Melanie Marttila

How the magick works

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: I told you how I came up with my idea for Tellurin’s magic system, and the dark history of the craft.

But how does it work, you ask?  We all have Robert Heinlein to thank for that.

Ever read Stranger in a Strange Land?  Excellent, then you’ll know what I mean when I say “grok.”  You might even grok it 🙂

Grokking was what Martians did.  They raised Valentine Michael Smith and taught him how to do it.  When Val eventually came to earth, he started to teach humans how to do it too.

Grokking, is not just understanding a thing, it is understanding it in every way possible, through all the senses, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and sub-atomically.  Val could grok something so completely, it would cease to exist, having achieved its greatest purpose in having been so completely understood.  Yes, extreme grokking means understanding something into non-existence.

It’s not exactly the same thing, but sourcery and magick work in a similar way.  Sourcerors manipulate a thing by understanding its nature.  They understand a thing in its molecular structure, by its DNA, though they don’t call it that, and perhaps even to its atomic structure, but no further, and this understanding works on an instinctual basis.  No sourceror ever thinks in terms of modern science.  It’s just not a part of their vocabulary.

As I wrote in last week’s post, the source is a special kind of energy, but it’s still energy, and everything in Tellurin possesses its share.

Those born with a talent are also born with the innate understanding of how to use that talent.  The Agrothe magi have attempted to subvert those talents to their own ends.  They delay the expression of latent talents through their arduous initiation process and indoctrinate their students into thinking that their powers must somehow be “unlocked.”  If left to their own devices, anyone with talent could figure out how to use it on their own.  The Agrothe just want to ensure that the talent develops in an ethical framework.  Theirs.

Georges Merle’s The Sorceress.

As a child, the first creatures Ferathainn understood were the spirits of things: grass, flowers, rocks and trees all “talked” to her.  Because of this talent, Ferathainn understands the spirits of things well enough to evoke their qualities.  She can summon them too, though Aeldred hasn’t explained that what she’s doing is summoning.  He doesn’t want her to run amok.

With people, this understanding takes the form of being able to use thought speech.  Though she does not know it, Ferathainn can also read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others.  Aeldred, not being a skilled mind-mage, has discouraged this avenue of Ferathainn’s development to the best of his ability.

Ferathainn’s understanding of spirits is also what makes it possible for her to excel at spirit travel.

Ultimately, her understanding of spirits will enable Ferathainn to master all of the elemental powers and talents, beginning with the earth, geomancy.  Hence, Initiate of Stone.

A note on source theft, farming, or poaching

As I mentioned last week, a person’s share of source is attached to their spirit or soul.  It’s part of what makes each person what he or she is.  Because of this, the soul and source may be called at the moment of death and taken by another sourceror.  This is usually accomplished by calling the source by its name, which for most people, is their everyday name.

Clever sourcerors have adopted source names, but these can easily be discovered by an adept mind-mage and so are no guarantee of protection.

In taking another person’s source, the sourceror risks taking not only the victim’s power, but also their personality and memories.  This can lead to insanity unless the sourceror can figure out a way to filter out the undesirable bits of the victim.

Waterhouse’s The Sorceress.

So … everything Ferathainn does is magic 🙂

Next week: a worldbuilding vacation.  I’m going to write about my most recent draft of IoS and what it’s taught me.  Stay tuned.

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8 Good things I’ve learned from bad computer-based training

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

So … we were provided this computer-based training (CBT) product to help roll out what may appear on the surface to be a fairly minor change, but turns out to be quite a complicated change that has an impact of several aspects of the work our front-line and processing staff perform.

The intent was to send the product and its accompanying Job Aid out to all staff, and let them have at.  There would, of course, be a policy brief released and online tools to help with the adjustment.

At first blush, the CBT looked great: interactive, with exercises and self-assessment tools …  That was before anyone actually tried to work through it.  Early on in the process, when it had already been decided that the CBT would be insufficient for our needs (thank goodness) I and several of my colleagues had a chance to go through the CBT.

I had no problem, but I’m tech savvy, I know how these things are generally designed, and I also play with things.  I click in apparently inappropriate places.  I muck about until I figure out how something ticks, and then I git ‘er done 🙂

The first problem was the site onto which the CBT was loaded.  It wasn’t particularly user friendly and several people couldn’t figure out whether they needed to log in, set up a new account, or reset their passwords.  The system was a little glitchy too, and offered errors when the CBT was accessed, requiring a re-log.

After I helped everyone get logged in and set up, I waited for the reviews.  This is what we discovered:

  1. Though pretty, the CBT was very much of the “clicky-clicky, bling-bling” species that Cammy Bean reviles.  Read about it on her blog.  Go on, I’ll wait.
  2. There were no clear and easily accessible instructions to inform learners what they needed to do on any given page (e.g. you have a picture of a luggage rack on the screen … and … ?).
  3. Navigation was accomplished through varied small or awkwardly-positioned cues.
  4. Exercises and tests contained no clear instructions, nor any mention of the purpose of the activity or how it would apply to the learner’s work.
  5. When working through examples, the learner can not navigate back to the scenario page and so has to write everything down and work it out by hand, or muddle through on a memory and a guess.
  6. All the assessments were self-assessments.  How could anyone determine if learning had taken place?
  7. The CBT was filled with acronyms, but no definitions.
  8. There were errors in the examples.

Turn all these negatives on their heads, and you have 8 take-aways for elearning.  See how that works?

When the CBT was given to staff, many of them were so frustrated with the experience, they stuck to (and got more out of) reading the print material.

Ultimately, the CBT was about how to get through the CBT, and the real learning was lost.

Admittedly, we don’t have the time to correct the existing CBT, or to develop a new product.  As flawed as it is, it’s what we have to use.

