The Bewildering Pine - Fourth Friday October 27th

Welcome to my first Fourth Friday Post. Every month, on the fourth Friday I will be writing about, and sharing insights into, the Bewildering Pine; a world I've been creating, in one form or another, for as long as I can recall.

I should start by explaining and separating the two main parts of this series and that world.

One, the "Bewildering Pine" is the fictional world where my first (in process) novel length book, "The Ledgerkeepers", is set.  It's a fantasy world that pulls from the many influences and inspirations I've had over the years for just such a world. The world is populated by "old world elves",  simply referred to as folk, and not the High elves of modern fantasy.

And the second aspect, the Bewilder and Pine, which is the creative outlet for my miniature making. It's my Etsy shoppe and where many of the larger ideas I have been formulating began.

Here, I really want to focus mainly on the book, that world and it's ties to my childhood and adult life but some parts of that world are derived from the experiences and products in the shoppe, and the shoppe in great part inspired the book and everything else that will come beyond it. . .  so I will want to dive into both over the coming months.

Today, for the first installment, I do want to focus on what the undertaking of the writing of this book has meant to, and done FOR, my own heart.

It would be easy, I think, for an outsider to look at my miniature work, my writing here and my views on life in general and assume I am stuck in a loop of nostalgia and whimsy, not that there would be anything wrong with that. . . and to a degree it's true. :) I've come to a place in my life where I tend to keep most anyone who I feel is too caught up in the outside or "real" world at arms length. Not because I want to pretend that world doesn't exist but because I believe how much that world affects us is almost entirely up to us most days.

Simply put, if  I allowed that world to inundate my daily thoughts and emotions, I could not do what I do for a living. It's not an escape, it's the way I go about and make sense of that very same world while at the same time, giving life to, and protecting, another world I've held within for so many years.

Somewhere along the way I decided that we each have our roles to play, I won't say it's our destiny or our calling. . .  or even our path. . . just that we may choose what we do with each moment we are given and for me, that choice slowly over the years became one of deciding that I wanted to put as much beauty and joy into the world as I can every day.

I discovered early on in the Etsy/maker-of-things world that the more I attached stories to my little creations, the more people responded to them. The more stories I created, the more the world that is now the Bewildering Pine of the book, started to creep in and influence my making and the stories I wrote to go with.  Tart Carts, crooked towers, shop and village names, houses with different architectural styles, little enigmatic elves who live in the woods or in hermit like solitude. Monks with face like mimes. Old tongues and sacred traditions lost. With each addition another little piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Now, this is going back some eight years to the beginning. In the last few years, the separation had begun to widen in my heart and in my creative desires. I started spending more time on the "side project" which, at the time, I could not have told you what exactly it would become. The world of the book is now vastly different from the world of the Etsy shoppe.

There are still bits and pieces that remain constant but as characters, locations and I suppose, most of all, the plot for the Ledgerkeeper's story started to reveal itself to me, I saw the chance to speak about more than just a fantasy world. It's aim is to be a novel that speaks to cultural identities and traditions, how things change, why things change, and, of course, how everything is not what it seems when story is a foggy subject at best.

As for the writing, this has been a crash course. I've never even attempted to write something like this before. Not seriously. Poetry yes, short stories, yes, letters of all kinds to friends and family, yes.

But to sit down and say, "Right, I want to write a novel!" No, that never crossed my mind once really.

What I've learned more than anything in the last year since I took up the task is WHY so many people start writing a novel, a short story, a memoir and then quit. Because it's reallllllly HARD and it requires something I feel blessed to have been able to find in an already busy life. The space and a routine to do so!!

I believe it's the hardest creative thing I've ever set out to do.  It requires persistence, time commitment, belief in it and in yourself. More than all of those, I think, it requires a desire to say something through your fiction. To tell your story or offer a viewpoint.

Nothing has ever brought me face to face with my own resolve and motivations like writing.

I chose the genre of fantasy for obvious reasons. Mostly because at the start of a fantasy story or novel is the world building part of it. That world that only exists in your head has to be fleshed out. Mapped out too. Not all at once but, at some point, you have to think about it all. The cultures, the limitations, the food, the climate, the magic etc.

Often you'll hear writers offer the advice "Write what you know". For some, like David Sedaris, that can mean your close family. For others like George RR Martin, that means the world you've been toying with in your head for your whole life.

To me, the love required is the same and evident in both I think. So yes, write what you love as well as what you know. The great thing is, you can learn so much that you don't know when you start! I may have a fantasy world in my head but it's littered with real world objects and situations that need to be right for the story. How does a water clock work? How were certain vegetables farmed 500 years ago? What happens when you have two moons, not one. The list is endless.

I love fantasy. Myth, legend, magic, the realm of Faerie, elves, surreal nature.

The funny thing is, I've decided to go a whole lot less in the original direction I assumed I would.

