Booklog #6

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This week I finished:

Nothing!  Everything I'm reading at the moment is quite lengthy.  ;o)

This week I started:

Shatter (The Children of Man) ~ Elizabeth C. Mock

This was a free download on the Amazon website, so I thought I would give it a try.  It's an epic fantasy with magic, mystery and lots of characters and places with funny names.  And when I say lots, I mean lots.  I'm up to chapter 9 and there are three separate sub-stories going on (though two have converged now, which helps) and frequent references to the various belief systems, gods and mystical forces that exist in their world.  I don't want to criticise, as the characters and storyline are good - but it feels like I've had everything thrown at me at once but without any explanation.  If I'm honest, I felt so overwhelmed that I nearly gave up on it, which is rare as I hate to leave a book unfinished. 

I've pushed on and it has improved, but I still don't have any feel for how things 'work' there, if you know what I mean.  What are the rules of that world?  There was a series of articles in Writing Magazine about constructing a fantasy universe and one of the pieces of advice was that the 'rules' have to be set down clearly so the reader knows what is considered 'normal' and can get their footing, as it were.  If elephants can fly there, then show that this is the norm so that the reader doesn't wonder why none of the characters have noticed when a herd flies by.  If there's a complex religious belief system then you need to explain it to us early on so that we don't feel a bit stupid for not understanding it (like I did, and to a certain extent - still do at chapter 9!). 

I am intrigued to know what happens to the characters - even if I don't really understand yet what it is that's threatening them - so I'll carry on to the end.  Hopefully I'll pick up what's going on along the way! 

I'm still reading:
* Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett
* The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (still up to ch 22)

Have a great week! 
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Productivity Dive... :o(

I'd planned that today would be a great day, what with the new laptop being all set up and ready to go, but sadly I was laid low with a headache until well past lunch time.  The headaches I get are usually due to eye strain from computer screen use, so I didn't want to risk provoking it into returning by jumping straight back on the laptop once it had gone. 

Instead I decided to go through the not-insubstantial backlog of Writers' News and Writing Magazine that has been building up on my bedroom floor *ahem*.  I've subscribed to both for years, but I'm a bit of a lover of magazines all round and have a lot of other subscriptions too, so they often form something of a queue (well, more of a mob!). 

If you're a writer or poet and have never read either of these fine publications then I highly recommend that you have a look.  Not only do they provide great advice and stop you feeling quite as isolated, they also recommend writing-related books and this can save you money because there are a lot of those out there and not all of them are helpful.  My own collection of writing books is a modest size but all of them have proved interesting and inspiring - these are my favourites:

• On Writing - Stephen King
• Your Writing Coach - Jurgen Wolff
• Wannabe a Writer? - Jane Wenham-Jones
• The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes - Jack M. Bickham

Of course it's perilously easy to fall into just reading about writing and not actually doing any writing - much like I unintentionally did today.  But I guess it's the second best thing that I could be spending my Writing Days doing!