Next time, though, I hope the development team keeps a few things in mind:

  1. The importance of bringing subject matter experts (SMEs) who have some course design experience and technical aptitude into the fold. There are a few of us out there.  Use your networks and resources wisely!  Even if I had the time, I couldn’t redesign the CBT: I don’t have a license for the tool used to create it, or anything similar.
  2. Design for how people think.  This means keeping the end-user in mind.  It has to be a product that both your mother and your ten-year-old nephew could navigate through equally easily.  This means beta-testing on a group of your target audience and taking their criticisms seriously.
  3. Assessment is not just for the learner, it’s for team leaders and the advisors who are going to have to answer all the questions your learners have after the CBT experience.  It’s also for trainers, course designers, and IT, so they can figure out how to make a better product next time.

In the end, the CBT has to facilitate learning, support retention, and help the learner apply the knowledge when he or she returns to work.

Oh, if I were king of my little learning world 🙂  And yes, I’m a woman and I want to be king.  Got a problem with that, do ya?  I didn’t think so 😉

How have the best-laid plans of upper management and IT gone awry for you?  Did you tuck any lessons away for future application?  Have you learned good things from a bad CBT?

The Learning Mutt is signing off for another week.

Mage or magus, magi or mages?

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on work in progress: The dull detailing of days, weeks, months, and years in Tellurin.

As promised, here is my theory of magic in Tellurin.  It actually starts about thirty years ago with me in confirmation class …

You may think confirmation a strange place for this, but I started theorizing things that had nothing to do with Christianity.  And you know what?  I was indulged, even encouraged by my instructors, two wonderful, open-minded people.  Shout of gratitude going out to Rick Shore and Marg Flath!  For them, it was healthy to question, explore the questions, and come to your own conclusions.

One of the things I theorized about was the nature of energy, consciousness, the soul, what might be termed miracles, and what might happen after we die … to me it was all connected.

In science (incidentally one of my confirmation instructors was also my grade 9 and 10 science teacher) we were learning that matter and energy were the same thing.  We learned about the laws of thermodynamics, including: energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changes form.

So to me, it wasn’t that far a leap to think that if we, humans, were made of matter (therefore energy) that thought, the soul, and all the wonderful things that made each of us uniquely ourselves was a kind of energy.  It couldn’t be destroyed when we died, it could only change forms.

So how does this relate to Tellurin magic?  Well really this species of thought contributed to both the magic and religious systems of my world, but here’s what I drew from my theorizing about magic: it could exist, just like any other kind of energy.  It would all be a matter of trial and error to figure it out.  It would be a kind of scientific experiment …

You may remember from my post about the cosmology of Tellurin that my interpretation of the big bang was that something within the homogeneous whatever that existed before the universe (I called it the One) recognized its independence.  In that moment, everything else within the One had to become distinct.  Boom!

But in my universe, not all kinds of energy are distributed equally.  The thing that recognized its independence (what became Auraya) carried more than its fair share of a specific kind of energy, and Tellurin, the planet, bore an equivalent amount.  That’s why the world has its own spirit and consciousness.

So Tellurin is a magic-rich world, and potentially any of the beings living on or in Tellurin can access that energy if they have the talent.  Talents are another group of senses that allow their possessors to recognise source and influence or manipulate it in specific ways.

Aside from Auraya, Tellurin, and the other gods of the world, everything holds its own share of the source of all things, or, simply the source.  In the people of Tellurin, this energy is bound to the spirit or soul.  It’s part of what makes them what they are.

When the primitive Tellurin first discovered their talents and their ability to manipulate the source, they called themselves sourcerors.  They learned in communities, experimenting with their various talents and expressions of source, categorizing and naming them as they went.

Along came a man named Halthyon Morrhynd.  He was actually an eleph from Elphindar, crossed over into Tellurin through one of the Ways Between the Worlds.  Incidentally, these Ways are just another expression of the source in Tellurin, a natural phenomenon.   If worm-holes could exist and function in a stable manner without affecting the matter and energy around them, that’s what the Ways would be.

Halthyon, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, is a bit of a megalomaniac.  In Elphindar, he’d tried to stage a coup against the anathas, or council of elders, and institute a kind of magocracy.  The eleph called source in their world the kaides esse, or the powers that be.  Sourcerors were called kaidin.

The result of Halthyon’s attempt to wrest power from the anathas was that he failed and was ostracized, or made shuriah.  The eleph were the only people in Elphindar.  Ostracism was generally a death-sentence.  Elphindar has no gods either, only the kaides esse, and those in significantly lower amounts than source in Tellurin.

Elphindar would not satisfy Halthyon’s ambitions, but once he found the Way and made it through to Tellurin, Halthyon saw this new world as a paradise.  He instantly made the connection between the source of all things, the kaides esse, and the gods of the new world.  He understood that if he could find a way to contain enough source within him, that he could transcend mortality and become a god himself.

The source existing in the things around him wouldn’t do.  He’d have to expend nearly as much source in the destruction of inanimate objects as he would receive from said destruction.  The gain would be negligible.  The people though, them he could use.

So he found the fledgling sourcerors of Tellurin and taught them.  In time, they “grew ripe” and he was able to “harvest” them by killing them and stealing the source carried with their souls.  The way to do this, was to call the deceased sourceror by name, and thus summon his soul.

Sourcerors began to take source-names, secret names to prevent Halthyon from learning the name that could call their soul and source to him, but Halthyon was skilled at telepathy, and could discover their secrets.

As he waited for some of them to ripen, other sourcerors grew powerful in their own rights, learned what he was doing to their fellows, and mimicked the practice to accrue their own stores of source.

The brothers Kane and Jareth were two of these surprising sourcerors.  Kane was as obsessed with gaining power as Halthyon, but he was also concerned that Halthyon would murder him before he could get very far, so he started to develop defences, the chief of them being binding.

His early experiments were with animals.  He bound his soul and source to a creature, and if he was killed, so the theory went, his soul and source would remain safe in the beast.  These he called familiars.  Kane was a good scientist, and decided to test his theory after sharing it with some of his fellow sourcerors.

Unfortunately, the consciousness of the animal interfered with that of the bound sourceror, and the animal hadn’t the capacity to use source, and so quickly fell prey to the predatory sourceror.

