Click on the picture to listen to the podcast
It’s TGIAD, or Thank God It’s Amnar Day (so named by the great Toaster Ferret). I release the next chapter in the book Amnar: The Awakening, and take a moment here to write about what happens in the episode here on the blog.
Amnar: The Awakening will soon be available in MP3 format via Podiobooks.com. Watch this space for more…
The escape from Duum
This is a set piece that I imagined from the very start of writing the original drafts of the Amnar books. The escape from Duum spans four chapters, from 34 to 36.
Originally, it was fairly short, but in The Awakening, I became really ambitious, and inspired by music from Aliens, I began working on something that would include dragons and provide a reall good conclusion to the story (so far).
Io really isn’t the hero who wins out here, which is “against the rules” of writing. Instead, she’s surrounded by Ta Dasi and Servants as she faces the powers of the State of Duum being unleashed.
Now we’re introduced to Fior, and Sadarin, two dragonmasters from whom we’ll hear much more later. In the meantime, enjoy…
A selection of assorted items:
1. The problem of being a dictator
This time around, I’ve decided it’s time to get right inside the functioning of the ‘Duum State’, the ‘Tiomke’ or, well, the bad guys in the Amnar story. It’s been causing me a little stress, because I’ve been considering actually seeing matters from the perspective of Tiom himself.
I’ve spent the last couple of days staring at the point in the chapter where Vasha walks in and is introduced to the Cabinet who manage the Duum State, wondering how to begin. I want this to be authentic, as much as I can get it, so I figure I might have to go back and do a bit of thoughtful research. I’ll write more about this tomorrow.
2. Re-recording for Podiobooks
Since Amnar is going to be released through Podiobooks.com in the next month or so, I’ve been preparing the episodes. The first eleven will need to be completely re-recorded so that they match 12-38. I have to take off all the original intros and outtros and set them up to match Podiobooks’ requirements.
I decided I’d be very clever and make sure the end of Amnar: The Awakening is all ready to go out on my own website so I don’t have to worry about putting together my own podcasts at the same time as the Podiobooks ones. This is turning into a bit of a logistical adventure, especially given that in three weeks I’ll be launching Amnar: The Inheritance on the world – whether it likes it or not.
3. It’s a ninja kangaroo
I swear I was investigating the background to the situation in Iran when I found it. According to the Times, “Man in underpants wrestles crazed ninja kangaroo”. I think that might be the best headline I’ve ever read.
This is a topic I’ve encountered a few times with other writers, and it’s one that makes me very curious:
Do you write in order (every chapter or part strictly following the other) or do you write whatever section comes to mind first?
One of the things I’ve been working with when I see clients is whether they keep themselves to writing everything in order, no matter how stuck they might get over a scene or dialogue playing out properly, or do they write whatever they want to write?
I’ve generally given the advice that it’s whatever works for you. This is about finding out what your own method is, rather than finding some prescription methodology that leaves you stranded in the doldrums.
In the past, I’ve written ‘the bits I want to’ first, but when I came to writing Amnar books, I wrote in order, from the beginning to the end of the book. I often have a scene that I’m dying to get to, or a sequence I can’t wait to write out, but I use that as motivation to get through the bits that aren’t hooking me in so much.
Yet this isn’t strictly true. Because most of the Amnar books rely on a group of main characters rather than a single, central focal protagonist, there are a lot of subplots or perspectives to manage. I’ve frequently found myself going back over chapters and moving them around or adding new sections that come to mind only after I’m rather further into the story.
I like having this dynamic approach, like keeping only to a vague set of plot points rather than a strict outline. It can be a roller coaster ride at times, but it’s definitely fun.
Holosync Level 4.1: When all the stories collapse in one go
I did promise earlier that I would write some kind of explanation for my disappearance from blogging. After months of writing two and three posts a day, I’ve been silent for days at a time.
Some of it has been because WordPress wasn’t working brilliantly, but there are ways around that, and I’ve been making use of them when I needed to. The story behind the story was that I suddenly found myself unable to keep writing about the things I was writing, and nothing new had yet emerged in my life.
