The Adventures of Bilbo and Itaril

Gandalfs Beard

I'm still figuring out how to navigate some aspects of the site. But once you register, and click through all the guidelines and how to post/publish, it's relatively easy to upload from a Word program.

Also explore the site a bit first, so you get an idea of the layout. Email me if you have any questions.

Odo Banks

Ta GB.

Have had a peep. You're a published author (in a sense)! Congrats! 8-)

Odo Banks

How are things going on the fanfic site, Old Beard? I'm getting a few dribbles (and a private email too, wow!) Hope you're working on something non-fanfic though! One must keep up the momento, thinks one!

Odo

Gandalfs Beard

I've had 31 hits in January and 10 so far in Feb. I've had one great review from some Australian Dude so far (Ta) , but no private messages .

I've had a job house-painting the last 2 weeks. Nothing kills creativity like "Real" Work . That's why I have to hand it to you for holding down a full time job, family, and still finding the time, energy, and creativity to complete a book.

Odo Banks

With me the more the tintacks of daily life gets in the road of my creativity the more desperate (and determined) I am to write. I know I haven't got much time in hand, so I get practical, I don't stress the writing, I just do it, no matter how crappy it might be. The biggest part of writing is in the rewriting as you know - but I've found that you can't rewrite something until you've got something to begin with. Once you've got somethng, you can chip a sentence here and snip a paragraph there (five minutes here, twenty minutes there) and suddenly (about three years later) you've got a novel in four parts - 500,000 words, in fact! This is a true story. It happened to me! I tend to write more when I'm busiest, but only bit by bit. The more time I have up my sleeve the less I tend to write. Go figure! (Maybe time sometimes hangs too heavy in my sleeves?)

I seem to recall a story called The Adventures of Bilbo and Itaril. If you'd had less time to write it, it would have just taken longer time to do it! That's logic!

Odo

Gandalfs Beard

I think it may have something to do with being a bit ADD . I tend to be more creative and stay on a roll when I don't have too many interruptions.

Odo Banks

Yes - there's always ADD to interupt things too! I coach ADD kids basketball. Smart kids all - but my training has to adapt to their behavioural traits and how they learn. I still think 'just doing it' works though. Self-doubt and disatisfaction with first drafts seems to be the Universal Demon writers face. Only my theory though. Everyone is different!

Odo

Gandalfs Beard

Yeah, I've had to adapt myself to achieve even small goals. In the end, I usually put one project aside after entropy sets in and pick up on something else until I can generate forward momentum on that one again. The things I've had best luck with are usually projects with a strong emotional component that just bubble up. As long as I don't have too many interruptions, those projects are propelled by my obsession with them.

Odo Banks

I'm no expert on ADD of course (nor writing neither) but what you're talking about sounds an awful lot like not choosing to persist when '[i:143fmjyz]inspiration'[/i:143fmjyz] hits a hurdle, or fades, or when boredom with those originally exciting story ideas begin to set in? Creative works (that get finished) are one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. It's an old adage but true in my opinion. Frank Herbert said somewhere that he could never remember what parts of his books were 'inspired' or not, he could only ever remember persisting with his story whether inspired or not. It was always a job of work for him - the ideas came somewhere in the 'process' presumably... I have the same thoughts about my current book. I can remember some of the bits when I know I was running on inspiration (some of these bits needed a lot of fixing - and deleting same bits at times!) but I also know I did a lot of pure old fashioned slogging. In fact, I did far more slogging than I did skating gaily on the ice. Funnily enough, I sometimes find bits I think were inspired (yes, I'm being subjective!) but they are bits that I can't ever remember feeling particularly inspired when writing them! Could I have been inspired when I didn't know I was inspired?

You know, GB, I find writing to be a frustrating, lonely and often loveless business, and it's always comforting to find someone else who suffers the same affliction.

Odo

Tinuviel


I'm shocked! Odo and GB, ur recent conversation nails my writing habits on the head! I've been writing a story since third grade in a journal I recieved in a good bag or something. I haven't really started intensely writing until I got my labtop last summer. So far I've got 41 pages written, which is an amazing acomplishment for me because I am ADD and can NEVER sit down and write something for more than about 10 minutes. ITS A CURSE! Yet, it does help me come up with ideas whenenver I'm staring into space or listening to music. In fact, I have so many ideas, I'm reluctant to sit down and write them because I know it will take forever! But it must be done. My only worries are that it will sound too much like Lord of the Rings because it has so much influence on my writing. Everytime I pick up one of Tolkeins books, I think of characters and places in my own story. For example, I have elf like people in my story, that are in ways alike and different. Alike because they have immortality (to an extent) and similar physical qualities. They also have their own language, which isn't as beautiful as Tolkien's I assure you But different because of their lives, and name. Elv`e is what they call themselves, meaning "the people" (and the accent should b over the e). They live secluded from the rest of the world, and have for the most part been forgotten except by a select few.
So I have a story of my own, and feel your pain GB and perhaps we should exchange excerpts sometime everyone?