His next experiments involved people who had no noticeable talent.  These he referred to as homunculi.  Sadly the same thing happened with them as did with the animals, and these too, he discarded as a failed experiment.

Then he started playing with constructs, which he called golems.  These experiments were never wholly successful.

In the meantime, Kane’s brother Jareth, whose primary talent was geomancy, or manipulating the earth element, conducted experiments of his own.  He decided that inanimate objects would make better subjects for binding.  There would be no consciousness to interfere with the bound sourceror’s, but this would necessitate having a partner who would be able to release and restore the sourceror after the death of his or her body.

Jareth’s experiment was much more successful than Kane’s and was widely adopted, even by Kane himself, but no solution was perfect.

Sourcerors like Halthyon and Kane, after killing another sourceror, would search out the partner, and torture them until they revealed the secret of unbinding their victim.  If the partner was stubborn enough, or faithful enough, to keep the secret, then they could simply be killed.  Although the murderer would never benefit from the source of their victims this way, their victim would forever remain trapped in whatever object they’d bound themselves to.

This is eventually what happened to Jareth.  Halthyon slew him in sourcerous combat and went in search of his partner.  Kane got to her first.  Laleina was not only Jareth’s binding partner, but they were also lovers, a relationship that Kane always envied.

Laleina wasn’t cooperative and would not divulge Jareth’s secrets.  Kane knew, to his regret, that he could not keep her alive.  Halthyon would eventually come calling and Kane wasn’t ready to face the eleph.  In a twisted bit of experimentation, Kane bound Laleina’s soul and source to one of his failed golems.  He’d noticed that metal tended to dampen the effect of source.

And so Laleina was trapped in the thing that would eventually become the Machine.

The sourcerous world continued along the same violent lines for centuries, but Auremon eventually decided that he couldn’t let things go on this way.

His idea was to voluntarily surrender his godhood, and his god’s share of source, to Tellurin, hoping that more source in the world would allow Tellurin to even the playing field among the sourcerors, and keep the power-hungry ones from victimizing the rest.

It didn’t work out as well as he thought.  Too close to one of the Ways Between the Worlds, he tore it open and half the population of Elphindar was sucked into Tellurin before the Way could be repaired by Auraya.  The sourcerors didn’t behave any differently, and Auremon had to concede his failure.

The only thing he could think to do, was to teach young sourcerors how to use their powers responsibly.  So he set himself up as a sage in a mountainous island off the western coast of the main continent.  Auraya created a great castle for him there, and eventually all sourcerors found their way to Auremsart.

Auremon taught ethics more than anything else.  It was the sourcerors themselves who thought that if they changed the names of things, that they could change the way people behaved more effectively.  So source became magick, sourcerors became magi, and they instituted a rigorous initiation process that would so instil Auremon’s ethical code into their students that there would be no risk of any of them becoming monsters.  They called their new discipline Agrothe, the followers of the code, in the old language of the land.

They policed themselves too, and started setting up schools of magick in other cities.  Business was booming.  And then Yllel came in disguise and killed his father.  Auremsart crumbled, became the Spire, and two kindly elementals from Elphindar resurrected Auremon and bound his spirit to the stone that was all that remained of his earthly home.

How the Agrothe functions in Tellurin at the time of the novel:

  • As soon as the prospect’s talent begins to manifest, training begins.  This can be anywhere between five and thirteen suns of age.  The prospect becomes an aspirant.
  • This period is one of intense theoretical and ethical training, highly structured, lasting thirteen suns. This phase of training does not guarantee initiation.  If evidence of cruelty or insanity is detected by the Master, the aspirant is taken to a mind-mage, and their talent crippled.
  • The aspirant is initiated.  This phase of the training introduces the initiate to their talent(s) in a gradual, disciplined fashion, and also lasts thirteen suns.
  • The initiate is apprenticed, gains some autonomy and is allowed to experiment in a limited fashion.
  • After thirteen more years, the apprentice could become a master in his or her own right.  If further training is deemed necessary, an interim period of guided practice could be instituted.  The mage operated independently, but under the watchful eye of their master.  This period could also last thirteen suns.
  • At any time, if the student decides, they can withdraw from training, once more having their talent crippled so that it cannot be used in an unauthorized or unethical fashion.
  • This is why most women, wanting a family and life outside of the Agrothe, never make it to initiation.

Aeldred sensed Ferathainn’s potential at the eleph ceremony of Shir’Authe, when she was only a day old and newly abandoned in Hartsgrove.  Her talent was prodigious and he began her training when she was four suns old.

Most aspirants only evidence one or two talents, the rest developing with age and experience.  Most full-fledged magi might have five talents at their disposal, but it will be the one or two that showed themselves first that will be the mage’s primary talents.

Ferathainn possesses aliopathy, or the ability to speak to the spirits of things, which in turn feeds into her talent at evocation and summoning.  She is uncommonly talented in mind magick, able to communicate through thought speech with those who do not share the talent, and can travel in spirit with ease.

Aspirants are not allowed to use their talents prior to initiation, but Aeldred does not want to lose Ferathainn as a student, so he allows the girl latitude.  Besides, mind-magick is not one of his stronger talents, and he cannot prevent her from doing what comes naturally to her.

He does not want to call one of his Agrothe brothers in for fear that Fer will be taken away from him.  Further, he fears reprimand for his unorthodox training methods.  For similar reasons, he has not prevented Ferathainn from becoming betrothed or married.  He feels that if anyone can balance a life of magick and domesticity, it will be Ferathiann.

He hasn’t explained much of this to Ferathainn.  He hasn’t even explained her talents to her.  In truth, he’s a little afraid of what she might become, and that his lenience may lead her to the forbidden ways of sourcery.

She will be the first Agrotha initiated in two hundred suns.  That’s too great a prize for Aeldred to resist.

Next week: Everything little thing she does is magick!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Learning about learning coordination

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

There’s no guidebook or manual for what I do.  There’s no course that can teach me how to foresee the rough beast that slouches toward me, defend against it, or turn it away.

