So, I chose the genre, in a sense, or I didn't quite choose the genre, but all as part of a theory to fiction experiment. Of course, as soon as the tape started running, so to speak, that went into the background. The foreground went over to the main characters, and the qherrique.
Do you think a writer has control over how a story comes to her? I mean: do you think it's possible that this story could be written by you in a more accessible style? Or do you think the style and the substance and the story all work together?
The French-Canadian SF and fantasy writer Elisabeth Vonnarburg told me several years ago that I had a Voice. That is, a distinctive style. A lot of people, and some very good writers, don't. I don't think I can get rid of that Voice, however I tried. So, no, probably this can't be re-written in "simpler" style. I'm pretty sure the internal arbiter just wouldn't come at it, one day's considering time or no. Probably, I add ruefully, because it all began with picturing something by moonlight, and moonlight is in itself a powerful transmogrifier. I consciously wanted to convey that effect.
As for having control over how a story comes to you, no, I have none over how the donnee, the seed or opening section arrives. I take it how it comes and go on from there. In this case, though, style and content were much more powerfully welded, and much more "poetic" — condensed, figurative, rhythmic, high on alliterative devices, etc. — than my openings often are.
So you were thinking about the moonlight? That's how the inspiration for Amberlight came to you?
Sometimes a novel is born because of a person, or from history or an incident that sticks in my mind because it holds unanswered questions. Why did such and such happen? How did this person come to do that? I think Amberlight began, as other novels did, with undirected right brain activity. That is, not alpha-state, but one where anything can happen; a sort of ground-zero-field reverie.
My first fantasy novel, Everran's Bane, began with the sentence "Nobody knows where the dragon came from." My alternate-NQ SF novels started with a really vivid Cinerama dream of which I only kept fragments, including the novel's title: Following Eurydice.
I do know what the kick-off images for Amberlight were: thinking about describing a city by moonlight, which instantly morphed into Daulatabad, the amazing Indian medieval fortress — it's pre-Moghul — and then some of the huge granite boulders beside the road up our coastal range. Those, combined with the Daulatabad wall that's built into the hillside, so you have to cross it by tunnel, became the first image of the qherrique.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!