about it.

A line edit from Siege of the Shadow Worlds (The Chronicles of Lamuna Book Four).

“Her smirking eyes might have been dark brown, but they were bright as hellfire.”

This is pretentious phrasing, as there’s no “might have” with eye color.

“Her dark brown eyes were bright with smirking hellfire.”

Do I go with the unique-sounding juxtaposition of “smirking hellfire,” or this more reader friendly line?

“Her smirking, dark brown eyes were bright with hellfire.”

This is a tough decision, as “smirking hellfire” is a great descriptor for Suvani. As the latter also falls flat a little, I’m going with the former.

An edit from The Tree of Five Worlds #2:

#1 “Eurilda saw that she was still squeezing Khyte’s letter in her left fist, and when she unballed her hand, the fingers were white and sore, and her fingernails had dented the skin on her palm. The letter was creased, crushed, and streaked with palm sweat, and she opened it carefully.”

#2 “Seeing Khyte’s letter squeezed in her left fist, Eurilda unballed her white and sore fingers. The letter was creased, crushed, and streaked with sweat, and her fingernails had dented her palm.”

#3 “Eurilda unballed her white and sore fingers. Khyte’s letter was creased, crushed, and streaked with sweat, and her fingernails had dented her palm.”

Considering how acquisitive they are for human artifiacts, I have often wondered why more dragons don’t reside in human cities.

Spell-using or shapechanging dragons would live the majority of their lives in human cultures, and would have to be rooted out like vampires, considering how avaricious, covetous, and jealous they are of human treasures and the human way of life. Dragons with enormous hordes would aspire to be property owners. Like cuckoo birds or fairies, perhaps they could even pass off their shapechanged offspring as human.

Even dimmer dragons would slither into sewers, from which they would peer enviously at the humans.

Why are dragons so thirsty for human artifacts? Have they no culture of their own? Why not mint their own coins, with their own faces? Any intelligent being that is so parasitic of another being’s effects desires to be that being. We’re talking serious self-esteem issues, and an inferiority complex, of all things, in dragons. While they have teeth, fire, wings, scales, and tens of thousands of pounds, they must feel dwarfed by human culture. It’s not greed that fuels dragon avarice, it’s envy; they want the treasures of the ages because they have no ages of their own. Imagine living for centuries and not building your own culture, but desiring nothing but the commodities of the short-lived vermin making bricks out of mud. After a few centuries of blending in, and not showing their true faces, such intelligent, shape changing dragons would open antique shops and forget their own language.