Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

I finished this book months ago, and I really ought to have gotten to this by now, but time has slipped away from me. You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little vague on the details, because... Wait. Hang on. This is The Eye of the World?  Book one of The Wheel of Time?  I've probably read this thing ten times or more.  No worries, then, I've got this sorted.

So, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  This is a big one for me.  I first encountered it when I was around 15 years old, and that's probably the exact right age for it: too old for simplistic "farmboy saves the world" fantasy stories, but not yet old enough to have grown out of that sort of thing.

Make no mistake, The Wheel of Time is a "farmboy saves the world" story, and we've all read our fair share of those.  I feel like it transcends that description, though.  In a lot of ways it's the ultimate story of its type.  Certainly it's one of the longest, at over 4,000,000 words.  But more than that, it takes the tale in messier directions than the norm, exploring things like what actually happens when a farmboy becomes a king.  But that's for a later time; for the moment, we're in more familiar epic quest territory.

The first book begins the story of Rand al'Thor, the aforementioned farmboy, and how he and his friends discover that they are important in the battle against the Dark One.  Most of the story finds them on the run from the Dark One's minions, trying to get to the safety of Tar Valon.

I was struck upon this reading at just what a sudden lurch the finale of this book is.  The characters spend the whole book with one goal in mind: to reach Tar Valon, home of the Aes Sedai (lady wizards, basically).  Then, with about one hundred pages to go, they abandon that goal to head off into the Blight to foil the Dark One's plan to "blind the Eye of the World and break the Wheel of Time".  It comes out of nowhere, and in some ways it feels as though Jordan hit a deadline and had to rush the ending.  It doesn't seem likely, because he's usually a very meticulous writer, but this particular instance stands out to me.

On the other hand, there's a moment that I used to feel came out of nowhere, but is actually foreshadowed quite well: Rand's ability to channel, and the revelation that he is the Dragon Reborn.  Upon my first reading, as a dumb kid, I had thought this done poorly.  I don't know what I was thinking, because it's obvious in hindsight.  There's even a scene where Rand is cornered by bad guys, and they get mysteriously struck by lightning.  Dumb kid me got so angry at that scene, because, well, it's a stupid, random way to get the hero out of trouble.  Except it wasn't a random lightning strike, it was Rand using the Power.  Not to mention the episodes Rand has where he alternates between nausea and madness, exactly the symptoms described for becoming a channeller elsewhere in the book.  Like I said, I was a dumb kid.

There's one strength Jordan has that is on display in this book in spades: planning.  The guy planned the hell out of this series, and reading the first book it really shows how well he did so.  There's foreshadowing all over the place, and a scattering of prophetic visions that all pay off down the line.  It can't be stated enough how difficult it is to plan a book, then stick to the plan during the writing phase: especially so in a book spanning fourteen volumes.

Still, for all that planning there are a few unexplained oddities in the first book.  Most of these come from the finale, which... well, it's confusingly written.  Deliberately so, I'm sure; it's all from Rand's perspective, and he seems not quite in his right mind at the time.  But a number of things happen at the end of the book that never get resolved.  Was it really Rand's mum being held by the Dark One?  Who was that ALL-CAPS VOICE?  We'll probably never know for sure, but I'm cool with that.  Every work of art should have its ambiguities.

I probably haven't made it clear, but I LOVE this book.  As I mentioned above, it took hold of me at exactly the right age, and Jordan became a massive influence on me as a writer.  I spent a good number of years attempting to emulate his style, before swerving off into a totally different direction with Jack Manley. Later on, the series gets bogged down in detail and side-characters, but here in the first book it's a relatively tight coming-of-age quest story that does what it does very, very well.

The NaNoWriMo Deadline Approaches

At the time of writing, I have four nights to go before NaNoWriMo 2014 hits.  One of those nights is being spent watching rasslin', so that's a write-off.  I've got ten chapters of The Lightless Labyrinth left to redraft, which is doable, depending on how extensive those redrafts need to be.  I'm thinking they'll be more extensive the closer I get to the end, but I think I can still make it.

I also want to sit down and plot out part 3 in detail before NaNo begins.  I've learned from experience that the words flow out faster when I know where I'm going.  Inevitably it's all going to be rewritten down the road, but I'd like the stuff that I bang out in November to be as usable as possible.

Overall, I'm looking forward to it.  The redrafting process has been really refreshing, and I find that I'm enjoying what I wrote.  I'm confident that there's a good book there just waiting to be finished.

