Harper Voyager

Great comments guys. Much appreciated. Mostly I think this exercise allows us to see what kinds of actions, goals and limitations we place on the protagonists because of gender--again the question is, does gender define our character or is it a performance?

Tolkien (who is a hero of mine both for his fiction and essays) created Middle Earth and peopled it--and many of the gender roles mirrored the cultural constructs of the times. I'm not saying it's right or wrong--I'm saying, let's look at the way we write men and women. Let's examine how we think about gender and see if our portrayals match our beliefs.

Sometimes the things we think are habitual...unconscious patterns like 'default settings'. I say, as writers, let's be deliberate about what we're creating whether it is traditional or exploratory.... Read More

Thanks again, Ged and Matthias, for joining in the discussion! :)

I agree it isn't easy to sum up the novel concisely.There is a difference between writing a synopsis and a story outline.
The outline is more structured.

The entire story in a tree? Oh I like were her mind is going!

Hi, folks!

@Peter: Then you have the 8-second elevator sound byte, which scares me the most, ie.
Questioner: "So, what's your book about?"
Me: "...Well, it's a coming of age tale about a-" ... Read More
Q: *ding* "That's my floor, see ya later!"

@Kim: Trees both material and mystical are a huge source of inspiration for me! I'll be writing a blog post about this soon, I think... ;)