A Haiku About Writing

 "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Fucking fuck fuck fuck fuck shit

Fuck fuck cock balls fuck"

~Tatiana AS Webb 29/09/2017

Water Under the Bridge

When the pressure gets tight, my general response is to write.

When it's writing that's causing the pressure, I panic.

Not really true. Sometimes I do excessive amounts of art of the thing I'm supposed to be writing, because that's creative and close enough, right? Sometimes I just procrastinate and like... Study, and stuff. Most often, I... Well, I write.

Just not what I'm supposed to be writing.

Normally, I consider this a good thing because there's not actually much "pressure", so it's good to get my brain in another place, give what I've been writing some space, come back to it with a fresh head and new inspiration.

Now, I can't do that. Sylvestus needs to be finished, which means no breaks.

When I started in April, I worked out how fast I was actually going to have to work, and decided it didn't look so bad. I decided it's time to add context to that.

An Approximate Timeline of Tatiana AS Webb's Novel-Writing Career:

The Red Prince

350,000 words

19 months

2012-2014

 Never published

Seeking

 120,000 words

15 months

2013-2014

Published 2014

(withdrawn 2017)

Each Separate Dying Ember

140,000 words

18 months

2014-2015

Published 2017

Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum

210,000 words

13 months

2015-2017

Never published

Sylvestus Vol. I

Predicted ~120,000 words

6 months

2017

Due 2017

If you want to do some calculations on that, feel free; I did them once, but like... I didn't write them down. It's also worth noting that all of that is from memory and reference to "A'ight I know I was writing that during this life event..." so like... Not that anyone's checking, but accuracy is potentially not the most umm... Accurate.

(do you know how hard it is to make words do the thing outside of a novel??)

On the surface, I think it's easy to look at this and think that my writing accelerates and decays almost randomly. Four months fewer for Seeking than The Red Prince, but 1/3 of the word count? This might be true to a degree if you take into account other life commitments (lower secondary school, then GCSEs, then A-levels, and now a Bachelor's degree - plus work and theatre which have come in and out in the meantime) but actually, I think this timeline is incomplete in the scheme of my overall writing. These are my completed novels, sure, but for a long time novels were just a small part of what I wrote.

Before I started the very first The Red Prince in May 2012, I wrote a lot with online communities. A lot. They come and go in cycles, and I had been working with them on various plots and stories since about 2009; they're active for a year to eighteen months, and then they suddenly die, without warning, for six months or more. Most never come back. The one I worked with from 2010 always came back, but after the first time it went inactive in March 2012 I was left stranded - I had gone from writing hundreds of words a day to having nothing at all to put my mind and inspiration to.

Then I had the first idea for The Red Prince in May, and suddenly I knew what to write.

And why not? I didn't have anything else to write any more.

I had started novels before, of course, trying to write with no plot or plot the whole thing before writing, hesitantly discovering Word documents or just scratching out pages in notebooks I still have stuffed in drawers - but this was my first big commitment. And somehow, 19 months later, 350,000 words down, I finished it.

For reference, I believe The Hunger Games is about 100,000 words.

I may have gone a little overboard.

My community actually started up again a few months into The Red Prince. I re-joined and balanced my time.

When it went inactive in early 2013, I started Seeking - even though The Red Prince was still halfway done.

Since then, that's what I've always done: two projects at a time. Either two novels, where I alternate between them every few months, or a novel and a writing community. By the time I finished the first draft of Dying Ember, I had been writing thousands of words for the community almost every day on top of the novel (and A-levels, of course).

I stopped that habit halfway through Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum (now adapted to Sylvestus Vol. I & II). I wanted to be more serious and focused, so no community writing, and if I was going to get novels out on a reasonable schedule, I couldn't keep splitting my energy like that.

It's added complications. I tend to go steady on writing something for a while, then suddenly get a burst of energy for it, then burn out. I then can't touch it for anything between a week and six months. Then repeat.

Writing communities prevented the surges of inspiration and burn-out by steadying my progress. Two simultaneous novels gave me something else to work on for a few days/weeks/months, until I burned that out too and went back to Project A.

I have taken some small breaks to touch on Red and [City Novel], but otherwise it's been pretty much solid Sylv for a long time.

I hit burnout about three weeks ago, and I hit it bad.

I went from being far ahead of my schedule and still smashing out a chapter every two days, to having my deadline smack me over the back of the head as it overtook me again for the first time since about June. This is, honestly, what I was worried about; I currently have a desire to write, but when I try to touch Sylvestus I just get bluescreen. But I daren't get into anything else, in case I get too into it.

I need to finish this draft in about three weeks. I'm not gonna' lie, that thought is currently making me feel a little

But we'll... Keep going. I'm sure I can force something out in that time. And like... It is then going to be edited, right?
I've never actually written a novel to a strict deadline before. It's a different experience than I'm used to.