Odo Banks

As one amateur to another Tin, might I suggest that you NEVER trouble yourself about whether you're original or not, or sound too like Tolkien. Please write the stuff you like to read! If you keep doing it, you'll build up your skills and store of ideas as you go, and sooner or later you'll come up with something others will love reading too. Remember, there is nothing new under the sun.

I let my characters develop as they go - but I don't go for depth - and if they're Bilbo Baggins or Harry Potter or Pooh Bear to begin with, so what! If you have them do stuff you tend to find out more about them as you go and before long people ask you, "Was Harry Potter the inspiration for your character Branson Bugalugs the Bold, the gun-slinging girl pretending to be a gun-slinging boy?" and you'll say, "Well, actually I based her on both Billy the Kid and a girl with ADD that I know," (only too well! you'll be thinking), "and written in a style that suggests Pride and Prejudice with Arthurian Myth thrown in!" The imagination is a perilous road, if you step out in it you might end anywhere but where you thought you would! Go figure!

As to describing stuff, I think the simpler the better. Readers have their own imaginations. One of my problems is sometimes trying to be too descriptive - every time I do, I lose my way! You can waste a lot of time trying to describe things. If it's a dark castle with many shadowy nooks and crannies, the reader will conjure up the rest as a rule, but kick up a puff of dust, or slip on a slippery flagstaff as you go. The reader will then be THERE with you (I mean,THERE with your hero!)

As to having Elves - T never owned them! Nor dwarfs, dwarves or dwarrows for that matter! And be aware that your elves, though they might have similarities to T's elves, will naturally have your personal twist because I'm confident none of us imagine elves exactly the same. It's not all that conscious a thing, I feel. If you write elves exactlyas youlike them, readers will find differences to T's elves that you're not even aware of yourself, for only YOU saw those aspects in T's elves in the first place (in fact, it wasyour imagination that made you see things that other readers did not see!)

Like I've opined to GB, I reckon the idea with writing is to chip away, a bit here, a bit there; you'll get there in the end! The big secret I think is to persist, even when you've fallen out of love with what you're doing. Indeed,especially if you've fallen out of love with it! Finish one draft and you'll find the confidence to finish another. Eventually you'll have ten finished drafts - one of which might be worth editing to become that number one best seller! If it's reminiscent of Tolkien, well and good - we NEED another Tolkien! (If writing a great novel was easy, we'd all be award winning novelists!)

Cheers
Odo

Tinuviel

Gandalfs Beard

Excellent advice Odo. I couldn't agree more. I am often so afraid of coming across like just another Cheap Tolkien Rip-Off that I chuck my ideas in the rubbish bin before I've even put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard nowadays ). It's why I am sometimes more comfortable writing non-fiction.

Well, Bollocks That! From now on I am going to write my cheap, tawdry fantasies no matter how crap I think they are (for some reason the tawdrier my stories are the further I get ). Ah well, if my niche is to be Fairy Tales for horny adults so be it .

By the way Tinuviel, I spent more time drawing maps and inventing languages in my youth for my characters to live in and use than I did writing the actual stories .

Odo Banks

I dare say those maps are still there? If so, pull one out and, after a quick look, start writing. When you've finished the first chapter (draft), do a quick rewrite (I mean very quick) and email it to me! (You too Tin, if you'd like). If the chapter is top shelf, I'll steal it outright - and if it's only good, bad or atrocious, I'll send back a quick review! (I won't be too harsh, promise. First drafts are rarely top shelf!)

How's that for a challenge?

Odo

Tinuviel

Sounds like an interesting challenge! I'm up to it! haha!

Odo Banks

I might have a go myself! I won't cheat. I'll write something brand new... maybe... This might be harder to do than telling others to do it! Mm.... Have to have a think I think!

Odo

Gandalfs Beard

I do have the maps and linguistic notebooks in storage, but they aren't particularly accessible at the moment. So I just started on one of my ideas that has been burbling around for awhile in my head. I have a page of background notes on the central protagonist to refer to. I am up to page 3 already; thanks for the encouragement Odo

Tinuviel

Just stating this: Any rough draft of mine is MINE! and I claim the rights to them. If Copyrighted, I will be severly ANGERED!
Just saying :mrgreen: But I trust we are all honest Tolknerds

Odo Banks

You've made me feel all funny inside, but complimented nonetheless.

Tin, I've never been called a 'nerd' before, (though my kids have been making dark hints lately).

Thanks Tin!

Odo

NB As to ownership - what is yours, is yours! That would only seem fair.

Odo Banks

.... and well done, GB!

"Itaril" clearly flowed out of you. I hope your new project keeps flowing too!

Odo

Gandalfs Beard

Just thought I'd post to bump this thread back up.

Odo Banks

Cheek! (Doesn't hurt though!)

Odo Banks

The Adventures of Bilbo and Itaril.

Is this a whimsical work?

Gandalfs Beard

Not so much. There's definitely some humour though. A bit of it might qualify as Whimsy.

Odo Banks

According to your arguments, the whole thing is whimsy! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: (Btw do you like the way I brought your story back out again so folk don't forget it!