Oops

When I named this blog, I forgot to do the obvious thing. I forgot to google for Postman's Blog. I just (yesterday, actually) discovered that someone called David Postman has a blog of the same name. So did Neil Postman, deceased. Because they're not on Blogger, I wasn't told I couldn't use the title. There will be a short pause while I decide what to do, and find out how to do it.

I am the Breakfast Man

Much more work on the breakfast scene today, after cooking breakfast. I am the Breakfast Man on sundays.
I'm more and more aware that I'm writing about myself here. And perhaps that's why I'm writing in the first place. Seth is discovering himself; I rediscovered something I already knew, and moved to Bristol. Perhaps writing is a response to the urge to tell all.
I leave Seth with the problem of how to find a magical disappearing Greek restaurant, and we walk over the Downs to Clifton Gorge. The Peregrine watchers are out in force, with a helpful notice-board telling us that the young have left the nest. We see a Peregrine below us, flying up the Gorge, small, slate-grey, and deadly. They're mainly taking jackdaws at the moment, but one came back with a lapwing the other day, a rare bird itself. And now rarer by one.

Light and Shade (geddit?)

A light day at work, so finished early and off to Forbidden Planet for the next installment of Sandman. I'm renewing my lost collection, and am now up to number 3: Dream Country. I also bought vol. 1 of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Last month's trip to the Triangle had me buying Anansi Boys and Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, both by Neil Gaiman. Laughing out loud on the bus up to Blackboy Hill earned me some Looks, so I didn't open today's purchases until safely in the pub. I'm very much looking forward to Lost Girls. I don't know how to put up links yet, so you'll have to find it yourselves.
After replacing bedroom light bulb, and helping fill and precariously hang a hanging basket, wrote some more of chap. 2. It's going well, but we need to go out and visit. More later. But maybe not today.

Out with the Morris...

...last night at Hanham as guests of Rag Morris, a mixed side who wear rags and dance Cotswold--rather well I thought. I've never heard a French Horn played for Morris before.

One of the best things about Morris is getting to know pubs like this one, the Old Lock and Weir at Hanham Mills. It is very difficult to find by road, but easy by boat. It stands on the outside of a bend on the Avon with the weir to the right, and the lock (hidden by an island) in front. You might catch a glimpse of it from the London-Bristol train, and think "That is the archetype of an English waterside pub", and it is. When I find out how to include images in this blog, I'll show one of the pub. Until then, just imagine...still water overhung with willows, boats moored alongside, good beer and food, tables under the trees with a view of mallard and moorhen drifting by...and a load of noisy buggers with bells on their legs, prancing about with sticks and hankies!

I wrote some more of the breakfast scene in chapter 2 before I went to work this morning. I've got to finish that before writing the fight scene in chapter 1. There's also a sex scene in chapter 3, which I'm looking forward to more than doing the fight. Perhaps because I was never much good at fighting... (Hah!) or maybe (Huh!). Whatever.

9-7-06 Edited to say that if you click on the funny oblong thingy at the top of this post, you will get a link to the Old Lock and Weir pub.

A little bit of science in the fantasy

Fantasy fiction is like science-fiction without the science. Metaphysics, not physics. Psychology, not surgery. Some publishers insist on some science-content, however slight.

The day before yesterday, while on my walk, I remembered the Chaos Pendulum; I think it’s in Bridlington Priory. It is cross-shaped; inside the horizontal beam is a hollow metal tube open at both ends; recycled water enters at the mid-point, which is also the point of balance. Logically, the water should flow evenly through the tube and out of the ends, leaving the beam horizontal. But it doesn’t. Sometimes it tips to the left, sometimes it tips to the right. And it’s completely unpredictable. And I think that Jo-Jo and Tomas could be watching the pendulum, and when it stabilises they’ll know that Seth has reached the Vortex (or whatever I'm going to call it) and has taken control. Some of the church furniture in Bridlington Priory was made by a local wood-carver whose trade-mark was a mouse. There are little carved wooden mice on the pews, the pulpit, and the organ-case. And because of the excess of chaos they have come to life and started breeding and the Priory is overrun with them. There might be an issue with pagan gods in a Christian church, but I think I can wriggle out of that one, or my characters can.