My title is training coordinator, and the main thrust of my job is to plan the year’s training, and try to keep everything within budget.  Along with that came a whole set of tasks that I was neither familiar nor comfortable with.

Still, I learned, I dealt, and I made the best of it.

My first big test was to plan the year’s training.  The skeleton was there, but surgery was required.  A titanium joint here, a transplanted bone there, the odd amputation and prosthesis, and voila: a training plan.  Call me Frankenstein.

Then I had to cost it all out given a reduced budget.

I did well though, made it through my first all-day meeting via conference call … for a moment there, I thought I understood what my job was all about.

I think I have to have another look at my job description.  There must be a clause in there somewhere that says “and all other duties as required.”  Or maybe the key phrase is “must tolerate ambiguity.”

I can do most of what’s been asked of me.  I can make pretty tables and Excel worksheets.  I can write proposals, and while my manager rewrites most of what I submit, that’s part of his job.  I haven’t quite learned to cater to my new audience yet.  Give me a defined task, and I’ll make it happen.  It’s all the little stuff that I wasn’t expecting that’s getting to me.  It’s all the chaos.  For a creative person, I don’t do chaos well …

It’s all the last-minute training that no one knows about until a week before it has to be delivered.  Add to that the reassignment of the training team to other duties (so no one to deliver the training) and the necessity of training nearly all the processing staff in the province, and you have a narsty beast indeed.

Though there’s a whole slew of other prioritized work that I need to get done, I’m stuck in scheduling hell.  Nearly 600 staff over 40 sessions, plus independent study groups.  My head spun with that alone, but then I was asked to co-facilitate 6 of the sessions.  Hey, I’m a trainer.  It’s what I did for 3 years.  I can hack it.

And then …  I was asked to do the invitations for all the sessions, and set up the sessions in WebEx because the trainers we recruited weren’t familiar with the technology.  It wasn’t what they signed up for, which is understandable.  They have their own overflowing workloads to deal with too.  Plus, each set of invitations I sent out returned half a dozen changes to the schedule. That is a lot of work for one person.  And it’s not over yet.

Once again, I’m managing.  I’m making it happen.  I’ve even made some suggestions in the event something like this happens in the future (which I think is inevitable).

Regardless what work they may have been assigned to, the best people to handle training is the training team.  They know the technology.  They’re experienced trainers.  They can set up their own sessions and create and send out their own invitations. If I was able to work with them, this training would have gone off without a hitch.  Well there’s still the schedule to consider, but I think that might be a problem under any circumstances (more on this in a moment).

With a team of 6, we could have rotated them through the sessions, so they still could have dedicated most of their time to their reassigned duties, the work would have been distributed, and everyone would have gotten what they needed to out of the deal … with a little compromise.

Failing that plan of action, we have to ensure that anyone recruited to deliver training will be able to fulfill all the duties that the training entails, such as setting up WebEx sessions and doing their own invitations.

I’ve figured out what to do about the schedule too.  Now this was my fault, because I didn’t think of asking for some key information that it turned out I needed.  Another learning experience.  That too, is on the books for “next time.”

For now, things are slowly starting to level out.  It’s still chaos, but it’s an organized kind of chaos.  The rough and slouching beast sits beside my desk, growing only occasionally, and I think we’ll all come out of this intact.  

This may sound like a blog-of-complaint, but I’m trying to keep this as a statement of facts rather than an indictment.  I’ll be fine.  These are just growing pains.  I’m essentially optimistic.  This has just been a heck of a couple of weeks.  It’s hard not to be overwhelmed when you’re … well, overwhelmed.

Had a trial by fire?  What did your rough beast look like?  Were you able to figure out a way to make things work?  Success stories welcome 🙂

I’m the Learning Mutt, circling three times and curling up for a nice nap.

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Some of my favourite books on the craft

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Several months ago, I read a post called “Confessions of a Craft Book Junkie.”  I had no choice but to comment, because reading books on the craft of writing is an addiction for me.  I’m always buying more!

I have no idea what brought this issue up for me again, but having thought of it, I’ve decided to share some of my favourite craft books with you, and may you reap their myriad benefits! I don’t care if you get them as ebooks, or from a used book shop.  Just get ‘em 🙂

In the beginning …

There was Natalie Goldberg.  Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind were the first two books I read about writing, and they’ve stuck with me through the years.  Goldberg espouses a philosophy of “first thoughts.”  Writing in your journal first thing when you wake up.  Sound like morning pages to you?

Goldberg introduced me to free-writing, and weaves in wonderful exercises for journal writing with Buddhist philosophy.  Monkey mind and wild mind is a concept I come back to again and again.  Monkey mind is the nattering, distracted place in our heads we occupy most of the time. 

Wild mind … well, draw as big a circle as you can on a piece of paper.  Put a wee speck of a dot in the middle of it.  The dot is monkey mind.  The rest of the circle—you guessed it—that’s wild mind, the cosmic consciousness that will endow your writing with greatness.

The key is to let go.  Don’t worry.  Don’t pin all your hopes on the greatness you might achieve.  Just be in the moment and do it.

Word after word

Heather Sellers two books: Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter really changed my writing game.  It was time for some tough love, and Sellers delivered.  She was the first author I read who asked the question: do you want to be a writer, or are you a writer?  She made the distinction very clear.

Wanting to be a writer means that you’re letting things get in the way, making excuses, because the phrase is always followed by the word “but.”

If you are a writer, you write.  You write every day.  You’re dedicated to your craft and you don’t let excuses get in the way.

Sellers also writes about her struggles, how the disapproval of peers and professors affected her, how relationships, good and bad, can influence your work, and how serious life incidents like car crashes and disease can change things forever.

In the end, you can only keep writing, word after word, page after page, and chapter after chapter 🙂

The Maass Oeuvre

Donald Maass is an industry expert and he turned his expertise into several wonderful books.

His first, The Career Novelist, delved into the changing face of the publishing industry.  No longer the land of monster advances, runaway auctions, and multi-book contracts, Maass discussed the kinds of writers, the kinds of agents, the kinds of editors, and publishers that were emerging, how they might survive the new era, and he offered a lot of practical advice about the mathematics of publishing (what do the numbers mean and why should I care?).

