If Not Now, then after I’ve finished messing around for another half an hour or so

 by Ashley Lister

I’ll be honest here: my schedule is replete with displacement activities, all of which I justify with psychotic vehemence.

At the start of this year I was commissioned to produce a novel about dragons. The story was based in a pre-medieval version of the UK. Consequently I was looking at sites about dragons and the fantastic. I was reading similar literature and delving into essays on Tolkien and the relationship between the complementary genres of fantasy and science fiction. I was brushing up on my pre-medieval history. I was watching movies about dragons and wizards. I was even playing PC games based on medieval battles.

Notice how, in the paragraph above there is no mention of my writing the novel.

I justified the above activities under the rubric of ‘thinking time’. In my own mind I qualify it as opportunities for research and reflection. A part of me thinks it would be more honest to call it ‘not writing time’.

But I have to wonder – are these really displacement activities or are they valid exercises in research and reflection?

The dragon book is now complete and with the publisher.

I was particularly pleased with the level of historical detail I’ve included because it’s accurate without being boring or intrusive. I couldn’t have achieved any of this without all the online research I did or the visits I made to areas of historical interest.

I was also pleased with the approach to magic in the story. Arthur C Clarke (Clarke’s Third Law) says, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I’d encountered this sage piece of wisdom before I started writing the most recent opus but it was at the forefront of my mind when I encountered the writings of the 1930’s editor of Astounding Stories, John W Campbell.

Campbell dealt mainly with SF stories and advocated that those fantastic elements of the future that made SF so appealing to readers should be treated as if they were everyday objects or occurrences by the characters in the story. It’s a technique where characters perceive the marvellous as mundane.

Applied to the genre of fantasy, the magic in my story is not treated as miraculous, making it seem (I think) more credible.

All of which is my way of saying I don’t believe my displacement activities really are displacement activities: I do think they are genuine opportunities for research and reflection.

And the only thing that niggles at the back of my mind is the knowledge that I’ve spent time writing this blog post when I could have been working on outlining a sequel.