It started when all the mental stories started to collapse. I’ve read books like ‘The Power of Now’ and I know Byron Katie’s story, about how they suddenly found themselves without a mind. All the chattering stopped as they stopped believing their thoughts. For me, it’s been a slower process.
I told my coach in my first session that I was bored of the story I’d trotted out time and again about my life. He simply asked who I’d be without the story, and at that point, I was free of it. It was as though I’d said “Yes” to a process I’d imagined I was involved in but had never really committed to before. Like opening the floodgates, everything was released.
When I’ve discussed how the mind creates illusions and we live according to mental stories and conditioning, some people respond by saying they invented new stories. This isn’t the case here. This isn’t about creating new, prettier illusions. It’s been an intense process of completely falling apart, but then just sitting in the silence that’s opened up as that happened.
There were times when I couldn’t get out of bed. Resistance came in enormous waves, when I felt as though I was being hurled against a brick wall repeatedly, or hit over the head with a lump mallet. Yet there was always the powerful sense that this wasn’t something that required writing about, but just experiencing, in the moment, as it was.
It has also felt as though it wasn’t a big deal. This is the bizarre thing about the whole process, the unfolding. Whereas I used to be so excited to come here and write about a new discovery I’d made about my mind and what I was thinking, now I found myself cutting off posts and then never even considering writing about them. What’s the point – if it’s all illusion anyway?
I’ve also stayed away from the theory behind how this might work in the brain, or what this means spiritually. The way my mind worked had come so far adrift from what I was experiencing in my daily life, it had to come to an end. It’s been very much like giving up anorexia six years ago. I had outgrown the structure of my thoughts, and the effect was a sudden explosion of change.
I use a process called ‘Inquiry’, which is a cross between Adyashanti’s spiritual Inquiry and Byron Katie’s more mind-centred ‘The Work’. I notice that very often, when we work on limiting beliefs – and when I’d worked on them in the past – I was so attached to them they simply couldn’t change. We often begin conversations where we own beliefs as though they were real, without turning them over and just challenging them outright. The moment I began to do that, they fell apart.
Early on when I began to use Holosync, I’d made use of the witness, which is what Bill Harris recommends for ‘watching your thoughts’. Adyashanti regards this as being a part of the ego, or mind, and while it’s useful, I found myself going into deeper and deeper places. In the last week or so (this whole thing has taken so far around eight or nine weeks), I’ve found myself with a silent mind more and more often. In that silence, more conditioning arises to be processed. It’s impossible to maintain a story for any length of time, because there is the powerful sense that anything that arises in the mind is going to be nonsense unless you have a calculator to prove it.
My life totally unhooked itself. Acting, speaking and thinking differently, I’ve been absolutely indebted to my coach, and particularly to friends like James who’ve had the commitment to sit and sometimes watch the process of thought patterns falling apart in front of their eyes. It does feel crazy at times, to find myself getting involved with a story about something, pull myself up short and realise it’s just imagination at work.
All through this, I’ve kept using Holosync daily. The whole event began around the time I started Holosync Level 4.1, but I wouldn’t guarantee that you could suddenly expect your entire mind to start to dissolve at that level. I’ve been wondering if it was intensified by using Holosync, but there’s no way to know for certain, since unfortunately I don’t have a handy MRI scanner to prove it (wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could). It does mean that I’ve been less and less directly impacted by Holosync and the material it brings up.
Detachment is the key. I get a lot of people writing to me who say that it’s making them angry, or depressed, or confused. The key lies not just in saying ‘Holosync is making me angry’, but understanding what the anger is, what the thoughts and other feelings are behind it. Most crucially, it’s about having the courage to go right into the emotion without resistance to get that kind of clarity. It’s not exactly easy, because we’re hardwired as human beings to avoid things that hurt, and go for the good emotions. Yet it’s going into the deepest struggling, the places where we suffer the most, that we find freedom. It’s like unlocking the prison by really taking the time to look at it, rather than trying to climb out of the barred window or pretending the prison simply isn’t there.