I blame music a little; since I discovered Spotify a few years ago, I make a playlist at least four hours long for writing each novel, which includes character-relevant songs, but also atmosphere and mood (different to the public playlists, which are a more reasonable one hour long). Because I've been listening to the Sylv playlist for like two years, I can't listen to it now if I'm not writing, because I just get bored. The result is that I listen to my Red, [City novel], and [Pyrate novel] playlists quite a lot - studying, travelling, cooking. Then I get more into the mood for those; that song has such a good atmosphere, I'd rather write in that place than in ancient Rome; that song is so emotional, I'd rather write that relationship than those in Sylvestus... Among other things, my characters and worlds live in music, and if I'm listening to the wrong music, I can't get back into that world.
Consequently, in an attempt to beat down my inappropriate Red feelings (the equivalent of shoving Rheimer bodily into a box while he squalls and kicks and tries to climb back out), I've been listening to Claire Laminen's Across the Formidable Sea playlist.
I wouldn't really say I have a "kind of music", which is evidenced if you look at the contents of my various playlists and albums; I have a few genres I won't touch, but other than that I'm game. The AtFS playlist, however, still contains music I... Wouldn't normally listen to.
And I'm currently obsessed with it.
In particular, I'm losing my mind to this at least four times a day now:

And y'know what? I think it's working. Aside from a few cases of "Ooh, I could so steal that song for my Red playlist...", the atmosphere of AtFS is so different from what I write that there's no crossover in my Creating vs. Consuming brains.
So I guess I'll keep belting out off-key Adele, shoving Rheimer back under the bed, and drinking Ikea blueberry juice until I can coax Sylv onto the page again.
And if you're lucky, I'll even let you look at the Sylvestus playlist next month.

And yes, I stole the title of the Adele song for this post, because I am truly phenomenally terrible at post titles, and you can probably make a metaphor out of my old novels or my problems with writing being water under the bridge, or something. Idk. Whatever you think would work as a metaphor.
As the Welsh would say (but probably not really), joio.

Genuine live-action image of me enjoying the AtFS playlist with my new headphones, because I couldn't be bothered to draw a representation. You can tell it's not Water Under the Bridge that's playing because I'm not visibly losing my mind and shrieking along

Bird People, or Beople,

Just kidding.

Imagine if that's what they were called though.

Nice.

Well, what's basically happened here is that I got bored of my attempts to draw a Sylvestus thing, and I drew a Dying Ember thing instead. It's something I've wanted to draw for a while, but that never ended up being what I did draw on the occasions I've taken to my sketchbook recently. My brain has been in such a Sylvestus place for a while, sometimes it's hard to remember I have another, pre-existing novel.

It ended up being some wonderful comments by another author slash writey-friend, Claire Laminen, which triggered my switch in subject material.

Click to enlarge

I'm pleased and vaguely surprised with how it turned out. It was also extremely fun to draw. I think I just really like wings.

There's two sparrowhawks in there, two falcons, some buzzards, an osprey, two kites, and a barn owl. I looked at some eagles and vultures but by that point I only had the tiny right bottom corner left and I... Couldn't be bothered. The ones on there are pretty enough.

I've been wanting to talk about something like this for a while, and I think this has made itself the perfect opportunity. There's also gonna' be a metaphor in there. Advanced, I know.

Since even before I started to write Dying Ember, I've been fascinated by the potential physiology of bird-humans. Maybe just humans with wings, but how much further could you take it? The conventional perspectives in literature which includes humans and bird wings are either evil biological experiment to implant the wings onto living people, or supernatural or magical creatures which therefore don't have to abide by such petty things as physics. There was a big surge in the late 2000s shooting down the impossibility of winged people, and although I barely understood all the big words like torsion angle and body mass ratio at the time, the fascination of how to solve all those problems stayed with me.

In 2014, I drew a conceptual piece trying to determine a suitable bone structure and organ system for bird-people.

To this day I'm still proud of it, and stick with what I drew here in terms of the shoulder structure and, to some degree, organs. Birds and mammals have completely different respiration systems, but also hormonal glands and chest shapes and spines and hips... Combining the two was intriguing and fun.

What I drew yesterday was much easier, and much faster (about two and a half hours, compared to the fifteen or so I think on the 2014 piece) but, to me, just as important.

As the eagle-eyed (eyyy i'm sorry) may have noticed, in yesterday's piece, all of the people have tails as well as wings. In all earlier artwork, they do not. I'd been considering adding tails to them for physics reasons for a long time, but the image just didn't work in my head - I quite like the effect it has in these in-flight drawings, but I have tried to draw tails on them before, and to visualise them while writing, and it just... Didn't work. But the thing is, they would definitely need tails for control, balance, slowing, acceleration, and... Well. Being able to fly. Drawing all of the different poses above really clarified that for me, especially working out how the tails would have to contract, expand, raise, and lower to direct their bodies in different directions.

