Castles and Inspiration

I've been visiting some of the castles around Sheffield over the last few weeks. I've even bought into the English Heritage membership program. They have about 400 sites all around England that members can visit free of charge. The list boasts not only castles, but stone circles (Stonehenge included, though sadly it's far away from Sheffield), monasteries, priories, oratories, monoliths, abbeys, burial chambers, and more, some that are even remnants of the Roman Empire. It's quite an impressive list. There's also a place called King Arthur's Round Table, which is a henge that is believed to have been King Arthur's jousting arena. Being a big enthusiast of all things related to the legend of King Arthur, the prospect of visiting such a place is outright tantalizing.

Pictured above is Conisbrough Castle, which dates back to the 12th century. The castles I've visited so far have been small, at least compared to what I imagine when I hear the word castle. There's usually one surviving keep, where the duke or earl lived, and the king came to visit, and battlements in various states or disrepair. There is some inspiration that comes when visiting ruins like this, but I do find myself wishing the renovations had slightly less of a modern touch. A one thousand year old castle loses some of its character when it's furnished with plastic furniture, a fake fire place, and is awash in concrete. It becomes somewhat of a lifeless husk. I know it can't be helped, and in some cases the concrete is necessary to preserve the remains, but I long to one day walk inside a ruin that still breathes, and remembers what it once was.

Somehow, despite writing fiction set in similar time periods, I've yet to write a story set in a castle. The castles in my stories are always distant, and mentioned only in passing, and the adventures take place everywhere but, but I'm sure I will circle around to them eventually. There are kings in some of these lands whose stories are waiting to be told, and you can't tell a story of a king, without telling the story of a castle. At least, once I do get around to these castles, I'll have plenty of first hand impressions to draw upon. I'll try to hold back on the plastic furniture.

Hail in May

I once wrote a story with a friend of mine in high school. Our English teacher asked us to pair up and write a myth (reminiscent of old Greek mythology) surrounding the origin of a natural phenomenon. My friend and I chose hail. We created our protagonist, a young man aptly named Hail, who had been the half-human son of one of the gods from our pantheon. The young man was stoned to death for some perceived transgression in the city he'd called home, which incurred the vengeful wrath of his celestial father. The god stoned the city with chunks of ice the size of people's heads (for dramatic effect, of course), killing most of the city's unsuspecting inhabitants in a most brutal and bloody (and descriptive) fashion. Thus, hail as we know it today came to be. I remember as we were reading off the story in front of the class, our teacher chuckled and remarked, "Ah, there it is!" when we got to describing the macabre massacre, as if he'd been expecting it from us.

We've had rather cold weather here in Sheffield since I arrived about two weeks ago. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were in the middle of fall, rather than the middle of spring. It's been getting colder by the day, finally culminating yesterday with hail. Quite a bit of hail, actually. It wasn't the size of people's heads, but it reminded me of that story I wrote with a friend so long ago in high school. I wish I'd kept a copy.

The Prelude

I'm better at beginning stories. This blog (henceforth weblog) is an entirely different exercise. When I begin a story, I begin with a solitary idea, a single scene. I give it room to grow, and the story practically writes itself. It's like the events therein have already happened, and I'm just there to pass the story along. This weblog, however, rests entirely in my dubious hands. It's beginning right now, and the rest lies in the murky and unpredictable future. I can't help but think that this is an unnecessary distraction. Nevertheless, for the better or worse of it, let me tell you why I'm here.

Motivation. It's something that characters need within a story, and it's something that a writer needs to transform that story into a manuscript. I'll write with or without this web site, I have for a while now, but additional motivation in the form of due dates (albeit set by myself and likely to be broken by myself), and certain expectations from outside parties (you, if you will), cannot be a bad thing (I'll eat my words later).

Circulation. Breaking into established literary markets is difficult, and as any aspiring or otherwise writer will tell you that's an understatement. I've submitted to traditional publishers in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, but in the mean time I would still like to open up some of my efforts to a place that's a little more public. To be less precise, I find a certain joy in sharing stories, and I have something special in mind for my small slice of the world wide web.

Feedback. This probably should have been item number one. Feedback is the fertilizer that helps a writer grow, to use a crude analogy. Receiving rejection letters from publishers in the past has sent me straight to my laptop, inspired to do better. Sharing stories with my writers' group, and hearing their invaluable feedback has only ever served to push me forward. I hope this web site, at least in some ways, becomes an extension to all of that.

In the long run, I suppose all I can do is try. There's only so much planning one can do before jumping out of a moving car. If you're here, reading this, then to you I say welcome, and I hope that there is some spark here that will keep you coming back. I invite you to join in and comment on the stories, the weblog, and whatever else becomes of this place. I might be a little slow with updates at first, this is rather new to me, after all, but the main event will (should) begin soon. You know what? No more stalling. Here it is, buried beneath all this text. There's a story brewing. More of a novel, really. I have it outlined, and I plan on sharing it chapter by chapter, right here, as they come. Bear with me just a little longer, and we'll get this endeavour started.