I will try to come back and write more about this experience, and detail how what I’m doing works more clearly. In the meantime, I seem to have encountered a freedom I never really believed possible before. In some ways, it’s like being a completely different person.
I’m afraid I owe all my readers a huge apology for my chronic absences over the last few weeks. I have a lot of reasons for being mostly unable to write here, and I will explore that eventually, but instead today I’m writing about the impact of the Iran elections and the fallout on my own work.
Amnar is about a repressive regime and the impact it has on people. It’s not your typical good-versus-evil fantasy. Over the last week or so, I’ve been writing the early chapters of Amnar: The Inheritance, and it’s been almost painful to see, very vividly, the mirror of the Iran elections taking place at the same time.
I’m very active on Twitter most of the time, and my tweetstream is constantly filled with information, reports and photos about the protests that have taken place over the last week. This is the first time I’ve followed a major world event from Twitter’s hashtags rather than an established news source.
Seeing it unfold in front of me has had an impact on my writing, too. When I first wrote the Amnar series, I was locked away from the world for the most part. I didn’t really follow the news; I simply didn’t have time. Somehow, watching what’s happened in Iran has raised the bar.
I’ve always wanted Amnar to reflect not some kind of fantastic escapism but the real impact of living in that kind of system on people’s lives. I’ve also wanted to make sure that there is a greater depth to the understanding of how people react under those circumstances.
Being constantly aware of what’s going on somewhere else in the world started to seep into my writing very quickly. It’s startling how quickly and powerfully it’s inspired me to go to greater lengths to provide deeper realism within the Amnari political world.
There is a level at which I’m left feeling uncomfortable, too. I’ve been asked several times by different listeners whether the events in Amnar reflect real life happenings in parts of our own world. I’ve never been this specific before. It appears the new Amnar will be even darker than I had imagined as I head on into the series.
My paternal grandmother is ninety years old today. She’s been a Wren, volunteered for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau to manage tax for people who can’t afford to pay for an accountant, a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. Happy birthday, Granny!
Nancy Joy and her twin brother James
Posing in front of the summer drawing room
During WWII (on the right)
In 2005
A long long time ago, a friend who read my blog gave my a warning.
He said that I might well have a lot of difficulty writing once I was doing it professionally, or at least very visibly. I didn’t think about it at the time, because by then I’d been writing Amnar books and posting them to my old blog for ages. I thought I was visible.
But there’s a big difference between writng then and writing now.
Writing then
When I was writing then, it was all about me. I wrote primarily for my own enjoyment, because I loved the story. I did do a lot of on-the-fly editing, shifting the story around and re-writing sections if need be, but I didn’t feel that anything really mattered because basically, it was just about me and my world.
Even writing knowing what I wrote was seen online, and then heard on the podcasts, and could be judged, was fairly easy. I felt that this was just about me, a fun hobby I didn’t really have to be good at, or measure up to any standard but that I set for myself.
This was great – it was a fantastic opportunity to have the freedom to hone my writing style. Even now as I read chapters for the podcast each week, I can see places where I can learn and improve and change. I see this as part of the writing process, and I’ve always been glad I wasn’t published five or two years ago when I had chances, because my writing as become much more polished with all the hours and days and months of practice I’ve put in.
Writing now
Once I started getting attention for my writing, especially Amnar, my sense of what I was doing shifted. Suddenly, rather than feeling like somebody who just writes and loves it as a hobby, it’s actually something professional. It comes with standards and expectations, and a great deal more people looking in on me.
So, what changed?
There was a mental shift, and an emotional shift.
I’ve had all kinds of shifts lately, but the ones around writing were the biggest. More and more people began to pay attention to Amnar. There have been a lot of offers of support, including promotion and distribution, and being featured on blogs where I suddenly find myself very visible as a writer.
I’m no longer the girl who spent her nights writing while she tried to juggle working full-time and studying full-time. Suddenly, it feels a lot more serious.
