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The most important thing is, there is no most important thing - nothing like "pay your commas well and don't overwork them." Your books are like people. Somebody may give you a piece of advice for dealing with one, and it may be good and sound advice, but the minute you wield it as The Solution, you reduce the story to a one-dimensional piece of triteness. Either you're in the boat or not; what happens thereafter isn't a matter to be handled with anecdotes. Purpose to with your writing as you do with people: committed to it because that is what God has called you to do as one created in His image. And then get in the boat and get on with it.

(This is so short because I've had better things to do than keep up with this, and because the only other two points I would make - read good books, and just write something - have been more than aptly made by Jenny.)


I love Jane Austen. I love Rosemary Sutcliff. I love all my aspiring author friends, the published and the yet-to-be-published. I love the lasses of my childhood: L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott (a grudging, half-withheld sort of love here), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maud Hart Lovelace...

But really, if I could be one author - it would be Dorothy Sayers. Whether she is writing Wimsey with his walking-stick-sword and detectivating powers or plying her wit against the insipid churchisms of her (and our) day, she's fantastic. As a writer of fiction, of the poetic, she is charming. Straight philosophy comes trippingly off her tongue and falls with equal ease on the ears without tickling the intellect to sleep. Even with Chesterton, one has to do a good deal of slogging while he commits straight philosophy. Sayers contrives to be companionable and yet leaves the mind ringing with truth.

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A week's time after this challenge ends, school begins. The textbooks are ordered, the uniform needs to be dusted off, and I should probably start putting my immunization record together again. (They jabbed me twice - twice - for that TB test in March for work. No reason to do it again in August, thank you!)


I currently have two. The first one is a pseudo-parody of fantasy which is little more than a few pages and an audible chuckle every time I think of some new avenue to take the idea. It's difficult to describe the process, since I'm not doing much writing, but the story is still definitely alive and kicking. It grows in my mind - sort of like taking a ridiculous thing and finding new improvements on that ridiculousness - into further ridiculosity. The second one is my mystery-fantastical (which is the name I invented for it, ergo it sounds way cooler than it really is...)

Incidentally, this picture is already in the sidebar on the right. Yay redundancy!

(That's not the real title. Or maybe it is, and nobody told me. It's a moderate joke that threatens to stick; let's put it that way.)

The story is told from the perspective of an aspiring young writer who works in the office of an investigative agent. It features a few detectives, a notorious outlaw, a missing lady, the elusive scent of an impending murder, and the lingering, sinister figure of a corrupt sociomoral-somethingorother. And it's not really about any of those. Yeah, some writers know what their story will mean beforehand. And then there's the riff-raff - those of us who totter along behind our characters, pretending to be writers and pleading feebly behind our hands to our characters when we hope no one's looking: "What are you doing with this thing again?"

...well, I suppose I could tell you oodles more if I wished; the trouble is, one feels a certain awkwardness about these things. It's sort of like the whole literature textbook thing: at a certain point, you have to stop reading books about books and just read the books themselves. And if you never get to read my book in particular, it will hardly help you to hear me yodel on about it endlessly. If you truly (or falsely; the sincerity of your feelings mean little enough in this instance) care to know more about various aspects of this story, you can find hints and gleanings and outright tellings here, here, here, and here. I know, I'm probably not playing by the rules - but there are no rules, and anyway - well,  I daresay, in a year or two, you'll have got over it tol'rably.

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Once again, I am not exactly sure what this challenge is asking for. My guess is it means something mildly instructional. And I've always been rather disdainful of instructional videos as far as writing and reading are concerned. I'm sure they have their place, but I feel that rather than listening to someone talk about writing or reading, the more instructional thing would be to go do them myself. You cannot make a reader of someone by talking to them about books; they must read for themselves. Similarly, simply explaining how to "write well" does not make someone a good writer; they must get out there and actually write. But the best way to read or write well is to read well first, and so I offer this humble, moderately-instructive exposition of the grave importance of book-reading.