So when I get home I google for Bridlington Priory, whose website is being rebuilt, and look for the chaos pendulum, but I can't find it. And then, Google be praised! I find it. It’s called the Chaotic Pendulum, and it’s in St Mary Redcliffe, here in Bristol! And that’s even better, because they can get in through the secret entrance in Redcliffe Caves (there isn’t one) which is also a Portal… But no wooden mice, then. Pity; they'd have been cute, and fun to write. And when the pendulum remains horizontal and water pours out of both ends simultaneously, it's hailed as the Redcliffe Miracle... ooh, I could have fun with that! No chaos at all is as bad as too much chaos.

But it’s not so good, because I’ve set my story in an imaginary English city—English because it has pubs and people talk English, and a city because you can get lost easier and there’s a multi-ethnic population—which is really Bristol except where I’ve put in a bit of Sheffield or Leicester or somewhere else where Bristol didn’t have the bit I wanted. So everyone will have to up sticks and rush off to Bristol to find the Portal and the Pendulum (hmm, possible title?), or else I un-disguise the places and set it in really-truly Bristol. I'll have to write a Disclaimer, emphasising that all pubs are fictitious, and that Bristol taxi drivers are sensitive, tolerant liberals who never overcharge.

I’ve written a taxi-driver who is a nasty racist bigot. (Is there another kind? Of racist bigot, I mean. See above re taxi-drivers.)) At first I gave him what I hoped was an all-purpose demotic accent, which you could read in your own preferred (or hated) accent of choice. Then I realised I was saying something I didn’t want to say about people with regional accents, so I rewrote him without the dropped Hs and "vem"s, keeping his speech rhythm. Should I give him his accent back? And would it be a Yurr, Vis be Brizzle-type accent?

Always write down your ideas. If you don't, the Idea Fairy* will come and take them back again.

*Not to be confused with the IKEA Fairy, who makes your bookshelves collapse in the night.

Starting Post

A famous Private Eye cartoon shows two intellectual types at a party. One says “I’m writing a novel.” The other says “Neither am I.”

I am writing a novel. It's a fantasy novel. Not fantasy as in Fantasy Football. And not THAT kind of fantasy either. Put it away.

I don't want to give away the ending (which I know), or any of the twists and turns in the plot (some of which I know), so I'll just tell you that it's about a man who leaves chaos in his wake, meets some strange people, and finds out just how strange he is himself. Oh and he saves the world as well. Just like real life, then. My working title is The Chaos Man. I may tell you more when necessary, or I may just blog about my characters as I think and write about them, without helping you at all. You may be intrigued enough to follow my, and their, progress. You may just be annoyed. I don't know. But please leave your comments if you want to. They WILL be moderated, so please be clean and nice.

And right now, instead of writing my novel, I'm writing a blog about writing a novel. There’s a lot of advice for writers out in web-land, most of it written by successful writers. (Well, you wouldn't take advice from an unsuccessful writer, would you?) But can they really remember what it felt like to be writing their first novel? For many of them it was a long time ago.

So this is a blog about writing a first novel, by somebody who is writing his first novel. Some of you who are reading this are doing what I'm doing; I want you to share my experiences, feel my frustration when I get stuck with the plot, or can't get the dialogue right, and share my elation when everything runs like clockwork. And I might get some tips…

And I'm also learning how to blog. As I get better at it I'll be adding personal details and photies too. And I'll probably be rambling on a bit about things unrelated to writing a novel. But that's what this blog is about: writing a first novel. Mainly.

I’m calling it Postman’s Blog, because posting is what you do to put stuff on a blog. And it sounds a bit like Postman’s Knock, which is a game, and a song, and a Morris dance. And because I am a postman. And a Morrisman.