Try something new

In the search for inspiration, the best thing you can do is to keep trying new things.

Read something in a different genre than you usually do.

Go to an art museum.

Write in a different place.

Take a modern dance class.

Do something that makes you consider your world, the world, differently than you would normally. Do something that makes you ask questions. Look at art that makes you uncomfortable and then ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable. Ask yourself why a lot.

Live in a state of constant questioning and keep blurting out answers until you find one that sticks... until you find one you can't get out of your mind, then follow it and see where it leads you.

Writing Motivation

Happy New Year! My three favorite nerdy men are here to tell you to stop browsing the internet, get off Facebook, and get back to writing!

6 Questions with James Hunter-Shortland, Fantasy Cartographer

Today I'm excited to share with you 6 questions with fantasy cartographer James Hunter-Shortland! Thanks for sharing with us, James!

Would you please describe what a fantasy cartographer is for people who might not know? Who needs this?
A fantasy cartographer is essentially an artist who makes maps of fictional places or time periods. We're not to be confused with "proper" cartographers, who create maps of Earth using techniques such as GIS (geographical information systems) - they train for a long time and their work is more of a science than an art (though they might disagree). Fantasy cartographers are mainly semi-professional and self-trained. As far as I know, there are no courses or qualifications you can go out and get if you want to create fantasy maps.

The main communities who need fantasy maps are fantasy authors and RPG companies/creators. Sometimes video game developers will have a need for a fantasy map for their game (think Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3, Dragon Age) but most have in-house art teams who will design those. Recently, another cartographer was commissioned to design a tie-in map for the movie After Earth. I was even contacted by an individual who needed "old map" sets of slides for a corporate presentation. So there are lots of possibilities and you never know where the next request is going to come from.

How did you get started doing fantasy cartography? and Why?
I pretty much stumbled into fantasy cartography out of necessity. I was about twelve when I started writing a fantasy novel and realized I wanted a map to go with it. I had grown up with great stories like The Hobbit, LOTR and a series called Redwall, all of which featured these beautiful old style maps inside. I started out imitating my favorite maps, with nothing more at my disposal than a piece of paper and a pencil. Over the years I started to experiment with graphics software. My earliest experience of Photoshop and GIMP was taking movie posters, applying various effects to them and changing the layout. Eventually, I realised that if I could import my maps into PS/GIMP, maybe I could get a better final result than I could achieve by hand.

I don't remember when or how, but at some point I came across the Cartographer's Guild, which is a fantastic online community of fantasy cartographers. There are so many great tutorials on there for all kinds of styles of maps. I started tearing through those tutorials to see what kind of maps I could make. Up until a couple of years ago, I was only making maps for my personal writing projects. It's only recently that I started to make maps on commission.

What's the easiest part? What's the hardest part?
That's a tricky one! I'd say the easiest part of making a map is working out where everything goes and how it all fits together. For example, mountains are like the backbone of a continent and everything else flows down out of them. Rivers are at the mercy of gravity, so they always take the least difficult path, which is usually downhill and around obstacles, not through them. Forests grow around rivers and lakes and so on. Once you get all the rules straight in your head, it becomes easier to know how everything needs to be set out.

The hardest parts, at least for me, are labeling (place names) and anything that requires me to draw anything more than mountain and tree markers! Firstly, map labels are time consuming as there are usually a lot of them. And drawing - I'm a horrible "traditional" artist. While some fantasy cartographers are also great at painting or drawing, I really focus on using digital applications to achieve all my effects. That isn't to say I don't do any manual drawing when I design a map. I do own a graphics tablet which I use to draw in landmasses, create geographic markers and to shade/add in fine details.

What's the most fun project you've worked on recently?
Projects are always a heady mixture of self-doubt, fun and perseverance. There are elements of certain projects I have enjoyed hugely and there are others that I have hated with a passion. There are two projects that come to mind where I really had a fun time.

First was my entry to the One Page Dungeon contest (this year was judged by Ernie Gygax, the son of the late Gary Gygax), "In the Vault of the Howling Palace". I made this weathered paper type thing that was designed to be a page from the journal of a master thief. Needless to say, I didn't win in any category, but I really enjoyed designing that page.

