I've done some work on Chapter Three at last!

I've involved some of the most complicated aspects of the story so I'm not sure if I will keep it that way or hold it back til later. Haydain has a vision of Nisréaval which I am working hard on getting right, I'm going to write an essay to go with the vision to focus myself and I will put that up here when it is finished. The whole thing is very very complicated but the story really revolves around the idea of multiple universes and different realitires. Essentially there are two characters, Nisréaval and a male character called Torm, who only exist once (for the normal chracters there are infinate different others) and they control this whole thing and manipulate it in grand schemes of their own making, related to their need to find each other. When Haydain has his vision he is pulled into 'the place between worlds' where Nisréaval and Torm operate, and he sees her there. This disrupts the process by which Nisréaval was travelling to Midgard and it effectively wipes her memory of everything she knows.

Incidentally Nisréaval is the name that the Dragonians know her by, she does not have a name for herself and in the vision she fits into Haydain's expectations of her so when she appears as Rhonwyn she looks like Nisréaval is supposed to look. The rest of the book concerns her rediscovery of herself and her efforts to find Torm and the effects she has on Midgard. I describe her as a 'force' since she is neither good or evil but she is very powerful and her power affects everthing around her, she had very little control over what she does and she causes a few diasasters along the way! Of course it is abut more than that, it can be deep and complicated at the same time - such as the debate through the book about religion (as a method of control, the origions of belief and my attempt at writing a fantasy where gods do not exist) and about stories (Torm and Nisréaval disrupt stories and they create their own thought the worlds, the book also asks about the reliability of myths and other such stories since Rhonwyn begins by trying to follow the Dragonian interpretation of herself and does not succeed). This is why I've never finished the thing!

I want anyone who reads my diary to tell me "Get on with Chapter Three!". Please :-)

Acctually I don't think I'll be able to do some serious work on it until after the weekend (I'm being very social this week). Sometimes I find it harder to write from a plan that I do being a bit more random about it. I've planned Chapter Three quite closely because it is an important chapter since it builds up to Chapter Four. Although not that closely because I've not really thought about the details of the summoning ceremony Mirendhan performs (although I know I want it to be dark - flaming torches and chanting and that kind of thing - to show another side of the Dracogean). Added to that I need Haydain going crazy in the Twilight Garden (which is the result of him being really angry in Chapter Two) and calling out for help. It's all a bit twisted because, although Nisréaval turns up, I don't want to be too obvious about why she arrives and who she is answering (it is not the Dracogean!). Hence the 'strange air' in Chapter Two to show something is going on even before they summon her (implying she was on her way already). Gosh this is complicated!

I am engaged in the sport of ticket watching; the new stuff will be published soon (fingers crossed!).  

I've been a busy editor over the weekend and I'm going to upload the Prologue and Chapters One and Two tonight. I did a bit more editing than I planned, I totally rewrote the scene in the training room because it was too long, not very exciting and did not really add much to the story (origonally this scene was supposed to be a bit of light relief for the reader but I decided that was not enough because I like my scenes to work hard and reflect several aspects of the story at once). I inluded some information about dragon riding and explained the dislike between Haydain and Elórfilad which I had not really elaborated on before. I also played with the description of Haydain and made it even more pervy.

I revised the Author's Note that goes with the Prologue and made a few changes to some of that information. I really need to work some more on my langauge soon but I have made a few changes along those lines. I decided that I wanted to be more consistant with the name I use for the Dragonians; now they are Dracogean throughout the story but still Dragonians everywhere else. I also made a new letter 'ÿ' to represent the 'y' vowel (so Estelisyn is now Estelisÿn) and moved the position of the rolled 'r', 'rh', to consonants rather than vowels and updated the story with the changes (but I've not updated Nisréaval's Song yet).