In the current market, this book has lost some of its relevance, but I would argue that it is still an important read.  Understanding the changes that led to the current state of publishing offers the reading writer insight.  Learning from history, we hope not to repeat it.

Writing the Breakout Novel gets more into the mechanics of how to write a damn good novel.  Using his personal experience and that of some of his well-known clients, Maass explains what agents and publishers are looking for, and gives the reader tools to achieve their goals.

The Fire in Fiction is more of the same, but deeper.  Maass really asks the writer to dig deep in this one and offers exercises to deepen your understanding of exactly what it is you’re doing.  Analysis.  Critical thinking.  If you’re willing to work for it, Maass tells you how to write a novel that will WOW.

Finally, The Breakout Novelist, Maass’s most recent publication, is more of a workbook and reference than some of his other books.  It combines the best of Writing the Breakout Novel and The Fire in Fiction with extra exercises.  If you’re having trouble with a particular aspect of your novel, flip to that section and start working through the exercises.

Obviously, I’m a fan.

I’ll have more of these coming in future months.  I just thought I’d start with what I think are the best of the best 🙂

What are some of the craft books that you value and why?  How did they speak to you?  And as always, like, comment, share, subscribe!

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World info, or the boring stuff that worldbuilding sometimes entails

/ Melanie Marttila

Ok, so now that I’ve announced that I’m going to bore you all to death, you can all run away and do something fun with your Friday nights …

Last time, on WIP (before we were so rudely interrupted by the outage): The history be done!  For now.  You never know, I may have to go back a write a novel about the past of Tellurin someday …

As I’ve mentioned often, I’m a pantser.  I start with an idea, I write though the first draft, then I go back and start playing.  I do character sketches first, then history, then I start getting into the systems.  This post is about how the world works.

In reality, I know that a world like this probably can’t exist.  It’s too convenient.  Everything lines up exactly.  But this is a fantasy people.  And these are the rules as I’ve made them.

Tellurin has:

1 sun, very similar to earth’s sun, a young ‘un.

1 sunspan (or sun) = 364 dayspans, or days (exactly 13 moonspans of 28 days a piece)

A day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is 60 seconds … Gotta have something familiar!

1 moon, large enough to have the thinnest of atmospheres, completely covered in ice.  Looks blue because of the reflected light from Tellurin.

1 moonspan (or moon) = 28 days

There are 13 moons in a sun and they are called:

Isto, Sein, Terza, Quade, Cinquo, Sexta, Septo, Octa, Ninte, Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

The seasons are:

Shoudranya, the season of spring forth (most people don’t use the old names—they’re considered “stuffy”) comprised of Isto, Sein, and Terza

Zaidranya, the season of the bright sun comprised of Quade, Cinquo, and Sexta

Mardranya, the season of leaf fall comprised of Septo, Octo, and Ninte

Vedranya, the season of storms comprised of Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

And here’s where my paganish leanings enter the picture.

The sun begins in Shoudranya when the rains stop and the growing things begin to spring forth again.

On the first day of Isto, the festival of Kiestaya the awakening is celebrated.  Imbolc-like.

On the first day of Terza, the festival of Anestaya, the engendering or sowing is celebrated.  Day and night are equal.  Somewhere between the vernal equinox and Beltaine.

On the first day of Cinquo, the festival of Huostaya, the early harvest, is celebrated.  The longest day.  Summer solstice and Lunassadh-like.

On the first day of Septo, the festival of Uistaya the second harvest is celebrated.  Day and night are once again equal.  Autumnal equinox and Octoberfest-like.

On the first day of Ninte, the festival of Sestaya the final harvest is celebrated.  This is when the final slaughter is accomplished.  Samhain-like.

Vestaya or the closing, the only moveable festival, is observed on the first full day of storms.  Occasionally it can even occur before the final harvest.  Remembrance day-like.

The last festival of the year is celebrated on the first day of Seinen: Reshtaya the turning.  The longest night, though no one living can tell with the persistent cloud cover of Vedranya overhead.  Winter solstice-like.

Ferathainn is born on Sestaya.

Each moon is comprised of four seven-day weeks:

Selneth, the full week; Gebbeth, the waning week; Kiereth, the dark week; and Ebbeth, the waxing week.

The days of the week:

Sunday, Moonday, Stoneday, Windday, Waterday, Fireday, Spiritday

The older names for the days of the week:

Zaides, Azures, Telles, Zephes, Auges, Flames, Spirites

A date might be read Kiereth Zaides of Cinquo (Sunday of the third week of the fifth moon).  This also might be more commonly called Dark Sunday of Cinquo.  Most people no longer remember the old names or bother to keep that knowledge alive.

This was one of the things that I had to know about my world.  No one ever states or writes a date in the novels.  This is just for me to be able to keep things straight.  I even have a document in Word that I’ve set up as a calendar, so I can keep track of when things are happening.

I actually enjoy stuff like this.  I’m that much of a geek.

More systems next week (I can hear the screams already), but these systems will be more interesting.  I’ll get into the magic system, and this will be a little bit more like a story than a list of stuff 🙂  If there’s room, I might even fit in something about the religions of Tellurin.

And if I can get my brilliant man to fix my scanner, I might even share my rudimentary map of Tellurin.

I plan a little worldbuiling holiday too.  I have things to share about my current draft and the bizarre way it’s panning out.

So there’s good stuff ahead on WIP.  Stay tuned.

Writerly Goodness signing off.  Have a fan-tabulous weekend!

Work-Life-Creative balance … and resources!

/ Melanie Marttila / 6 Comments

I was inspired to write a little about work-life balance because of something my manager sent out to the team last week.

It was his newsletter from David Irvine, titled Quantity or quality of life, what really matters?

