Over the years there’s something I’ve noticed about writing. It might not be true for everyone else but it certainly is for me. I find writing requires a certain mindset, a certain state of being. You really do need to be in the mood. But the mood for writing is something intangible and fleeting. It can be upon you in an instant like a summer storm. In that time a deluge of ideas will fall upon you. Inspiration will flash like lightning across your brain. You’ll feel as if there is no single being or obstacle in the entirety of creation that can stop you from writing the greatest work of fiction that man will ever read. You’ll dash upstairs to the computer or lunge wildly to the biro by the fridge, snatching up the envelope that the water bill came in. You’ll ready yourself to slash that pen across the page like a sword across the heavens. You’ll touch it to the paper and then…nothing. It’ll be gone. Just like the storm it will have passed, there wont be a cloud in the sky and the only reason you’ll even believe the storm happened will be the lingering wetness of your clothes. There’ll be little traces of the ideas you had, the ghosts of genius rapidly fading second by second. You’ll but down the pen and it’ll all seem futile and pointless. The mood’s gone. No writing for you. Not today. No matter how hard you try you can’t conjure the mood, just like you can’t conjure a storm. Unless you’re a wizard, but if you’re a wizard you’ve probably got better things to do than write fiction. Like fighting dragons or battling that warlock in the next valley who borrowed your spell-book and never gave it back; bastard.
Category Archives: Writing
Cometh the hour
Well Monday did not in fact see the release of SFFS’s Zine. It did not arrive on the shores of the internet until Wednesday. I felt slighted. I felt betrayed, stabbed in the back. Left behind to suffer at the hands of a monstrous horde. My rage was incandescent. And then I was given a biscuit for my efforts and the anger melted away on a breeze of chocolate and baked dough. That and I realised that being twos days late wasn’t all that bad and I was evidently over reacting. Sometimes the industrious little gnome in my head likes to throw on a pair of tights and a ruff; turn the drama all the way up eleven, start yelling “verily” and “forsooth” and act the ever loving shit out of a situation. His elocution could do with some work though.
Anyway, I advise you to hunt out this Zine about Mr Callis and his shenanigans. It’s also worth having a read of my friend Sam’s story called “Jeremy”. The last line is quite the stroke of genius. Or at the very least bad punning.
Now I’ll leave you with a link and bid you good night. For as much as one might want to wish otherwise, the dread Minecraft is no substitute for food and sleep.
Unhappy the land that needs heroes
Tomorrow should see the release of the latest issue of SFFS’s termly e-zine. It’s called the Zine. It should also contain the third instalment of “The Trails and Adventures of Mister Callis”. For the uninitiated, which I suspect will be more or less everyone, they’re a series of short stories cornering the eponymous Mr Callis. I’ve always been a big fan of fantasy literature, the epic tales of high adventure from the likes of Eddings and more recently the dark and seedy world’s of Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. I’ve always wanted to write a fantasy story but my previous attempts have been somewhat lacklustre, dry and a bit boring to write. The difference with this is that writing about Callis is fun, it’s exciting and I continually want to do more. This does however concern me greatly. Not for the reason that I’m writing a lot for fun, that’s great. But because of specifically who and what Callis is.
The Rogue Verbumancer 