The story I run with is that instead of reptiles evolving feathers for insulation and display, then using them to glide and eventually fly, it was early primates. Therefore, all Earth's evolutionary history shifted so that winged humans, rather than birds, ruled the skies. And only birds of prey, because Cannibalism is Bad and I'm less intrigued by pigeon-people (if it makes you happy to have pigeon-people in your mind's version of Dying Ember, though, go ahead. They're all yours).

But there's a reason reptiles developed into birds, not mammals (excluding that it might just have been chance). Birds' lungs are controlled by the same muscles as their wings, just like reptiles' limbs are, so their respiratory system is different. Their digestive systems, while varied between the raptor taxa, are largely more adapted to be able to store food in a place that it won't affect their ability to fly, before gradually being digested in multiple chambers. In the 2014 drawing I did something toward reconciling this with the mammal digestive system, but they're different enough that there isn't really a reasonable middle ground. The Long-Wings in the novel are described as being on average slightly smaller than Short- or Broad-Wings, but in actuality anything larger than a real modern-day gyrfalcon just wouldn't be able to achieve the speed and agility described of Dany and the other Longs (and the biggest people would have to be about three and a half foot tall, the size of the largest modern day flying raptor, the Andean condor). Plus, the more you look into it, the more it kind of... Falls apart. I draw and visualise the characters of Dying Ember with bulky double-shoulders - the wing-joints just above where we have our arm-joints, and their arm-joints below those. In reality, having arms at all would just add a whole host of extra problems that would probably result in some very unattractive and complex solutions. The heads on some of the drawings above were ungainly and difficult to draw; raptors' heads are that shape for a reason, and I think to look forward while they fly the characters would get some damn sore necks, unless they had incredibly long and flexible necks that could bend back and forth at will. Oh, and their legs would probably have to have short thighs and calves and ankles of equal length to tuck well into their bodies...

The reason raptors are the way they were is evolution and physiology. The more you go into it and pick holes in bird-people, the more you try and solve, the more you just end up with...

Birds.

So if you don't want to visualise Kiah and North and Dany and co. as being three foot tall with weird vulture necks and tails and monstrous body-builder chests and flamingo legs, constantly vomiting up their meals to try and re-digest them... It's okay, dude. Just picture them how you want.

It's fiction. We can have fun and investigate the possibilities and play around with physics and biochemistry, but in the end their universe has a fundamental difference to ours, and whatever the details of that difference, the outcome is this: bird-people work.

I do a similar thing with Dying Ember. And with Sylvestus, and that's not even published yet.

You want it to be 100% perfect before it sees the light of day, but the truth is that it will never be 100% perfect. You just have to draw a line when you're satisfied enough, and publish that.

And then you spot more things after the line. Like that they aren't actually biologically possible. Or that there are types of raptor that aren't Short-, Long-, or Broad-Winged (kites - red, black, Brahminy, all of 'em - are some of my favourite birds, especially to watch in the air, but they don't come under this very simplified classification. Owls are completely different anatomically, and varied within themselves. Clay is a Broad and an osprey, but ospreys aren't actually broad-winged in the same way as eagles or buzzards. It goes on).

Or that a minor character has two surnames that are mentioned at different points and no-one spotted it and now she's just out there changing her surname halfway through the novel and please, let no-one else notice this now that I've said it...

There are plot holes in Harry Potter, and The Raven Cycle, and Game of Thrones (well, season 7 at least. still loved it tho. theon my boyyy). There are typos. There are mistakes.

Do what you can. Draw a line in the substrate of your choice. Put it in the light of day. Every time you change the lighting or move to a different angle or leave it alone and go back to it you'll see more flaws, but you know what?

It's not real.

Take a breath. Draw some bird-people with tails even though they don't have tails in the novel.

Have fun.

How you, too, can feel when you let go of your inhibitions and Just Enjoy the Fiction

Hobbiton

Well, it has... Been a while, huh?

In fairness, things have been Happening. Unfortunately, writing isn't my full-time profession, as you may have gathered (if you want to change that, force my books onto your friends, family, colleagues, partners, enemies, local book stores!) - the result is that I can't afford to spend as much time as I'd like not just writing, but on all the accessories.

So what was it this time? Partially, just life stuff. Sylvestus. Pretty art. And then, moving into our new university house!