WEEKLY PROGRESS:
The Lightless Labyrinth - redrafted part 1, chapters 7-23, and part 2, chapters 1-8.  Current word count: 52,908 (up about 1,000 words since last week)

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:

What I'm Reading:
The  Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs
She by H. Rider Haggard

What I'm Watching
WWE Raw
Walking Dead season 5
Doctor Who season 8

What I'm Listening To:
Party Animals by Turbonegro

What I'm Playing:
Orthanc
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Game Boy Advance version)

Monday, October 20, 2014

Redrafting Fever

In preparation for my upcoming NaNoWriMo stint, I've been redrafting The Lightless Labyrinth.  It's coming along quite well, and the process has reignited a lot of my enthusiasm for the project.  I'll definitely be working on this book in November, not starting another one.

But over the course of this process, I've discovered something about myself: I love redrafting.  I really, really enjoy it.  Writing from a scratch is a whole different story.  When I'm writing from scratch it takes me forever to get going, and even then I often spend time agonising over every sentence, hemming and hawing over a single adjective.  I enjoy writing, but it's often a painful process, and a slow one.

Rewriting, on the other hand, is a breeze.  I can dive write in, punching up the prose, improving the descriptions (because I never include enough on the first go-through), tweaking dialogue, and just generally shifting things around.  I'm even happy to rewrite whole swathes of stuff that I'd already done.  I completely scrapped my original prologue (it was as expository as all hell), and the new one sprang out of my keyboard fully formed.  Even my main protagonist has undergone a personality revamp, and I'm pretty happy about it.  I find making changes to a thing that already exists much more pleasant than creating that thing to begin with.

I guess that's just how I work.  My first drafts are often sloppy and unfocussed; I proved that with Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity, in which I had the same scene happening three times during the book.  But once I've got the skeleton in place, and I can see the shape of the book, I can dig in there and start fixing it.  That's the fun part.  The trick is not to have too much fun with it, I guess, to know when the book is done and ready to be released into the wild.

Mostly though, I'm glad that I have some enthusiasm for the book again.  It's something I should remember when I'm struggling with draft one: once the hard part is done, the fun of redrafting awaits.  I'm already looking forward to it.


PROGRESS SINCE MY LAST POST:
The Lightless Labyrinth  - redrafted the prologue, and part 1, chapters 1-8.  Current word-count: 52,116

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:

What I'm Reading:
The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard
Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs

What I've Been Watching:
WWE Raw
Doctor Who season 8
The Walking Dead season 5

What I've Been Listening To:
Apocalypse Dudes by Turbonegro
Pop by U2

What I've Been Playing:
Orthanc on a PLATO emulator
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Nintendo Wii

Monday, October 13, 2014

Nanowrimo 2014

As I do every couple of years, I've decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo.  In theory this is a very good idea for me.  It should motivate me to get more work done, and really kick my novel into high gear.  In practice... not so much.  I've entered NaNoWriMo four or five times, but I've never finished it.  I've never even come close.

But, here I am in 2014, ready to disappoint myself yet again.  But, making the assumption that I will actually make a decent fist of it this time around, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to work on.  I could always continue on with The Lightless Labyrinth.  It would be the sensible thing to do, given that I'm 50,000 words into it.  But, to be honest, I feel like I've hit a wall.  The enthusiasm isn't there right now.  I don't intend to abandon it, because there's so much awesome stuff in it that I've yet to write, but I'm closing in on the conclusion to part 2, at which point the narrative branches in three different directions.  I feel like it's a good place to stop if i want to take a hiatus.

So at the moment I'm going back over what I've done, rewriting my super-over-expository prologue, and just generally tidying up some timeline issues and hammering the character arcs into place.  Once I get parts 1 and 2 done, I can decide what to do for NaNoWriMo.

The first option, as I said, is to continue with The Lightless Labyrinth.  The second, very enticing, option is to start on my next Jack Manley book - Jack Manley and the Interchronal Deathmatch Tournament.  Going back to Jack Manley is really tempting.  I can write him in my sleep.  The prose style is dead simple.  I've got the plot worked out.  I think it would be fun to take a break for a month.  But then there's always the risk that, once I leave The Lightless Labyrinth, I'll never go back to it.  It's been a difficult beast to wrangle, and it's only going to throw up more challenges as I get further into it.  I'm pretty sure I'll be a better writer if I manage to finish it, but...  Man, writing Jack Manley is a hell of a lot of fun.  I'll have to think about it.

PROGRESS SINCE MY LAST POST:
The Lightless Labyrinth - 1,632 words

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:

What I've Been Reading:
The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard
Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs

What I've Been Watching:
Loads of WWE Raw
Doctor Who season 8

What I've Been Listening To:
Hot Cars and Used Contraceptives by Turbonegro

What I've Been Playing:
Orthanc on a PLATO emulator
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Nintendo Wii