It’s been far too long since I done any sort of writing.  It scares me.  I fear that I’m losing it; losing the ability, the vocabulary.

That Oltice will be forever stuck in his hole in the ground, wondering how to get out.  That Ylandra will be forever wandering, searching..  that the span of aeons will pass and no echo will issue forth from the realm of my imagination.

That I will become content with the mundane trappings of existence, the routine of daily living; of survival.

Sometimes when things get tough, when life gets a bit shitty and the walls start to close in a little; writing becomes a way to dig out a little space around me with a hand shovel.  It opens a little hole in the wall that I pick at with the tip of a pen and peer through at the horizon beyond.  It paints the walls with images I’ve envisioned.  Writing becomes an escape but it also becomes a vent and a creative way to channel something otherwise destructive.

I feed shit to my characters, y’know. In my head. Sometimes I’ll siphon a little bit in their direction and see how they respond.  Oltice for example: he is a boy on a journey to become something beyond any control, any sanity.  He is borne of fear, isolation, betrayal and contempt.  He is a trickle that becomes a river strong enough to crack a mountain.

And then there’s Ylandra, I haven’t introduced her yet on this blog.  She personifies justice, impartial reasoning, sustenance and veiled innocence.  She’s a girl in a womans body in a mans world. Mercurial and cunning, she becomes the immovable object that meets an unstoppable force.

I’ve come to realise that these and the other characters: they’re segments of my personality that I wouldn’t normally express on the ‘outside’ and that they embody qualities that I either find desirable or contrived or undesirable and suppressed.  I’m not sure.  But it’s happening again and after all the shit that I’ve fed them, all the situations I can imagine them in; they’re starting to talk back to me again.

They’re starting to speak.. they just want the words to be strung upon and spread across a page. Smeared from chapter to chapter in a long congruent line of meaning and memories.

After so many easy chapters now, I come to the hard work. The characters are as real now as they’ll ever be.. but I need now to structure the environments and the other people they encounter.  I need to research and read more on where they are, what they do and who they meet before they can respond back.  Funny, you say, but I need to read more to write? Yes I know, I was hoping to kinda get away with not bothering but the truth is, I’m going into new territory.

So far this book has more or less written itself but now, now.. I need to do some work.

There’s no time to waste!

-R