I probably managed my 1,000 words but I have not written anything new for Chapter Three. I plotted it in the bath though and came up with a few ideas to get things to the entry of Rhonwyn in Chapter Four, when I will probably go back to following the old plot. I managed to work in Silmaldur's sword too which was helpful (in the previous version Haydain took a very quick trip to see the Midgardians, in the middle of Chapter One, so they could give him the sword). Note that it is not a magic sword or anything like that, it once belonged to the Dragonian leader Silmaldur, who Haydain really admires and wants to emulate when he becomes Lord. Its a symbol that the Dragonains and Midgardians can not get along (so Haydain is a bit misguided thinking they will, the sword is there to remind the reader that Haydain is not always right) and also comes in later when Rhonwyn finds it (but I'm not saying anything more about that, some things are too important to spoil!). This is not magic sword or magic ring fantasy!   

Chapter Two is now finished (I've just done a quick edit and spell check). I set myself the target of having the Prologue and first two chapters ready for Elfwood by the time I went back to work, which was toady. I don't think I'll upload just yet, I want to leave a bit of time to have another look at it but it should be done by the weekend. I've been writing solidly since Christmas and I have around 15,000 words done now (Prologue - 500; Chapter One - 7,000; Chapter Two - 6,000). My daily word count should be around 1,000 words if everything goes well (I went to a talk by Phillip Pullman a month or so ago and he said he tried to write 1,000 eveyday so I'm in very good company!). I'm pretty happy with it :-)

I'm still on the introduction of the story really and I will be until Chapter Four. Those Dragonians are very complicated! The Prologue is their version of the backstory and the history of Midgard. Chapter One introduces Haydain and Mirendhan and gives some insight into their society. Chapter Two is more focused on the characters and their ideas, it is dominated by two conversations. The first is between Mirendhan, Padrÿnduil and Haydain and that follows on from a conversation between Haydain and Mirendhan in the first chapter. There is quite a bit of subtext to their words and it ends with a bit of an argument between Mirendhan and Padrÿnduil. The other conversation has to work even harder, it is between Haydain and Torandal. I like my words to say more than one thing to the reader so this conversation is not only about the Barbarians it also has to bring in hints about their relationship which, I will build on later in the story. It also contains a revelation about Haydain's parentage which is a new development in the story, I''m not sure if I will keep it in or not but it does make sense.
Just to get away from all the serious debate, I've written a couple of comedy moments to split up the conversation. I like to keep a balance in my stories so I'll write a comic scene after a tragic one or a discriptive passasge after dialogue (Chapter One was mostly discriptive so Chapter Two balances that).

That was not my only reason for all the dialogue though. I wanted to show that the other character's have views on what is going on. In The Citadel I am experimenting with using an unreliable omnicient narrator almost like another character (called The Narrator). I don't really like the sort of books where the narrator's word is taken as truth so mine is mostly unreliable. The Narrator is another sign of the wrongness in the story (there is plenty of decay in Midgard but I also wanted to show decay in the story itself because the story, like the characters, is a part of that wolrd). She is a big fan of Haydain, slightly disturbingly so at moments (look at his introductory description for example, I wanted it to seem very voyeuristic and a bit pervy) and presents his views as being more valid than those of the other characters - if he sometimes sounds a bit arrogant them it is down to her thinking things like 'Haydain was barely able to swing [a heavy sword] and he was no physical weakling' and '[Torandal] had nearly fallen ... but Haydain had been quick eough to catch his friend'. I like to think of her as his hopeless girlfriend, unable to think bad of him and always emphasising his important role.
Although I'm not saying Haydain is wrong, I wanted to give the other characters a chance to say how they feel and I can only do that with direct speach because The Narrator messes everything else up. I want the reader to be able to understand the different arguments and even take sides if he/she wishes (my view is closer to that of the Dragonians than Haydain).

The Narrator aslo mixes with another voice, mine or The Author's (because it is not always what I think). That voice is strongest in the more objective discriptive sections, such as the discription of the Twilight Garden in Chapter One or the information on the Barbarians at the end of Chapter Two. The Author voice is related to that of Mirendhan in the notes for The Visions of Therathiel and both, like so much, comes from Tolkien. I wanted a sort of academic style to The Author's voice, rather factual and perhaps slightly old fashioned - like they are studying what is going on rather than being involved with it (I'm thinking of the voice of the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings).
Unfortuantly The Author can not always be relied on, the information she gives still has some spin on it (so she sees the Barbarians as the Dragonians do rather than getting to the truth of who they are) and it rarely contains the whole truth. There is only one character in the whole story who speaks the universal truth all of the time and unfortunatly he only comes into the story in the Third, and final, part!

