Category: Norse City Limits

Note to Self: Stop Making This Mistake!

March 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I’m in the midst of correcting a mistake.

The mistake was beginning a novel, writing about nine chapters, and not outlining the major plot points, character details, and world-building information of each chapter as I finished it (which is a thing I do: I outline after I write, not before).

Instead, I wrote, wrote, wrote, my hair on fire, my fingers flashing, and I just kept chugging along, oblivious to my fatal error until I’d written 25,000 words and I was like, “Oh, fuck.”

I am a “discovery writer” or a writer who writes “into the dark,” so I do not outline beforehand. Instead — ideally — what I’m supposed to do is outline AFTER I’ve written each chapter, so I have a running summary of what’s happening as the story progresses and therefore I can keep track of all the details without having to use my critical voice to plan things beforehand.

Ideally.

Because what ends up happening — seemingly every time I start a new book — is I forget to do the outlining after I finish a chapter. And then about a third of the way through the book, I realize my mistake and have to spend days/weeks going back through and rereading my manuscript and taking notes. It really puts a halt to the creative energy and stalls the progress of the story. But it’s kinda necessary, otherwise I’ll forget key details and get all messed up with the continuity of the story.

So back into the manuscript I must go. Rereading and taking notes.

That’s where I’m at right now. I started writing Norse City Limits several months ago, and I was on a real roll — letting loose and getting the story down with energy and excitement — and then I realized I hadn’t been outlining after each chapter, and it was an emergency, screeching-of-the-breaks moment, quick-grab-the-notebook-and-start-outling, and now, it’s March, and I’m still not back to writing. I’m still outlining.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I need to put a sticky note somewhere to remind me to STOP FORGETTING TO THE DO THE POST-WRITING OUTLINE!!111!12121!

This is not the first time such an error has happened; you’d think I would have learned my lesson, but apparently not. It’s kinda good that I’m so caught up in writing the story and finding out what happens next that I forget to do the “housekeeping” side of things afterward, but man, it is not good when I have to go back and do all this rereading and it just kills the momentum of the story.

I’d like to say, “Live and learn,” but apparently, I don’t learn? I just keep doing the same stupid mistake book after book.

So that’s where I’m at. Fixing my stupid mistake and trying to get back into the story so I can start writing it again.

Ugh.

Works in Progress July 2023

July 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’ve settled into a groove. My early morning writing routine has kept steady (with a few days here and there where I’ve had to shift my mornings to accommodate the varieties of parenting and life), and with my morning sessions, I’ve mostly focused on Norse City Limits. I’m up to 13,000 words in that project, which is amazing in some sense because it doesn’t feel like I’ve written that much. Not that 13,000 words is a lot, but when I see it all totaled together, and then I think of how I got to that 13,000, it doesn’t feel like I did any work. That’s the point of a daily habit, isn’t it? A little bit everyday adds up to a lot over time. Well, I’m proving that adage true.

My other project is a story I’m calling “Dark Was the Morning,” about an old dragon and an old dragon-slayer who must decide whether they want to face off against each other or not. They’re both tired and filled with ennui, facing the end of their lives and the slow betrayal of their minds and bodies as they age. I’m not sure if this will be a short story or a novella or something else. I’m just writin’ it and seein’ where it goes!

I wish I could say I’ve been working on Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess, but that book is on the back burner again due to my focus on Norse City Limits. Maybe when fall rolls around and I’m getting to the midpoint of NCL, I’ll feel like I need a shift to something different and pick up Ysbaddaden again. I really want to finish the Merlin series, but I also know that these other stories are closer to the surface and need to be fished out first. I’m trying really hard to let my creative voice dictate my writing, and if Creative Voice says NCL is the way to go right now, that’s the way I’m going.

My blogging has been pretty shitty since summer started, but maybe that’s for the best. I should be outside doing summery things not hovering over my keyboard like a pasty crypt keeper. I would like to blog more, though, and maybe my renewed focus on Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and other OSR/indie games will be the material I need to start blogging with more regularity. I’ve written before about these old-school games, and perhaps I shall write about them again in the near future. Old school RPG stuff is wildly creative, particularly the modules and settings, and I find that it’s often more interesting and inspirational than any other fantasy media. Who needs AI when there’s a random d12 table to roll on for ideas!

