RE: Taking a Break From Hive - Writing a Fantasy Novel, Health Concerns and The Ink Well Community

I shall be sure to take good care of my health from now on :)

YOu trilogy sounds so intriguing. Didn't think there'd be so much work going into putting a novel together.

Yeah, with fantasy it takes a lot of preparatory work to create something that is worthy of mainstream publishing. For example, George R R Martin (writer behind game of thrones) had hundreds of thousands of words of sub-creation (planning and world building) already written before he wrote the saga that game of thrones was based upon. The trick with fantasy is that their has to be some type of internal logic behind the magic, world and fantastical creatures that are in the setting. Even if you don't explicitly mention it all in the books, the fact that it is all there in your mind (and notes) while you're writing it makes the world believable throughout the course of the 90000 words that make up a paperback novel. If you make it up as you go along mistakes and factual holes emerge all over the place as the systems within the setting have no solid basis to rest upon. It is a real labor of love, and the best fantasy writers like J R R Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin immerse themselves in the worlds they create to such an extent that they know the characters and landscape intimately.

It is this level of commitment I need to give this undertaking and I need every spare hour of the day to do it justice :)