Jam Sessions

So I had a Jam Session with my editor yesterday afternoon.

For those of you who have not read this blog, do so.

There are only half a dozen small entries. It’s not exactly War and Peace or something written by George R.R. Martin.

My editor is, now that you have caught up and read the rest of the blog (you have, haven’t you?) mi wife, K. I call her that because she is a firm believer in proper grammar, syntax and punctuation. She is paragon of orthography; the Praetorian guard of Lords and Ladies of Spelling.

You sort of get the idea.

More than that, though, she is the first person I sought to talk to in depth about Niwent (which wasn’t called that at the time) the first story arc, and the history and mythology of it.

K was notoriously difficult to convince about the whole thing.

She is a voracious, cultured reader.

But fantasy fiction is not her Baked Alaska (see how I incorporate topical social media trending issues?).

She has read pretty much all of the works of Terry Pratchett and is an avid Neil Gaiman fan. But high fantasy is not really something she is highly familiar with.

For that matter, neither am I.

But I shall talk about my writing origins story at a later date.

K took a great amount of convincing from the day I first started the story arcs and the development of the themes within Niwent.

A great amount of convincing.

But it all clicked one night over a dinner about a year and a bit ago. We got into a discussion (alright, I pretty much started it and pressed on) over a large glass of wine about the story in my head and it just seemed to turn into a marvelous exchange of ideas to and fro where she questioned some of the things I was proposing, forcing me to elucidate on vague notions to flesh them out and see what worked and what didn't.

I loved her enthusiasm. It was intoxicating to have someone want to engage at that level, to challenge you and push you to not merely defend a notion, but to develop it.

And I loved having to present the story to someone and getting them to become interested and invested in it.

I know writers don’t write for anyone but themselves. There is a story buried deep within your head and you do everything you can to dig it out, dust it, clean it and commit it to vellum…or eVellum as the case might be nowadays.

It is a personal accomplishment more than scripting something for the acceptance of others.

I like the ideas in my head.

I love them.

I think they are fantastic and fabulous.

Fantabolous.

And K gives me something which any and all writers would be immeasurably grateful to have: a focal point.

No. Better still.

K reigns me in when she sees that in my hyperactivity I may be writing myself into a corner, or worse yet, writing some awful cliché about ‘no one writes baby into a corner.’

So having Jam Sessions with her is a wonderful thing.

She isn’t afraid of bringing the proverbial hammer down.

She absolutely will not pull punches.

If it’s rubbish, then she will say so.

If she really likes it, she will say so (and usually I react like an overactive fat Italian cook going ‘SHE LIKE-A DA SAUCE, LUIGI! SHE LIKE-A DA SAUCE!’

And before you get your knickers in a twist, I am half Italian.

I can get away with making fun of my own people’s stereotypes.

:-P

So, on to yesterday’s Jam Session:

It was incredibly short for a jam session, lasting a train journey of about 20 minutes. But it was fun. She was re-reading the equivalent of the Genesis of the Niwent: my world’s story of creation. It has become the one story I dare say she has invested in, given the amount of criticism she gives me about it. We perused through some of the old printouts of the story (yes, I still print my stuff out), looking at some of the previous formats. She liked the earlier drafts where I made the story straight prose as opposed to my more favoured series of spaced out sentences. And I have to agree it reads better as prose. I tend to use single sentences as a means of providing emphasis on a particular statement, but if I do it for EVERY sentence, then all I am doing is being annoying.

She was only able to read the first tree pages of the story before we had to alight, but still, it was three pages of sheer enjoyment where a childish grin just could not leave my face.

I later spent the night going and re-drawing the group of Islands where the Children of the Star Forest are from, and I was much more pleased with the result. I won’t give much more away until I am completely happy with the results, but at the moment I can say I am about 95% happy. What I will say is that when you do see it, the main island of the chain will be more or less some (having only JUST now worked out the scales) some 750 miles by 536 miles.

Plenty of space to develop a fantasy story or two.

;-)