All notes, biographys and this diary are written by me because they are outside the sorty and do not follow the style of it. The story has its own truth which is not that of this world. 

This writing diary will contain spoilers so if you don't want to know what might be coming up in the story then I would not advise you to read this diary. Not that many people are that interested in my story but you never know, I would not want to spoil it for you if you were reading in suspense of what comes next. 

I've decided to use the diary for something more interesting than my random thoughts (which go in my LiveJournal). I'm going to start a Writer's Diary, following the progress of my novel. It's something I've thought about doing for while as a way to share my experiences and any tips or ideas that I find along the way. i studied English at university and I like nothing better (ok, maybe I like some things better, vodka probably and shopping and pretty boys and some others) than discussing stories, especially my own!

I'm probably a few months late starting this because it should have tied in with me starting version number 13ish of The Citadel back in the summer. What with one thing and another I've not written much for the story and I'm having a mini rewrite anyway so I guess it is not too bad a place to start. Like the plot of the story the wriitng of it has a lot of history so I'll fill that in first just so you know.

Check out my Wyverns shelf for the story so far but The Citadel is basically a fantasy epic set in a secondary world called Midgard, which is a name from Norse mythology meaning Middle Earth.
This was a concious decision because my story was inspired by Tolkien (who I like to think of as J.R most of the time), partly because I love his work but it is also a reaction to it, and to the other writers who followed his style. In a way I'm trying to create a dialogue between his work and mine, which is a rather grand thing to do and I'm totally out of my depth but I want to do it anyway because I like to be ambitious.

The idea of trying to establish this dialogue really came to me about five years ago (when I was 17/18). I had to write an essay about someone I admired and all the things I wanted to talk to them about if I had the chance. I've always been a fan of Tolkien, discended from fans of Tolkien (I first read Lord of the Rings when I was eleven, The Hobbit when I was a bit younger, which was the first book I remember really enjoying). I had been writing The Citadel at the time, under the title The Citadel Under the Mountain which I call The Old Version or OV for short.

That began when I was fourteen or so and was a story I began in colaboration with a friend of mine, Liz Street. She came to my scool from Chile and we were both fantasy fans and liked writing and the story began as a school project. A year or so later Liz moved to the North of England with her family and we lost touch. I carried on with the story myself, writing the earliest versions on paper and then switching to computer when one arrived in our house (I did have a very short lived attempt at using my mother's old typewriter).

I started university in 2000 and it was around that point that I abandoned the OV and began the NV, New Version, which I wanted to make even more complicated than the story was before! I have always thought of the story in the context of Midgard but I wanted to create a history and mythology to feed in to that and so the story changed based on all the backstory and world building I'd been doing. I wanted to focus more on a race of people I had created for the story, the Dragonians, rather than on the more-human Midgardians who had been the focus of the story (see The Road to Ennion on my shelf which is based on the earlier Midgardian story). Most of the wold building was to do with the Dragonians and their culture.

During my time at university I did not have a chance to do much writing but I did lots of thinking and learning. I also got back in touch with Liz, the story is dedicated to her althought I'm not sure how she will take some of the changes to it (she is very religious and the story is a bit anti-religion) I found my course very useful and it introduced me to lots of new ideas and ways of looking at literature. Many of those ideas I've incorporated into the story and into my way of looking at it objectively. I have never taken a creative writing course, I tend to back analyse my work once it is written and change it accordingly. My writing is close to the stage where I'm including things during the process rather than thinking about it when I edit after. I don't know if I'll ever be happy with my writing but I'm getting there (incidentally I have never ever written a complete version of the story, the longest was about 145,000 words).

I graduated last summer and I finally returned to The Citadel seriously in July, working mostly on The Road to Ennion rather than the novel. I took a long pause in mid-October (for real life) and went back in earnest at the end of November. I've written my way though Christmas, working on The Citadel and I have almost finished the updated version of the Prologe and Chapter One, I'm currently working through Chapter Two which I will then edit and publish on Elfwood with the new Prologue and Chapter One.