The question for me now, as I’m writing Amnar: The Inheritance, how do I tackle this?
Creating a space
I can’t really go back to the ‘old days’, so it’s necessary to embrace what I’m experiencing now. On the other hand, I can also make a space where I just engage directly with Amnar the Muse and allow the work to flow.
This has been what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks. Creating an emotional and mental space where I can relate to Amnar, go straight back into the world without feeling the pressure.
The pressure is, in many ways, ‘all in the mind’. It’s remembering that I can still love Amnar and enjoy what I do with or without attention. It’s also about trusting myself. If I was fine before, then I can be fine now, and it’s a matter of listening to that deeper groundedness that allowed me to write for years without worrying about it.
Click on the picture to listen to the podcast
It’s TGIAD, or Thank God It’s Amnar Day (so named by the great Toaster Ferret). I release the next chapter in the book Amnar: The Awakening, and take a moment here to write about what happens in the episode here on the blog.
I’ve found a temporary solution to the problem I’ve got with iWeb turning MP3 files into Quicktime files (that can’t be read on an iPod). So you can now download them through this blog. I’m working on getting them to work properly directly from the site.
To listen to the podcast, you can click on the picture to pick it up from the website, or you can download it directly from here:
Amnar: The Awakening – Chapter 34
Mac users: Hold down the “alt” key and click on the link to download automatically.
PC users: Right click to download.
The escape from Duum, and Io’s announcement
This really is it. Io, having been through the final breakdown in TGIAD 32, is now facing up to the challenge of actually being Guardian Defender. It’s Nasja’s arrest, in the last chapter, that has driven her to face off with the guards.
At last, she’s embracing her true identity, even if it terrifies her. Right now, she doesn’t have the chance to feel fear, having pushed herself right to the brink. The Servants and Ta Dasi have to react quickly to provide her with back-up.
Meanwhile…
While Io’s been fighting guards, facing off with geidan and meeting her very first dragonlord, I’ve been talking to people who might be able to help get Amnar out there. I’ve been hoping for people who might be able to do things I can’t, or wouldn’t think of.
It feels, as always, as though Io’s experiences reflect my own as I present the podcast each week.
Amnar on Podiobooks
As I said on Monday, Amnar has been approached by Podiobooks.com and hopefully we’ll be seeing a run of episodes there, starting from the beginning again. If you’ve had issues with the podcast format, this should be resolved as their files are MP3s.
This is a story about finding inspiration for Amnar, and its many components. This is mostly about the Ai Ta’Sifradan, who appear in some of the early chapters, and include characters like Talija and Lilatysia.
Back in 2006 I was on a plane to Australia when I first saw Memoirs of a Geisha.
I had already created the Ai Ta’Sifradan, as a group of powerful women rather like sorceresses. They were endowed with magical powers which they rarely used, and were led by the Empress of Amnar herself.
It was Memoirs that inspired me to start thinking in more detail about the group known as the Ai Ta’Sifradan. Over the years since then, they have evolved from sorceresses to become part of a secret order deeply involved in political movements throughout the Empire.
Sketch of Talija in her underdress and corset
The most significant characters who appear in Amnar: The Awakening are Yaxha, who is officially a dancer rather than an Ai Ta’Sifra, and Talija, one of the most powerful figures in the Empire.
The power of the Ai Ta’Sifradan is rather like that of the secret world of the Geisha, in that they are artists, wearing dramatic and beautiful costumes, inhabiting a universe all of their own that is distinct from the rest of the Empire. It is that which gives them the capacity to move unseen through Amnar’s political circles.
In public, the Ai Ta’Sifradan are symbols of Isha’s presence, and they are mostly motionless. In the picture opposite, Talija is shown in the lower layers of her garments. I had a look around a couple of costume galleries, including an exhibition in Manchester, which gave me ideas for the design of their clothing.
I am particularly interested in getting these small visual details right. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to develop enough artistic talent to accurately portray their incredible headdresses, which are made of very fine threads of gold, silver and platinum.