I am the tallest member of our new house, and I am 5'4". Consequently, our house has already been christened within our Biological Sciences community as Hobbiton (or The Hobbit Hole). It's nice, significantly nicer than the student village was last year (though that wasn't difficult), but moving in has been an understandable hassle. Next week I'm on a five-day field study in Pembrokeshire, and then two weeks after that we start lectures - with three pieces of coursework due already. Oh, and the week we start back I'm going to be getting three baby rats moving in with me.

To stick to my Sylvestus release date, October is going to be busy working on it. The deadlines are looming in life and writing, and on top of that managing this website is becoming an ominous shadow over all of that. It's important, but it may have to take a backseat while I focus on living, studying, and publishing.

In keeping with my normal nature, Hobbiton is a suitably characterful place. It's an incredibly good house for the money, and by student standards, but it ah... Possesses some individualities.

So far we have discovered:

• My bedroom doesn't have a window. It has a sliding patio door which has been chained shut. It opens about three inches. I am not on the ground floor;
• A small roof directly below my sliding patio door which, presumably, is why it does not open all the way as it does not appear to be a very stable roof. However, many students before me have been, it seems, creating a tradition of adorning it with things which they can throw out of the three inch gap it opens by;
• A garage door at the end of our back garden, which is locked shut by a massive chain and a fist-sized padlock we don't have a key for. Upon inspection from the top floor, it is apparent that it does not lead to a garage, but rather to the alleyway at the back of the house;
• The light directly outside my bedroom, which is on the second of four floors, is controlled by switches on the bottom and top floors;
• A hook akin to that which may be found beside someone's front door with a hanging basket attached, on the ceiling just out of reach of the top floor balcony which looks over the floors below;
• Just beyond this, what appears to be a door set into the wall. A metre from the balcony, several metres above the floor below. It has a sign on it telling us not to try and climb into it. It's a very good job I don't drink any more, because drunk-me would definitely try;
• A small concrete step in one corner of the kitchen, entirely pointless but apparently for the purpose of causing a great deal of tripping, toe-stubbing, and swearing;
• We won't get broadband installed for another week, but one can pick up the university campus WiFi - but only from one corner of my bedroom (this is where I am currently typing). The campus is a twenty minute walk away. Sometimes it's strong enough to watch Netflix with only occasional buffering. The network is only accessible from this one place in our house, except one time when I picked it up for about ten seconds in the kitchen;
• The only mirror in my bedroom is wedged behind the desk. RIP mirror selfies;
• All of the lightbulbs had been removed from the bedrooms and hallways when we moved in, but we did find several boxes of them in a desk drawer;
• The downstairs toilet has a glass door.

As I say, it has character, if nothing else. Frankly, I would expect nothing less.

Last year, I lived in a quite different place. The student village was the cheapest campus accommodation - and it was quite clear why. It had been under order of demolition for at least five years, and while we lived there they actually demolished part of it, which resulted in frequent losses of water, WiFi, electricity, buses, and launderette facilities (we lost at least one a week. It was a roulette of living standards. We got a £20 refund at the end of the year, though, for our troubles).

Aside from the general phenomenal awfulness, however, it did have one thing going for it besides being cheaper than just about any student accommodation in the country: its name.

Because this is Wales, it had a Welsh name. Actually, student in Welsh is my least favourite Welsh word of all:

Myfyrwyr.

I know the English were horrible colonists and tried to wipe out the Welsh language and it's a glorious piece of heritage we must preserve and it sounds beautiful when spoken, etc., but.

Myfyrwyr.

It doesn't even have a vowel.

I have a problem with Welsh which isn't Welsh's fault, but rather mine for being a genuine idiot. Like, I'm intelligent but I'm not... Clever. In Wales, all signs are written in English and Welsh. In north Wales, the Welsh goes first; in south Wales, the Welsh goes second. When I first moved to south Wales, I encountered a very unique problem: I keep forgetting I can't read Welsh.

Automatically, I just look at a sign and try to... You know... Read it.

Except that I can't read half of it.

But my brain doesn't register that it's Welsh and therefore I can't read it. I just see something that I can read the first half of and not the second, and think I've had a stroke.

Of course, I then go back to England and encounter the opposite problem: when I've been in Wales for a few months I learn to skip over the Welsh. The result is that I only read every second line of every poster or road sign - meaning that in English I just miss half of what it's trying to say.

I've asked around, and apparently most people aren't this stupid.

It's just me.

 

The student village's name was pronounced Hen-druh-voy-lun. But how was Hen-druh-voy-lun spelt?

I'm glad you didn't ask.

In my first year in Swansea, I counted four ways that it was spelt. I managed to collect photos of three of them, although I don't doubt there were more.

To me, this was absolutely hilarious. What's better than living in a place no-one knows how to spell?

Hendrefoilan

Hendrefoelan

Hendrefoilian

At least you can't spell Hobbiton wrong very easily.