I've left magic off the board in this world for the most part. What magic does exist is born more of our own old world beliefs and traditions and the faith of folk in that.  I've seen first hand in my life how powerful that can be. So, if it's tinged with magic in the Bewildering Pine, it has roots in something you may recognize. There are no great powers, no mages and wizards. No dark forces. . .  at least, not magic ones.

The main characters as well as most of the supporting ones are all based on people I have known as well. From childhood friends to folk I know in the small town I live in currently. All wonderfully unique in their own ways and human to a fault.

I personally fall in love with books for the characters, not just the worlds the author created for them to dwell in.

My favorite books of late all share the core foundation of having very strong characters as well as the world around them being interesting too. But that doesn't mean they have to be a total creation of the imagination.

A Darker Shade of Magic
A Green and Ancient Light
The Queen of the Tearling
The Foretold
The Night Circus

All of these portray vastly different worlds: Four parallel Londons,  a non-descript,"post war" European setting,  a realm from our very own possible future, an Amazonian tribe/landscape and the underbelly of 19th century London.

What they all have in common are main characters that are stronger than the need to suspend your disbelief because they are relatable. Now, I won't ask you to read any of those if fantasy is not your thing. . .but if you want a short story that sums that same idea up, of the character being more important than the system of magic and the world, I'd suggest seeking out "The Night Market" by Holly Black. It's simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's got a bit of fantasy, a bit of magic too, but it's all revolving around the main character, her love of her family and the ending is the true magic of the story, of the world. . . of each of us in our world. It's well worth the read.

So here I am. over a YEAR into this project and just moving forward every day. I spend two hours each morning from 5:30am to 7:30am sitting in the silence of the early hours at the laptop writing, researching, plot sketching, exploring.

Each day starts with feeding and loving on our cat, Bhu, then venturing out to walk to the old-school bakery which is just a block away from our place and opens at 5:30am ( I know, lucky right?) and the day starts with something like this

French Press and a fresh apricot danish. Sorry about the lighting. . . but it WAS taken before 6 in the morning!

Finding that space, that time and making it a routine was key to getting along with the writing. It has also been the best adventure ever! Bringing this world to life and creating the characters and all the little details is like nothing else I've done. I 'm hooked. It's no longer hard. No longer a chore. It's just one more thing in my daily routine and I try not to let anything keep me from it.

In the future I want to talk about the beauty of routine and how it is such an important part of my days. I learned it at retreats visiting a Zen monastery years ago. Their set hours for meditation, meals, down time, work etc were a novel idea to me who, as a creative soul, could not stand the notion of incorporating that into my own daily creative world. Yet. . .

Immediately I saw why it worked but I still fell off the "routine wagon" very quickly afterwards. In the last 8 years or so, learning to keep to a schedule has become essential with all that I want to accomplish and make.

The routine I have now is set in stone and it has to be a pretty extraordinary thing for me to break it..

I'll also want to discuss finding your "voice" thru writing.  For me, that has been the hardest part of taking up a novel. Different writers create in different ways. It was yet one more reinvention and I seem to have found my own methods to get me there along the way.

At this point in the Ledgerkeepers, I have a prologue and four very strong character chapters. One for each of the main characters. Each also explores a little of the world around them and each, before I found my voice, were wayyyyyy too long expositions of pure world building and description ( a common flaw in fantasy writing) and less of the characters.  One of these chapters, for example, was near to 70 pages of discovery writing which I condensed and stripped away to what is now an 11 page first chapter. I found the characters and found THEIR voices, their motivations and their desires.

I'm excited to start sharing some of that world with you all here. And while I am not quite there yet, I want to put out there that I am going to be asking for Alpha and Beta readers in the coming months. (beginning in January most likely) If you have any interest in being among the first to read what I am creating, you can let me know and I will put you on the list of people to open the early chapters of the story up to as it falls into place.

As an alpha reader, I'll ask you to only focus on,  and give feedback for four distinct things:

1. What bores you
2. What confuses you
3. What don’t you believe
4. What’s cool? (So I don’t accidentally “fix” it.)

That's it! No long explanations are necessary. Just simple observations as you go. No other input is required at that first stage. I'll likely post the chapters here with password protection on them and send you the password when I am ready. I tend to like rather short chapters, 8-12 pages on average so it's not a lot of time commitment with each. 

Here and there I'll be posting little excerpts on the open blog too. In addition to "The Ledgerkeepers", I am also creating a book born from the world building itself. An "atlas",  I suppose, with many of the descriptive details of the villages, architecture, maps, belief systems, flora and fauna, folktales and the ancient origin stories for all of the type of folk who dwell in the world of the Bewildering Pine. As if someone were archiving the world from within the world itself. 

Alright, I think that's going to be good for this month's opening installment. I know it was a bit scattered but we'll find a direction with it in the next month or two. 

Welcome along for the ride! I look so forward to sharing more of the world with you in the coming months on fourth Fridays. I hope you will enjoy it too. 

Thank you for coming by and reading! XX
Nicolas

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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)