Their hair is twined around these threads, which stand away from their head and represent either the sun or moon. They are intended to be symbolic figures, and their clothing not easy to move around in. There is a strange contrast between their incredible inner power and their constricted outer appearance: when Ai Ta’Sifradan appear in public they move very slowly and gracefully, and rarely speak.
‘Sifra’ literally means ‘life’ or ‘energy’, although it refers to a specific type of life, rather than simply life itself. The Amnari believe in a kind of energy that runs through everything, and because the Ai Ta’Sifradan control this energy, they are named for it.
The Ai Ta’Sifradan appear more in the next book, so over the last few days I’ve been thinking about them more and more. As always, my fascination for detail and creating a larger world with greater finesse is the motivation.
This is a post all about my jaw. Well, my jaw, a random dislocation, and what it taught me about taking care of myself during a very busy time.
It’s also about how I sometimes think I should be able to do everything perfectly all the time. Sometimes, I just can’t.
The jaw story
On Monday, I happened to be sitting quietly on my sofa when my jaw locked. I didn’t even yawn. I just moved slightly and my jaw jumped out of its housing, as it were, and locked. Half open, half shut.
I couldn’t eat or drink. I sat and massaged it to get it back in place, or at least so I could move it around a bit, and the next day went to the doctor.
It turns out that I’ve developed TMJ syndrome. That is temporomandibular joint syndrome, which is usually caused by gritting or grinding the teeth at night until the jaw pops out of joint and locks or is at least very painful.
Its primary cause is stress.
Handling the cause
I haven’t discussed it here, simply because I’d decided that I just didn’t want to sit around writing about what my life was like. It’s also really difficult to decide what the truth of my life really is.
A great deal has happened behind the scenes, and to be honest, I’ve felt like keeping it behind the scenes. I needed space to myself, to sit and be quiet with what I was experiencing, dealing with it and moving on.
One of the things I’ve learned is that endlessly talking about what’s apparently going wrong doesn’t necessarily fix it or improve it, and it’s hard to tell if anything is wrong, simply because my life tends to change very rapidly when I’m open to it.
However, I was under a lot of stress.
All that sudden attention
In the space of a few days last week, I was suddenly given a lot of attention by being approached by Podiobooks, then a friend recommending me to her literary agent and her publicist. I’m meeting the latter on Friday.
In the meantime, I need a new contract and I need to stabilise a bit so I don’t have to worry financially for a while. I’ve been handling that, the focus of attention and dramatically realising I wasn’t necessarily feeling ready of it.
So I had a lot of hard to deal with. And I was trying to keep smiling through it.
That is, until my jaw stopped me smiling.
It’s all about control
When I mentioned my jaw locking, Havi Brooks recommended that I have a conversation with it. Now, I’m not normally one to start having chats with parts of myself, but as it happened, I didn’t need to. My jaw was already screaming – metaphorically.
I was trying to control everything, and gritting my teeth against the emotional stress. In my sleep.
This isn’t fun, especially when it means you have to drop everything to see the doctor, get pain medication that makes you feel a little giddy for the rest of the day. Not to mention, having TMJ tends to make you spend your time making silly faces as you work your jaw. And that’s not somethng to be done in public places.
Lessons in taking better care of myself
It took having to take some kind of medication to make me stop and really look at what I was doing. I decided it wasn’t enough to pop the pills and carry on regardless.
This morning, I decided I stop rather than trying to do everything at once, tell myself off for not getting it all right instantly, and give myself a bit of space. Thankfully, my jaw has stopped hurting and given me a bit of relief.
It’s a reminder that putting yourself under intense stress is a really quick way of making yourself ill. The body will react, in some way you’re usually not expecting. It’s a lesson to me to take things one at a time, and to properly process how I feel about everything that happens.
It is great when amazing things happen, but one of the costs is that it does have an effect on you. You have to show up and communicate with people effectively, not to mention take care of yourself. Even good things put you under stress because they mean change. It’s a lesson to me to take better care of myself when I’m in an intense situation in my life.
