I'm re-merging this LJ into my main one, or rather, I'm making my main LJ a proper "backup"/"mirror" of my online blog. You can either friend my main LJ, or follow all posts on writing under this tag.

Thanks to a combination of randomness and poking around at other people’s fiction, I’ve come to the conclusion that the culture/technology of Casting On needs to be much closer to Rennaissance levels than Medieval ones. Which is a bit of a bugger, since I that’s not exactly my era of expertise. Hm. Excuse for research books? :D At the very least, excuse for a wikipedia excursion. *packs lunch*

Hm, so, according to the History of Knitting article on wikipedia, knitting started blooming in the west in the late medieval period, but the purl stitch wasn’t around until the late Rennaissance, and cabling wasn’t invented until the early twentieth century. This not being Earth, I can fudge with some of this, so that we have knitting and purling in a mid-Rennaissance-type setting, with no looming Industrial Revolution.

I think cabling may be what the boys bring back from their wee trip, if I can poke out exactly how it fits into the magic system. I need to shake that a bit more to get it worked out, actually, how the magic works, and how it interacts with the knitting, and what non-knitting magicians do, and stuff like that.

Something else I should keep in mind: it seems, from various websites, that most medieval/rennaissance knitting has much finer threads, and thus must’ve been done on much thinner needles. (I can’t find any pictures of needsles older than mid-century, which vexes me.) The gauge is generally around 10 st/inch, which seems crazy thin to me, but I should keep this in mind when writing so I don’t anachronistically project my own knitting experiences on the story.

The other thing I’ve been poking at lately is how to write non-white characters.

Not as in, how to get non-white characters into a story in the first place, because I tendn to write what I know, and what I know isn’t all-white. My problem (well, one of them) with non-white characters isn’t having them, but writing them.

Mainly, and I’ve been wibbling about this for a while, my problem is walking the line between making it clear that a character is not white (because if I don’t, I know that the vast majority of readers will assume they are — white is the default, possibly in fantasy even more than in non-genre) and making a Big Deal about the fact that they’re not white. It’s a difficult line to walk, and it annoys me that I even have to, that I can’t just have elves living in the desert and trust the audience to infer that they’re unlikely to be lily-white, because, duh, desert, and sun, so they’re probably at least moderately darker-skinned.

Unfortunately, I know that the audience is going to be coming from an archetype of lily-white elves, and from white being the default until explicitly mentioned otherwise, and so I need to explicitly mention the non-whiteness, and by doing so, quite probably add to the “white = default” thinking unless I also mention that the white characters are white.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that I don’t, in general, have a very solid idea of what my characters look like. I usually have a solid idea of who they are, but my average physical description is along the lines of “(taller/shorter than) average height, solid/skinny/muscular/lean/fat build, [hair color], [eye colour], [skin colour]”. And that’s what’s actually in my head — if so much as hair colour and relative height of the characters makes it onto the page, it’s a lot. I’ve never seen much reason to change this, because in my own reading I find it excruciatingly boring and annoying when a writer spends a full page detailing every measurment and colouring of a character (usually followed by another page detailing their clothes), and the last thing I want to do is bore my readers.

But in a world where I know that a majority of my audience is going to be viewing my characters and reading my writing through the filter of white priviledge (and where, you know, I’m writing through a filter of white privildge as well), a general lack of physical descriptions will likely make my non-white characters stand out even more just by virtue of them getting their skin colour noted.

(And the descriptions in and of themselves are also potential pitfalls — I realised on re-reading TNFKAE, for example, that the one mention of Jonathan’s skin colour is “olive-skinned”. That was an interesting experience, as I’m often embarassed on re-reading my writing, but I’d never previouly been horrified by it. Apparently, I’ve managed to absorb a lot of the stereotypical exotifying/othering racial descriptions, and for lack of descriptions of my own, I unthinkingly reach for those without realising it. Augh.)

And it’s not that I don’t have these same (or very similar) issues while writing with having to keep male and straight privilege in mind, but it’s easier to do that “instinctively,” what with falling on the “wrong” side of those and all, and they don’t “clash” (so to speak) with my natural writing style so much.

Plus, I’ve been dealing with queer and women’s/feminist issues for more than half my life, whereas I’ve only relativly recently started learning about PoC/racism issues, and I sometimes feel like, until I know more about this, I shouldn’t be writing non-white characters at all, which of course is exactly what I shouldn’t do.

Crossposted from Sleepless in Scotland. Comment here or there.

Um. Yes. I think it's pretty obvious by now that I didn't make NaNo, again. Ive decided not to care too much, because the last thing I need to do this time of year is stress myself out more, so there. I'm still going to be working on the novel, though, and trying to write a little every day at least, but there won'tbe the deadline pressure of NaNo, which may or may not help.

I think right now I may need to concentrate on the worldbuilding a bit more, but I'm at a loss as to what kind of stuff needs to be there. Anyone have any questions or something? Anything you want to know about this world? Anything you think I should worldbuild before getting too deep into the story?

