Writr

I’ve been journalling for a while now, but only started doing it regularly fairly recently after reading “The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self” (Julia Cameron), particularly the bit on Morning Pages, bits of splurge that you’re supposed to write every morning. I have been doing them on my Mac, writing in Journler, but I find workingon my mac a little too distracting, at least for my early morning self - even with something like WriteRoom.

In an moment of Serendipity, I saw this article over at paper journals. Specifically this quote interested me:

Make sure there are no distractions while you write. That means no television, no people talking to you, zero interruptions while writing. If you can’t find a quiet place, put some headphones on and drown out conversations around you. It’s so important to eliminate distractions if you really want your journal to be a big help.

So I’m reminded of my interest in paper. Form tomorrow, I’ll go back to my paper Moleskine journal and start in that again. It’s not like a generally need to go back to previous journal entries anyway, although re-reading them is often fun.

So I came to a realization the other day abot the nature of fantasy. Well, okay, not a realization per se - that implies it’s some sort of authoritative truth, and this really isn’t, more of a… well, a new belief.

Previously, I had always seen ‘Fantasy’ as a genre, insofar as any can exist. After all, it has it’s own unique set of conventions and oddities and specialized writers. And yes, all genres are really a construct of booksellers to make it easier for people to pick out books they want to buy, but I thought there was still something in it.

But then I started reading more historical fiction - most notably Bernard Cornwell - and realized that, well, most fantasy is just historical ficiton about things that didn’t happena dn people that never existed.

And a lot of my favourite books do this to, but with different genres: like Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, which is a tense political thriller. Granted, a tense political thriller set in a place that doesn’t exist and with a dash of magic thrown in, but with a little retooling it could work in almost any setting.

Which is a pretty important realization for me. It also read to the realization that I’m not a ‘fantasy author’ - indeed, no-one is - but instead I’m a thriller author who uses fantasy in his settings and plots.

Ooh…