I walked in the rain this evening. It reminded me of Scotland: a bracing cold, but invigorating, my memory choosing to omit the reality of Scottish rain, pissing relentlessly down, soaking you through when walks in the rain weren’t for pleasure, but a miserable necessity. I grew up in the rain. I wonder now why …
Category: Reminiscences
Why I Write Fantasy: Death and Freedom
I'm not publishing the blog I wrote earlier today. Didn't quite capture what I wanted to say. So instead I'm freehanding this one, not even a spellchecker to save me! I started writing fantasy, as I've said elsewhere, to create worlds of my own to escape into, after enjoyng the sensation of entering into other …
The Writing Life: Work and Writing Part 1: The Overview
I’ve been meaning to write about the struggles of managing work and writing for a long time. I’ve written, or tried to write in a lot of different circumstances, and it is hard to say which, if any, has been the best option. Obsessive teen living on a farm with not much else to do? …
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Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #4: Clearly I Have a Type
So while writing about Highlander, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and The Crow, I couldn’t help but notice the common elements that the movies shared. In no particular order. 1) A narrated opening. All three start with someone speaking, telling you a story. Yes, apparently I’m five, and still like to be tucked up in bed and …
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The Writing Life: Choices in Art
In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those …
Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #3: The Crow
More spoilers for a film that this time is a mere 24 years old. The last film that has, so far, made me run back to the cinema three more times after the first viewing was this one. A modern gothic fairytale with yet another fantastic soundtrack, an alternate contemporary world that was close enough …
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Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #2: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Oh yeah. The music, the costumes, the saturated colours, the visual style that played with realism and then deliriously ignored it to tell its story in its own defiant way, and managed to sweep me up in it. I watched this movie four times in a rather dilapidated cinema in Dundee, complete with decayed but …
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Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #1: Highlander
Spoilers for a 30+ year old movie follow. And for Alien3 too. You've been warned. There are only three movies I’ve paid to see more than once in rapid succession, and each time I ended up seeing the film four times in the theatre. In each case I was lured into the atmosphere of the …
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Why I Write Fantasy: Memories of Nature and Other Fragments
Glen Clova, orienteering like a ranger or druid or both, the summit of Arthur’s Seat at sunrise, the Trossachs and trout over fire, Loch Katrine swimming, the shock of freezing, the amazement of finding warmer currents and following their course, shivering anew every time they were lost, wet bracken and green ravines down to running …
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The Writing Life: Acceptance
Last week I talked about what success meant for me nowadays. A big part of why the shape of success has changed for me over the years is a growing acceptance of the things I can and cannot control in this writing life. I was very unrealistic in my youth. I wanted it all, but …
Roderick T. Macdonald 