In the article, David recommends the following:

  • Relax, stop entering data in the computer, and take a deep breath;
  • S-l-o-w d-o-w-n long enough to actually look into the eyes of a person you care about and experience the love between you;
  • Smile at a stranger;
  • Stop and let the beauty and magnificence of a plant in your office be a part of your awareness;
  • Offer a word of acknowledgement and encouragement to a colleague;
  • Do something that leaves you nourished: have a hot bath; go for a walk in a part of nature that you enjoy; spend time with a good friend;
  • Let a child make you laugh;
  • Stop and watch the sun go down behind the hill and experience, with awe and gratitude, the beauty and wonder that surrounds you.

Today, Julie Czerneda sent this wonderful video my way:

It got me thinking …

When I lived in Windsor, the starlings that lived in the Ambassador Bridge were, quite frankly, a nuisance.  When I saw how they flew in murmurations though, I was touched and inspired to write a poem about it.

Sometimes all you need is a moment of beauty to give you pause, and help reprioritize your life.

Last week, Phil and I lost our internet service.  No email, blogging, or other social media for an entire week.  My initial reaction was panic, but then I recognized the crisis for the gift it was and took an unplanned, but very welcome SoMe fast.

Years ago, I just worked, and worked part time at that.  I fit my writing in when I could (which wasn’t often, because I wasn’t a writer then, I just thought I was).  Then the day came when I had the epiphany, and I worked the day job, then came home and wrote.  Where did I find the time?  I realized what was important to me and found the time for it.  I reprioritized.

When I became a trainer, not much changed, until another epiphany, this time at work, led me to the world of informal learning and social learning.  It was another kind of reordering in my life.  I found the time at work not only to do my job, but to feed my ravenous appetite for knowledge.  It’s paid great dividends for me: Service Excellence Award and an acting position as a Training Coordinator among other, less formal forms of recognition for my hard work.

Last fall, when I first started blogging and building my platform, then joined Author Salon and started critiquing my butt off, I started to falter.  I was doing too much again.  The three to four hours a night I used to devote purely to my writing was suddenly spent curating content, blogging, critiquing, and doing anything but working on my novel.

In the month of May, I hardly spent any time writing at all.  Broke my heart in all kinds of ways.

Last week, when we lost service, I wrote.  I reconnected with my work in a way that I hadn’t been able to for months.  I realized where my priorities should be.

So now I’m back working seven and a half hour days, building the platform at night, and yes, writing.  It’s not perfect yet.  Two hours of tonight’s allotment has already disappeared, but now I see where the fulcrum is.  Now I can learn how to find my balance again.

All I needed was a good “claque western” as the Northern Ontario French say 🙂

How do you keep your work-life balance?  Do you?  What challenges have you faced and have you found a workaround or kluge?

Now for the resources:

I’m a big fan of Cammy Bean of Kineo too, and gleaned a handful of wonderful resources courtesy of her blog (which I subscribe to):

Until next week, the Learning Mutt is signing off 🙂

Dream a little dream … and go from there

/ Melanie Marttila

I was going to write something about where I get my ideas from because a lot of people out there have done that recently, but it really depends on where I am, what I’m doing, and what the idea ends up becoming. So I think I’ll focus on one of the best places I get my ideas: my dreams.

When I was a kid, I had very vivid dreams. The earliest I can remember, occurred after I had my tonsils out. Actually, it occurred after my stitches ripped open and I was rushed back to the hospital for emergency surgery.

In the wake of that experience, I had a dream in which I actually died in the process of that surgery, but I still woke up the next morning.  Only, in the world I woke up in, I dreamed of this one.  It’s hard to explain.  Essentially, I dreamed that this world was nothing but the dream of my sleeping self in another world.

Pretty multidimensional/existential for a four-year-old, eh?

I had insomnia, the kind where you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.  I’d lay there and rehearse my dreams, or tell myself stories until I eventually got back to slumber town.

When I dreamed of falling, I woke up several inches off the bed.  What I know of dreams now tells me that the sensation of falling in the dream was so intense I felt that I was still falling when I woke.  I wasn’t actually levitating 🙂

A visit to a Christian book store led to me reading a comic book about an African missionary.  The barbarism with which the artist depicted the rituals of the native tribesmen made such an impact on me that I dreamed of the scar-faced man, had nightmares about him really.  You know the ones, where there’s a man standing at the foot of your bed, staring at you?

I often had out of body experiences (OBEs) when falling asleep, or waking.  I remember these distinctly.  I was like a balloon, tethered, but being flung around (or was I trying to escape?).  That’s how my young mind interpreted it, but when I later delved into meditation and eastern spirituality, I realized that this is classic OBE.

I didn’t keep a dream journal then, but many of my childhood dreams and nightmares have stayed with me nonetheless.  I often dreamed of being abandoned: driving in a van with my family and then one by one, everybody but me disappeared, and I was too small to drive the van (couldn’t reach the pedals).  Stuff like that.

I actually dreamed in story sometimes.  Full, 3-act drama.  If my dreams stayed with me long enough, I wrote them down, but often the delay meant I lost critical pieces.  I’d tell my dreams to my friend Margaret at recess as a way to keep some of them alive.

I started to record my dreams (among other things) when I went away to university for the first time.  I have a number of story ideas that have emerged from those journals.

In university, my room mate, Sandra, enlightened me regarding another aspect of my nocturnal life.  I talked in my sleep, and often sat up and did things as well.  Once, she reported that I sat up in bed, said, “It’s really not that bad … ,” reached around to open the closet door (right beside my bed), looked frowning into the mirror on the door, looked at her, then closed the door, and went back to sleep.

I had night terrors too.  Once I dreamed that something (what I can’t remember) was escaping from me.  I reached up to snatch it back, and when I woke up, I’d torn down a mobile that was hanging in the window.  I dreamed of insects (or other things) crawling on me, or of not being able to find something important.

The first time I went to camp (Southerners read cottage) with my boyfriend (now husband), I sat up and started searching the bed frantically for something.  I kept saying, “I can’t find it.  Help me find it.”  That kind of freaked Phil out, but it wasn’t the most bizarre thing I did while I was sleeping.