I think my earlier goal of 2500 words per day is too ambitious. Maybe someday I’ll hit that goal with regularity, but I think the better goal is to keep the streak of days alive. Writing a little bit every morning before the family wakes up is working well so far. 13,000 words of fiction isn’t a lot, but it’s something. And if I can keep it up, by summer’s end, I’ll hopefully hit 30,000 words. That’s a third of a novel. Not bad for a few minutes every morning.

The other problem with my 2500 words per day goal, is that eventually summer will end, and when it does, I’ll be going back to a 9-5 job (well, more like an 8:30-3:30 job… more to say about that soon…), and 2500 words will be nigh impossible on most days simply because of time constraints. And I don’t want to make writing into a chore. I don’t want writing to be a pressured thing. I don’t want to even make writing into a “career” (I’ve discovered I don’t want to make anything into a career, frankly). I want to write. For pleasure. For myself. For the sheer joy of it. But making it into a career is not for me. It might be for others, but not for me. I’d like to make art and let the day job make money.

So 2500 words is too ambitious. I would rather write daily — no matter how many words, just daily — and let the practice of writing (not the word count or end goal) be what matters. A daily habit. This is much more enriching to me than striving for a word count goal. (I shiver when I think of the word “striving.” I am not a striver. Down with striving! Up with leisure and habit!)

Soundtrack of My Write

May 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

My morning fiction writing habit continues, and today, I wrote a tense scene where my main character is fleeing from a ghoul in a misty, frozen tundra.

I have a playlist for this particular work-in-progress, a mix of Led Zeppelin, Nordic garage rock, The Cramps, 1950s rock & roll oldies, and some jazzy tunes from mid-century, and for my scene this morning, I queued up Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune.” On the surface, it was incongruent with the scene I was writing, and yet it really helped me get in the mood.

I can’t explain it exactly, but something about the contrast between the big, brassy song and the cold, tense atmosphere of the scene felt right.

The lyrics helped too. My main guy is running for his life, and it’s somewhat funny to think of lyrics like, “The wheel of fortune goes spinning around. Will the arrow point my way? Will this be my day?” as my guy is trying to outrun a monster. The languid pace of the song mixed with the quickness and fear in the scene also makes a nice contrast.

I often try to find a song that matches the mood of the scene, but in this case I went with opposites, and a bit of irony, and it really made the scene a blast to write.

Works in Progress April 2023

April 3, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Since finishing both Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion, I haven’t been idle, though I do wish I was further along with my draft of the second Merlin book. I’ve written a few short stories that I’ve been sending out to different magazines, but so far, no luck.

And I’ve started drafting another novel, Norse City Limits, a story which I’ve had rolling around in my brain for almost ten years.

When I was in college, I took a class called “Icelandic Sagas,” and we read a whole bunch of them: Njal’s Saga, the Volsunga Saga, Grettir’s Saga, and a host of shorter sagas.

I always thought the style of the saga writers reminded me of the way screenwriters write screenplays: terse description, a focus on dialogue and action, and a point of view that resembles the “camera-eye-view” we get in a script. There’s no room for inner monologue; the thoughts and feelings of the characters are expressed in conversation and action. To my mind, these sagas worked a lot like the old film noir/hard-boiled movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age: fate and bad luck often played a huge role, society was controlled by a few rich and powerful networks that often manipulated the system to maintain power, and down-on-their-luck individuals had to find a way to survive in a hostile environment that answered only to money or force.

So Norse City Limits is my idea for melding Icelandic sagas with film noir. I know mixing hard-boiled fiction with fantasy stuff isn’t anything new (it’s Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files or Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid, right?), but I really love film noir and I really love the Icelandic sagas and the Norse legends and mythology that they’re infused with, so I wanted to write my own version of this urban fantasy staple.

For Norse City Limits, my main character is not going to be a detective, but instead a “regular Joe” who is down on his luck and trapped in a bad situation. Much more of an Out of the Past situation than a Big Sleep one.

I’m hoping that Norse City, the fictional island metropolis that is cut off from the rest of the world, will serve as a setting for other books inspired by the sagas. Norse City Limits book 1 is partially based on Grettir’s Saga, but it’s not a retelling of that story. It’s more of a jumping-off point for an original tale of my own invention.

I’m not a very fast writer — partly because I need a lot of time for thinking and exploring, and what often looks like procrastinating is really my way of letting my brain ruminate on things — but, despite the way my brain works, I’m trying to write 2500 words per day (with Saturdays a little bit less, and no writing on Sundays). I know I have to work up to that amount, a bit like a runner working up to a 5k or a marathon, but I figure 2500 per day isn’t too high of a goal for now.

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Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

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