Second was a map called Tar Ebon which I made on commission for author Dayne Edmondson. He had this huge write-up for his world that he emailed to me, which I really enjoyed reading and helped me shape his map. I just really love the colors and the feel of that map - it's a world that I would really love to explore.

How can people contact you if they want to know more?
For more, you can visit my website, The Fantasy Cartographer, or head over to my deviantArt page. I also recently launched my Facebook page so I'd really appreciate some Likes!

What are you currently reading? (Or what's the last book you read?)
I'm currently reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and really enjoying it. I also devour non-fiction history books - if there's a castle or a Roman, I'm sold!

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Thanks so much, James!

N is for Never Giving Up

The thing is, sometimes we hate our own writing. Sometimes a project starts out with so much potential and then suddenly you find that it's gone terribly wrong... taken on a mind of its own and traveled to a place that you would never have taken it and that you never intended to go in the first place. That can be exhilarating, or it can be devastating.

At those times you may be tempted to scrap your project altogether... and that's ok! It's perfectly reasonable to take a break from your work and stretch your mind doing something else. Just DON'T throw away what you've already accomplished. Even if you hate it. Even if you think that you'll never look at it again.

Put your work in a drawer (literally or figuratively) and give yourself some space... but NEVER give up on what you've begun. One day you'll come back to it... 6 months... 2 years from now... and you'll have a fresh perspective, a flash of inspiration that will help you to transform your writing into something new. But you can't do that if you don't have something to start with.

So get out there, get writing, and see where it goes! Then, if your project takes a turn for the worse, give it some time, some space... come back to it later. You might be surprised at what you find.

For developmental editing and good writerly advice, visit www.writingrefinery.com and follow my blog! http://writingrefinery.blogspot.com

Written Magic: My Grimoire

Michael Quinion of World Wide Words highlighted the word Grimoire in issue 872 of his newsletter this way:

2. Grimoire
A grimoire is a book of magic that may contain spells, conjurations, instructions for divination and the construction of amulets, and other secret knowledge of a supernatural kind. The examples include such famous works as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The Book of St Cyprian, The Key of Solomon and The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.
The word is French, in the same sense. It began to appear in French-English dictionaries early in the nineteenth century but became more widely known in the 1850s. In French, it was a medieval modification of grammaire, a book of grammar, by which was meant Latin grammar, since at the time there was no other kind. It derives from the Latin grammatica, the study of literature in general, which by the Middle Ages had come to mean knowledge of Latin.
The shift from book of grammar to book of magic isn’t as weird as it might seem. Few among the ordinary people in those times could read or write. For superstitious minds books were troubling objects. Who knew what awful information was locked up in them? For many people grammar meant the same thing as learning, and everybody knew that learning included astrology and other occult arts.

I love the idea of grammar as magic... and not just because I'm a freelance editor and prone to hours of reading. Words are powerful, conjuring images and ideas that can help those who read them change the world, or at least change their perception of the world. Perspective is a crucial part of our ability to survive and thrive. Words can build up and liberate or they can trap and enslave. They must be used wisely.

Quinion's post got me thinking, Do I have my own grimoire for the craft of writing? As it turns out, I do. My grimoire, a notebook I keep while reading books on the craft of writing, is full of "spells, conjurations, instructions for [writing]... and other secret knowledge of a supernatural kind," or helpful hints and encouraging quotes that I find as I go along through such books as Stephen King's On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft  or Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees (Revised and Updated): An Editor's Advice to Writers . The words in my notebook are powerful, they're the key to unlocking creative energy in myself and in my editing clients. They're secrets and experience passed down by generations of practitioners of the craft of writing.

The cover of my Grimoire. "The Lightgatherers"
an original painting by Montserrat Bennett

We endow all sorts of people, objects and rituals with power over our writing, from our favorite authors to the reliability of our computers' operating systems. Why not do something intentional and positive to add power to your writing? Start your own grimoire of your craft and fill it with powerful incantations from people who inspire you to be a weaver of words.