My Camp NaNoWriMo Project

I’ve struggled for nearly a month over what I would make my Camp NaNoWriMo project this year, assuming I’d even participate, because part of me wanted to work on the novel I’d already started and still am nowhere near finishing, and part of me wanted to leave that on the back burner and just begin

J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Secret Vice” and My Secret Love: Thoughts on Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins’ Critical Edition of A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Language — A Pilgrim in Narnia

A Secret Vice by J.R.R. Tolkien My rating: 5 of 5 stars It was the fall of 2001. I was rereading The Lord of the Rings in anticipation of the film, which I was sure would be screened even in our rural, mountainside Japanese town. One afternoon, I was killing time at our church, a […]

“Just Enough Light: Some Thoughts on Fantasy and Literature,” the 2021 Tolkien Lecture by Guy Gavriel Kay — A Pilgrim in Narnia

I was pleased last week to watch the 8th annual J.R.R Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature, an annual lecture on fantasy literature held at Pembroke College, Oxford, this year broadcast online. The Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature was established in 2013 at Pembroke College, Oxford, where J.R.R. Tolkien worked for twenty years as a professor […]

Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers and Gamemasters, Part Nine

TRADERS, PLUNDERERS, AND PIRATES Every fantasy world has its material goods, whether it be everyday items such as food and clothing, or more specialised items such as weapons and armour. The most basic goods will be made from the most basic, readily available materials, such as stone and bone, wood and horn, fur and feather,

Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers and Gamemasters, Part Six

CULTURE: MATERIAL AND SYMBOLIC Studying real-world cultures can help you in your endeavour to populate your world with realistic societies. You needn’t invent a culture whole cloth; you can base your fantasy cultures on one or more existing ones, or even blend two or more of them to make a new one. Just keep in

7 Tips to Write Better Fantasy with History — The Spinning Pen

7 Tips to Write Better Fantasy with History So you think you have an original fantasy world? That may be so, but creating something from nothing is nearly impossible. Much of what we create is repackaged. We borrow. We polish. We add a flame. Some of the greatest writers borrow from history to create their […]

Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers and Gamemasters, Part Three

LANGUAGES AND SYSTEMS OF WRITING I wish life was not so short… Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about. ~J. R. R. Tolkien Famed fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien was a great inventor of languages, and while I don’t have his linguistic background, I’ve always

Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers and Gamemasters, Part One

INTRODUCTION Some years ago I started blogging a series on worldbuilding, but never got to finish it before abandoning the blog due to a lack of traffic. I called the series “Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers” because at the time the renewed surge of interest in Tabletop Role-playing Games (TTRPG) hadn’t yet transpired, but I always

Camp NaNoWriMo/NaNoFinMo

My fellow writers, in case you weren’t aware, Camp NaNoWriMo begins next Thursday and the folks over at NaNoWriMo.org have declared April National Novel Finishing Month, or NaNoFinMo. Whether that means finishing a past NaNoWriMo project that didn’t reach the finish line of 50,000 words, or in my case, expanding the novel I won with

What to expect from this blog going forward

Now that National Novel Writing Month is over, I figured I’d let you all know what you can expect from this blog in the near future, since last month I blogged almost exclusively about NaNoWriMo. But first let me just say welcome to all my new followers, and thank you for joining me on this