When we were living in Married Students’ Residence at Laurentian University, we had a 1-bedroom apartment.  In the middle of January, I got up in the middle of the night and opened all the windows. Phil woke up at 4 am shivering, realized what I’d done, and rushed to close the windows before the radiators burst.  It was a very cold night.  I had no memory of doing that.

One of my favourite courses was one regarding the Surrealists (writers primarily, but artists to a lesser extent).  I really fell in love with the way the surrealists let loose with their subconscious and tried to capture the world of dream on the page.

Since I started working full time and sorted out my depression (that’s another story), my dream life has been less vivid.  I dream more of stress and work-related issues (repetitive loops of action) or of terrible things happening to me or someone that I love.  I still have insomnia, but it’s more troublesome because I can’t afford to sleep in to catch up, and I don’t like what sleeping pills do to me …

I’ve started reading before I go to bed and have noticed I’m having more creative dreams.

I don’t necessarily want to start sleepwalking, having night terrors, or fall into depression again, but it would be nice to have the old story-dreams back again.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

An interesting book about writers and their dreams:

A selection of dream/depression/creativity links:

A dreamy soundtrack:

  • California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas, 1966
  • Dream a Little Dream – Mama Cass, 1968
  • Dreamboat Annie – Heart, 1976
  • Dream On – Aerosmith, 1976
  • Dreams – Fleetwood Mac, 1977
  • Dreaming – Blondie, 1979
  • Sweet Dreams – Eurythmics, 1983
  • These Dreams – Heart, 1986
  • Don’t Dream it’s Over – Crowded House, 1987

There are hundreds more, but these are my favourites 🙂

How have your dreams influenced you as a creative person?  Have your dreams/sleeping habits  changed over the years?  How has that affected your writing?

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Overview of the geo-political history of Tellurin, part 2

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: The first Kas’Hadden saves the Parimi.

The Parimi now occupied the western coastal mountain region of the continent but they were happy.  Having brought with them the best and brightest of their people, they took root and created a province like no other.

The Haldani and Espanic peoples, also persecuted by the Caldone, settled on the western coast as well, but in smaller settlements, though, these two, became provinces in their own rights. The Haldani and Espanic espoused the Faithful religion.

The Parimi continued in their spiritual belief as well, and when the Caldone finally realized that they could no more eradicate the Parimi Faithful than they could the Haldani and Espanic survivors, they relented and struck a balance.  The Holy Mother Church established its own religious centre and their own archbishop in Impiranze, Caldone’s capitol city on the eastern coast. Still, it was the holy city of Aurayene and the Archbishop there that became the spiritual centre of the continent.

Each area and culture within Tellurin developed its own language and way of life.  Each developed its own economy and its own ruler.  Whether king or osire or emperor, Tigernos, Chieftain, or Horselord, each country had its own leader and its own soldiers.  They fought with each other to a greater or lesser extent.  Those displaced or exiled due to the fighting inevitably found themselves trickling through the mountain passes and establishing towns and villages and small city forts on the western side of the continent.

Each had its own sourcerors, though they may have been called witch doctors, shaman, druids, spirit walkers, or other things.  Tellurin developed and grew.  Its people developed and grew as well.

Eventually, they negotiated truces and trade routes.  Aurayene in the west and Drychtensart in the east became the two largest cities and began to amalgamate power (religious and political respectively) in those two centres.

Auremon’s mistake brought the eleph into Tellurin.  Their bitterness at being “trapped” in Tellurin caused them to turn every help away: Auremon, and delegations from Aurayene (the Parimi), Mersea (the Espanic), and Pax (the Haldani).  Their desire for isolation and distrust of outsiders was spread far and wide and the people of Tellurin decided to let the eleph live as they chose (so long as they didn’t cause trouble).

The Agrothe was established and its adherents prospered.  Soon nearly all developing persons of talent were sent to Auremsart off the western coast to be trained in the official art of magick.

The Saxon began to assert themselves as the new power in Tellurin.  Politically, things were moving slowly but inexorably toward a centralized government and high king in Drychtensart.

When Auremon was killed and Auremsart crumbled into the sea, the Agrothe magi on the mainland consolidated in Dychtensart, another coup for the increasingly powerful king.  King Druckert (later called the wise) established the King’s University in Drychtensart and the Agrothe disciplines survived there.

Then the Cataclysm happened.  This was the battle between Auraya, Tryella, and Yllel.  As described in a previous post, the world was shaken by natural disaster in every form.  Vedranya in its new and terrible incarnation came to be.  Millions of people died.  Much of the written history and accumulated knowledge of the previous centuries was lost or destroyed.

In the years following the Cataclysm, the world rebuilt.  The Saxon, the strongest nation before the Cataclysm, was the first to recover afterward.  The king in Drychtensart was the de facto king of all Tellurin, though there were kings and lords scattered throughout the lands.

The gods were silent and though the religion of Auraya still existed, in both its liberal (Aurayene) and fundamental (Impiranze) sects, it was a changed religion.  The Kas’Khoudum and the Rada’Khoudum had both been miraculously saved, but much of the scholarship on the ancient texts was lost and many of the elder scholars had not survived the Cataclysm.

New schools and scholars made it the work of their lives to try to find old texts and recover their knowledge.  They spoke to the oldest of the old, the wisest of the elders.  But there were pieces missing and there was no context for the pieces of history that were recovered in later years.

Some ambitious scholars tried to recreate history as they thought it should have occurred.  A new speculative branch of scholarship arose.  Many of them were simple fabulists and their fictions were transparent.  Others were more convincing and only served to confuse things further.

The Agrothe had also survived more or less intact, but they too had been changed by the Cataclysm.  In the same way as history was being reinvented, the Agrothe too experienced a queer kind of renaissance.  The knowledge of the sourcerors that they had so long tried to subsume with their own training and lore was now actively set aside and with the trauma of the Cataclysm so recent, it was a much easier thing to forget about the sourcerors than to try to deal with them.

As for the sourcerors themselves, they survived, but found it far easier to do so without the constant harassment of the Agrothe.  They were happy to be forgotten, and yet, new sourcerors continued to be found, quietly whisked away for training, and then set loose on an unsuspecting world.

