Tag Archives: Reading

I Used to Have Things to Say

It’s funny; as I consider the history of my blogging – and its future – I think about all the things that used to occupy my mind. Every week, nearly, it seems there would be some newness to share: a novel idea, a thought, an opinion. There was no shortage of topics to write about, and no shortage of concerns to share about them.

As time wears on (or perhaps merely as I get older), the less these things seem to matter to me. What once was of grave concern to me (or at least of mild interest) now holds no sway. And I don’t know if that’s because the world has become duller, or because I have.

Every week as I fire up WordPress again to write, I struggle to think of something to say. Something worthwhile. Something interesting, or passionate, or educational. Or even just erroneously opinionated. But instead, all I can think of is how I can’t think of anything to write about.

What a conundrum.

I wonder if this is an aspect of getting older. I started blogging twelve years ago, when I was twelve years younger. Life was more engaging, more thrilling, more devastating … more stuff was happening to me emotionally. Now, of course, I fear that I’m getting boring, or too cynical to care about anything in any real depth. Especially as, even when a topic does come up that reignites some latent interest in me, it fizzles out before I can cohesively string a sentence about it together.

Or is it just me? Am I just becoming less interesting? Am I becoming a boring old git, whose interests are waning and in whom others’ interest is equally declining? Age, one would think, comes with experience and experiences, and with the both of those one would reasonably assume that there would be more to discuss, not less.

It just seems that there’s so little left to say about the world that hasn’t been said by others already, or in a better way, or with greater reach. After all, who am I? Who cares what I have to say? What does my voice matter?

It’s not that I’ve lost interest in my own passions; quite the contrary. In a few weeks I have an interview for grad school to study music composition – a return to a major that I had thought I’d abandoned nearly twenty years ago. I’ve been writing books, writing music, recording and composing; I just can’t think of the same idle, random thoughts to put up on the internet that I used to.

That being said, I suppose I never was very prolific at the whole “random thought” thing; I was never successful at Twitter, because I couldn’t think of enough witty 140-character remarks to fill a feed. Medium- to long-form blogging was the closest I could achieve, largely because I’m too wordy and not witty enough for sound bites.

I could, of course, update you all on the ins and outs of my mundane life and existence; I had Cheerios for breakfast, and drove too fast on the way home to pick up Chinese takeout because I was hungry. But I suspect that would be just as dull as anything else I could think of to write about.

Perhaps I should return to where this blog started; a way to publish and promote my fantasy writing. But in order to do that, I’d have to actually, you know, write some more fantasy. Which I’ve been dreadfully stagnant at. (Although I do honestly have an intention to return to The Redemption of Erâth.)

In any case, I will continue to try and write here, even if I am waffling with nothing to say, because writing keeps the muscles limber, and ultimately I need to exercise those dormant muscles from time to time.

The Evolution of One’s Writing

One of the great struggles I have as a slow writer is keeping a sense of consistency in style and tone when there are month-long gaps between progress on a particular novel. You see, although I can claim I’ve been working on book four of The Redemption of Erâth for four years now (yes – the first chapter has a timestamp on my computer of January 3, 2020), the honest truth is I’ve probably put no more than fifty or so hours of work into it so far. I don’t write slowly, so much as I take very, very long pauses between bouts of inspiration. There have probably been moments where an entire year passed between one chapter and another.

Over these long time periods, of course, it leads to me forgetting what I was writing, where I wanted to go with the plot, and more importantly, how I wanted to write the content itself. For example, the language I use in The Redemption of Erâth is considerably more deliberate and possibly archaic, designed to invoke memories of high fantasy and epic tales. The language I use in my contemporary novels is more colloquial, simpler, and less flowery in its imagery. And when I find myself working on different works across the span of months and years, I sometimes forget “how” to write in a particular manner. It takes a while to get back into the prosaic style of a particular type of story, and I find that sometimes the story suffers because I can’t keep the tone consistent from one chapter to another.

Another difficulty I encounter is the overall style of writing across books. With my standalone novels this isn’t too much of an issue, because the book in and of itself can be edited to a certain level of consistently, and if the next book comes out stylistically different, well … they’re two different books.