I'm also a bit stuck because I can't figure out why Cal's spent the last frou/five years away from his family, and where exactly he's been, and why he's now back, and why he's so annoyed about it. This is vexing meeeee! Augh.

(We won't even mention that I'm currently distracted by Robin Hood pornage, because I have enough WiPs as it is, lalalalala, this is not the distraction you're looking for ...)

I'm going back to posting completed chapters only, because splitting them up like this was getting ridiculous. So, deleted the split-up bits, and am reposting the entire chapter. If you've read the previous parts, skip to the fourth scene for new content. :)

... Why no, I've not been spending time writing a generator for HTML progress bars! *eyedart*

1,572 / 50,000 (3.144%)

So sleepy. Must go crash now, then clean tomorrow. Will write some tomorrow as well, but most writing will be Sunday, I suspect. Most of today's scene was written while sitting on Sarah's bed, which was a bit disctracting, heh. On the worldbuilding upside, I think I have at least a vague monetary system worked out, with some reference points for costs of various everyday and semi-everyday things.

Am babbling more than usual. Sleepy time noa!

Welcome to October, aka National Panic About NaNo Month. *fails, runs around panicing*

Although the majority of you voted for Tech Support in Space, I'm leaning rather heavily towards writing the Magical Knitting Story (which really needs a proper title already, because augh) myself. That'll take quite a bit of planning and plotting, I suspect, but I do have a month. Um. Yes.

Anyone who can think of Important Things I Must think About Now, please let me know. balancing between underplanning and overplanning is haaaard. *whine*

November is looming just past the horizon, and I am, as usual, running around like a headless chicken, unable to make a decision without input from my friendslist. And so, I present:

NaNoWriMo 2007: The Waffling

Option One: Never Change A Winning Formula

The one time I finished NaNo was the year I wrote pure, self-indulgent, cliché-ridden fantasy crap. I have a vague bunny in my head that would lend itself very well to this, and would require twisting beyond recognition to make it non-clichéd, so this sounds like a perfect match, right?

Pros: Self-indulgence has proven a good motivator for writing, and knowing I'm writing somthing that'll never be published anyway will help keep the blockage at bay. And I really do want to write it.

Cons: It's not the bunny that's currently most active in my head, and will require me to put Option Two on hold until December at least. Also, I'd have to avoid using any cool ideas I get because I might want to use them in Option Two, and keep them "fresh" for that.

Option Two: Serious Business!

This is the current active bunny. It's got magic knitting! Boys wot knit! Women talking about thingas other than men! Assorted other random cool crap! Bweeeeee! It's also something I want to write and then clean up and try and get published.

Pros: Magical knitting! Other cool stuff! Lots of inspiration!

Cons: I feel a bit anxious about "wasting" this story on NaNo, like it "deserves" better. It's also going to require some intensive worldbuilding and plotting in the next six weeks, and that's assuming I even manage to whack the characters and the world with a stick until they give me a plot in the first place.

Option Three: Write What You Know

Tech Support In Space! I have no idea what it would be aboutother than, well, Tech Support In Space, but I think I could have a lot of fun with this.

Pros: Even on a bad day, I could just write about Annoying Customers I've Known and I'll get to my daily quota. At least mildly original.

Cons: I have no idea what else this would be about, just a vague concept of "scifi knowledge about tech support".

Option Five: And Now For Something Completely Different

Not fantasy, not scifi, not genre at all. Pretentious litsnobbery with a side of autobiography, covered in angstsauce. Writer with writer's block, family issues, possibly a ghost or two.

Pros: If all else fails, I can still get my daily quota by whinging about being blocked, and it'll count as part of the novel! Also, people like this sort of crap.

Cons: I'm likely to want to shoot myself in the face before the end of the month, with all that angst.

Option Six: Geronimo!

Plan nothing, ignore the looming, and just dive in headfirst at mightnight on 1 November.

Pros: Much less stress pre-NaNo, and who knows what I'll surprise myself with.

Cons: Potentially much more stress during NaNo, and who knows what I'll surprise myself with.

Help me, Obi-Wan Friendslist, you're my only hope:

Pour l'enquête en francçais, appuyez sûr:

A journey of 50,000 words:

Is it can be tickybox time nao?

I think I'm giving in to the fantasy bunny. Random bullet-pointy thoughts:

• So once Cal gets disinherited (banished?), what exactly happens? (War?)
• Actually, should Cal be a Prince proper? Maybe the son of a duke or something?
• Read up on that whole nobility system, figure out if sons of dukes can be called prince?
• Underwater city? Mountain city with flying people? (Flying dwarves?)
• Pantheon!
• Need decent secondary characters, dammit.
• Dragons!
• Dragons?
• Ripping off Eragon = no.
• Magic system/rules?

(And yes, this is what my random planning/plotting notes usually look like. What is this coherent thought of which you speak?