Because, you know, there's a Julian Smith quote for everything.

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Someone asked me about this not too long ago, and I realized I really didn't know. Any one sample of my writing at any given time would probably fall sloppily in between two or three genres. I wrote one story that would belong mostly in the genre of fantasy, but that was far from my favourite. To remedy this - and to be able to give an answer to this question - I have coined my own genre: what I [would] like to read.

That may seem rather self-centred, but I think most authors follow that rule. I write what I admire most in a book: the ability to be fantastical without being strictly fantasy. That is, rather than saying "This all took place in a world called Idle Mirth in the Kingdom of Ethelfrythwyrdd where the good king Elbordir of Ethelfrythwyrdd ruled..." That would be closer to strict fantasy, and also largely a rip-off. As mentioned, I have dabbled in a little of that (the fantasy, hopefully not the ripping-off), but the fantastical is more to my taste.

It is difficult to describe the fantastical, but I'll try to summarize it as I see it in my own writing. As far as I can tell, it involves taking relatively modernish settings and intertwining them with the ideas (if not the literal figures) of the fantasy novel: heroes and monsters, kings and peasants, bards and jesters. Sometimes this comes complete with the swashbuckling duels; other times it carries the almost jarring note of the modern, tedious business of pulling out a gun and plugging someone.

Of course, even with the loose boundaries of fantastical to work within, things tend to seep across the boundaries into other realms. My current full-blown work-in-progress blends the swashbuckling with the tedious, but it also behaves as if it is a mystery novel. So you see, the old question of genres is still not an easy one to answer. But I think it is safe to say that when I write, the element I am striving for most of all is that element of the fantastical, the fairy-tale, the moderately unbelievable. If there are not dragons, there are the sort of characters that would be educated enough (having read the right sort of books) to know what to do if there were, and brave enough to venture to do the same. Chesterton advocated the necessity of the fairy tale in the ordinary; I should like to do that, though not as directly.

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It is at this time I must confess: I don't have a bucket list. Such lists are made for items like "go skydiving" and "hike through Europe," and while I would not be outright averse to such things (well, perhaps my stomach would raise some serious objections to the former) I have been instilled by a measure of whimsical practicality from my father's side of things. This says I shall have eternity to experiment with those things (in a new, perfect, resurrected body on a new, perfect Earth) and I might as well enjoy where God has placed me now rather than wishing for the far-off places in a broken world. (I understand and sympathise with the desire to explore and travel; I am merely deferring mine on a larger scale for another time, and indulging it as much as I can in my own backyard for the present.)

That is not to say I do not want to experience specific things while I live. There are many things I want to accomplish and share; they are simply not trivial enough for me to forget them without an organized list, and I do not think most of them would fit onto paper anyway. I know I should say "I want to get published." That is the sort of thing one puts on a bucket list - even a nonexistent one, I should think. The fact of the matter is, I don't write to be published. That is not to say I don't intend to, someday - but for the present, I want to write because writing is good for my soul. It is part of being who God created me to be. The process of getting it onto paper is just as relevant and irrelevant as the process of my fingers typing this post: utterly necessary, and completely not the centre of it all.

Right now, immediately, all I want specifically is to finish Miss Brewster's story, and be able to show it to at least one other person and hear them say "I see! I see it too!" - not with the shock of one who sees something previously foreign for the first time, but with the renewed joy of viewing a familiar thing from a new and more beautiful angle, the worn and weary lines of the ordinary suddenly cast in golden hues. And then I want to edit Miss Brewster's story, at least once, and iron out all the wrinkles that I am trying desperately to file away 'til after the initial writing process is through.And then... I will rub my aching wrists, and pick up and begin it all again. Or maybe I'll take a break and try out some Dickens. That's the charm of the nonexistent bucket list - anything could happen. It was always going to, anyway.

Thus ends my rather dull little spout. I'm afraid I was much more interested in the next subject; it lends a rather pruneish aspect to this one.