At the opening of the novel, the political world is ruled by King Romnir Raethe in Drychtensart, High King in all but name.  Each of the other countries still have their own ruler, but most of these (Nubia, Caldone, Hussar, and the Island Kingdoms) sit on a council that advises King Raethe.  The Parimi are represented by Archbishop Hermann Manse, special advisor to the king.

The Caldone archbishop does not advise.  The Sami and Skaldic rulers sit on the council when they choose to go to Drychtensart, which is rarely.  The Saxon are represented only by King Raethe.

The Shooksa-Nai and the Saanzu never had representatives on the council, though trade envoys appear from time to time.  The eleph of Rosingthiel keep to themselves and by and large, most people are happy with that arrangement.

The dwergen and dwergini likewise have their own self-sufficient kingdom beneath the earth, their own king, and trade envoys. The deep-dwellers are more regular in their attentions, however, and visit Drychtensart twice each sun, once in Shoudranya and once again in Mardranya to trade raw ore and enchanted weapons and armour.

The favrard live scattered throughout Tellurin (though some remain on Tahesakhi), serving their dark lord.

The western lands, bordered by the mountains in the east, the Deep Forest in the south, Parime, Haldane, and Espania on the western coast, and The Wilds in the north, are largely independent settlements and free towns that owe fealty to Drychtensart, but pay annual tributes to the surrounding lords and provinces to ensure their safety.

The king doesn’t bother to enforce this fealty, however, with the exception of the mountain keeps, which were Saxon to begin with, and Gryphonskeep, the sole settlement with ties to the Island Kingdoms in western Tellurin.

The Caldone are secretly plotting to eradicate the Faithful and supplant Archbishop Manse with their own archbishop as the religious leader of Tellurin.  They are also plotting to take the throne from Raethe.  With both religious and scular power secured, they want to cleanse the known world of such blights as magi and eleph, really anyone who doesn’t adhere to the Holy Mother Church.

Everything else is being set in motion by Yllel and Kane.  Yllel directs the drogadi to place source bombs strategically throughout the dwergen empire.  Drogadi sourcerors detonate the bombs remotely and trap the dwergen in their own kingdom.

His people among the Faithful place the Rada’Khoudum firmly in the hands of Archbishop Manse so that he uses its spells to bind Auraya’s source to kill Callum, the rising Kas’Hadden.

The drogadi rise to the surface and foment chaos in the west.  The other enslaved races muster for the coming battle.

The okante, and otherwise peaceful, tribal people, usually live in harmony with the Shooksa-Nai in the Northern Steppes and in the southern part of the wilds, south of the Glass Sea.  The krean are sea-faring folk who still call Tahesakhi home for the most part.  The bakath live in the Southron Spine, and the grunden in the Northron Spine.  The blinsies harass the Saanzu in the Deep Forest, but steer clear of the eleph.

Kane’s sourcerors infiltrate the Agrothe into the very capital and the king’s own university.

Map of Tellurin

Map of Tellurin

This is my cartographically-challenged map of Tellurin. At least you’ll get the general lay of the land.

Next week: What’s a Tellurin year?  A month? The days of the week?  The seasons?  Calendrical mysteries revealed.  This stuff will likely never appear in the novel, so Writerly Goodness will be your only chance to see such arcane material 🙂

Until then, good luck and good writing.

Creative antimatter

/ Melanie Marttila

This is a post from last fall that got lost in the shuffle when I restarted my blog.  I think it still has merit … how about you?  Let me know: Like, Comment, Share, Follow!

Leah McLaren, in her Globe and Mail article “Postmodernism: Finally, a museum piece,” published October 1, 2011, reminded me of (at least) one reason why I wasn’t a very astute graduate student.  She calls postmodernism the “intellectual and artistic equivalent of antimatter,” further defining it as a “creative sucking sound.”

I agree.

My problem with postmodernism started in Literary Criticism, the most feared and demanding course of my undergraduate career.  It was intended to help the lot of us make the transition to graduate school.  By and large, I simply found it confusing.  It made me feel stupid.  I’ll leave it to my former professors to comment on that …

I had returned to university in order to become a better writer, by reading and studying great writing.  Lit Crit seemed the perfect way to deepen my understanding.  Not so, I discovered.  The earlier literary theorists weren’t so bad.  I could relate to them, and gain something from them to fortify my art, but postmodernism … hurt my poor, tender head.

Think of a black hole in scientific terms: its gravitational centre is so dense that is draws in all energy and matter around it, and nothing can escape it.

Postmodernism is similar.  It has no presence, or meaning, except in the absence of meaning.

I was told that a way to engage with the big PM was to read between the lines, that it was as much about what was missing, or not being written, as it was about the words on the page.

Then ensued endless exercises regarding what a particular piece of prose meant, in absentia.  Meaning became this fluid thing and my mind a sieve attempting to contain it.  Every interpretation could be valid, if supported by theory.  I wasn’t writing anymore, I was thinking about writing, ironically, even when I was writing an essay about writing.

It was one big intellectual exercise to see if I could get it.  “It,” being that there wasn’t an “it” to get.  I came to understand that while some works, though challenging, had merit (Elliott and Joyce), other postmodern literature could be the equivalent of an artist painting a blank canvas and embedding pubic hair in the gesso, or defecating in a can and selling it as “merde d’artiste” as a performance piece.

I have, sadly, heard of both occurring.

Postmodernism hasn’t helped me a bit if life, or in art, and perhaps that was what I was supposed to learn.

In November, my mom went to see a production of Waiting for Godot.  I’ve seen it before and we compared notes.

Mom enjoyed Godot very much.  She got the whole philosophical slant and said that she didn’t think they were waiting for God at all.  They were waiting for death, or the end of the world, one or the other.  Very astute interpretation, Mom. The two friends she went with weren’t very impressed though.

Ultimately, that didn’t settle any of my postmodern angst.

Is there an intellectual exercise that you don’t get, or that pisses you off?  Do share 🙂

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