But with The Redemption of Erâth, an ongoing series that is essentially one long story (each book tends to end on a kind of cliffhanger, long-awaiting the next book to pick up where the last left off), I have to try harder to keep to a style and tone that matches throughout. And herein lies the biggest challenge: The Redemption of Erâth was originally conceived as a bedtime story for my then-seven-year-old child. That was twelve years ago. They’re nineteen now (and regularly remind me that I still haven’t finished their childhood bedtime story), and the story that began as children’s literature (to an extent) now has to accommodate an audience that has since grown up. However, I also don’t want to turn a corner into graphic, adult content with sex and extreme violence (à la Game of Thrones), not only because it would ruin the ongoing feel of the novels, but if a younger reader picked up the first book, I wouldn’t want them to be shocked by the time they get to the fourth or fifth book.

To an extent, of course, The Redemption of Erâth has matured over time anyway; whilst the overall themes of loneliness and coping with depression and darkness persist from the very beginning, I’ve found that as I continue to write, characters’ actions and motivations tend to be less childish (even adult characters), and more grounded in reality. Even things that happen to characters, such as injuries or the death of loved ones, I find I treat with more respect for how those characters would truly feel and react. For example, in the second book one of the main characters suffers a broken leg. This injury remains with them for the rest of the stories, causing them a limp and difficulty walking long after the injury is healed.

And of course, over the past twelve years, my own abilities and style as a writer have grown and matured. What felt like subtle plot points in my late twenties now seem obvious and uninspired as I enter my forties, and what thought was clever use of language back then now comes off as a pastiche of older, greater writers (like Tolkien). I have a better understanding of plot, structure and character development than years ago, and can (perhaps) weave a story with more subtlety and delicacy than before.

Of course, I’m also stuck, to some degree, with the style and language I started off with all those years ago, simply for the sake of keeping a sense of consistency between novels. It would feel wrong to change up the language, dialects or style of the writing itself at this point, and a clash of that nature between books would likely turn readers off. So now, of course, the challenge lies in replicating the style and tone of the past, whilst still incorporating everything I’ve learned about writing in the interim.

It isn’t easy.

At the end of the day, however, I still am committed to completing the tale of The Redemption of Erâth, which is still three and half books away, and that means continuing in the manner that’s been set as a precedent. hopefully it doesn’t become to wearisome to the reader, and the ongoing story of Brandyé and Elven will continue to be interesting and engaging throughout their coming adventures.

Man, I’m a Slow Writer … and It’s Time to Get Back to It

I started my writing journey over 12 years ago in 2011, when a friend and I decided – almost as a joke – to participate in that year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Over the course of that November, I churned out nearly 50 thousand words, which would eventually become the prelude to my (still) ongoing fantasy series, The Redemption of Erâth. By 2014 I had wrapped and published the first volume, Consolation (then through a vanity press because I was naive and knew no better). Two years later came the second volume, Exile, and in 2018 I followed this with the third book, Ancients & Death.

From that fateful 2011 November onward, I also began blogging; at first like a madman, with hundreds of posts a year. Now, I’ve posted exactly 17 posts in 2023, and possibly even fewer than that in the years preceding. The point is, I’m a slow, and sometimes non-existent writer, and that bothers me. I didn’t completely abandon writing after the third novel in 2018; in the interim, I’ve published two other standalone books under my real name: 22 Scars (2017) and The Broken (2021). But I really haven’t done an awful lot of writing since then.

I haven’t been completely idle, of course; I’ve made a return to my first creative love, music, for example. For the novel The Broken, about a rock band in the 90s, I actually took the time to write and record their (fictional) three albums in their entirety. I also completed three other albums of orchestral/rock music, and most recently completed writing a Requiem for orchestra and choir. I’m even now applying to graduate school to return to the field of music (assuming I’m lucky enough to get a spot), and the future, despite the past having had little written word in it for the past few years, is looking bright.

But despite that, I feel that I’ve somewhat abandoned my passion as a writer, and that feels … well, kinda crappy. So I have an intention – one that I have every year, of course, around this time – to pick up the virtual pen once more and start blogging, novelizing, and just generally getting words written and out of my head.

The fourth book of The Redemption of Erâth, The Fall of Thaeìn, is more than halfway complete, so one of my goals this year is to finish and publish this work. I also feel that it’s been a fair time since I wrote any contemporary fiction like 22 Scars or The Broken, and recent reviews – not to toot my own horn, but indicating that they’re pretty okay – have inspired me to look for new topics to write about, as well.

I also want to return to a regular blog schedule, through which I can get random thoughts out of my head, and continue to practice the art of writing. This post will (hopefully) mark the first of many more to come this year (although history has shown that I rarely follow through on these commitments).