Biog - progress report, October 2004

This writing malarkey is full of surprises. For example, I recently realized that the Stone Dance is deeply autobiographical. If you think how strange the world of the Three Lands is, how bizarre some of the characters, it would seem hard to believe that it could have anything at all to do with someone living their life at the turn of this new century. However, reading Jung and various other experiences I have had have gradually made me aware that, while I thought I was writing a fantasy/allegory adventure, all the time my subconcious was encoding my own life into the book.

At first I found this discovery to be a little alarming - after all, it's like discovering that your home is stuffed with hidden cameras and that you've been on live TV even as you thought you were living a pleasantly anonymous existence. Now, however, I am quite delighted about this revelation. It seems that in my subconscious I have a co-worker who has been doing overtime on my behalf. Of course, I have known of his existence for a long time. Often when confronted with what appears to be an intractable problem, I would go to bed, only to wake with the solution clear and obvious in my mind. A gift from my dreams which Jung believed was how the subconscious speaks to us.

Lest you think this a sign that I am losing my marbles I think I can prove that there is some truth in what I claim, namely, that I have recently become a noticeably better driver by having the confidence to let go of controlling my car with my conscious mind. I only learned to drive in my 30s and perhaps because of this feared that I would crash if I didn't pay the very fullest attention to the road. As part of my growing confidence in my subconcious, I now let him do much of the driving. The whole experience is more relaxed, almost certainly safer and I can even converse with my passengers without a crazed look and a sweat-beaded brow.

This is a rather long winded way of saying that things have not turned out as I expected when I last wrote here in March. They never do, I'm afraid. If you are frustrated by the amount of time it is taking me to finish the Stone Dance, my publishers are even more so. The deadlines I agreed with them, and which are written on my contracts, have long ago been exceeded. But what is the point in getting hung up on that. Writing these books is not like building a wall... where I could just take less tea breaks so as to add bricks more quickly.

What I can be thankful for is that I am finally back in my own home. Even as I am writing this, I can gaze out of my study window at the clock tower which was a key metric I used to give scale to structures in the Chosen and Standing Dead. I have all my books around me that I had not seen for more than a year. I also have my trusty log burning stove which I will be able to tend through the winter and, like Osidian, see my plotting materializing in the flames.

The truth is that the link between me and Carnelian goes deeper than I had guessed. Strangely, for him to resolve some of the monstrous problems that he is going to encounter in the third book, I am having to resolve some lingering problems in my own life.

I'm going to stop giving out dates for when I expect this or that is going to happen. I'm just not any good at it and it will cause me to get ulcers. I have to come up with this kind of thing for my publishers, though after all my careful calculations, I always seem to get it wrong. The Stone Dance has a life of its own. It long ago ceased to make any economic sense for me, but then that was never why I set out to write it. I shall continue to put stuff up here on the site and the book will continue on its wilful way to completion... and in the end, it is the characters and the life they lead in what I am writing that will determine when that will be...

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