PROGRESS REPORT #60: RETRACING STEPS

LOOKING BACK AT MOUNT OLYMPUS

Sometimes when you get stuck and find you are blocked by that old writer's enemy 'Resistance', just simply looking back at where you've just come from, retracing your footsteps, will help you sort out where you are headed for. I've had to do that a number of times while writing SHADOW OF THE LION, and the other day when I got stuck, that's exactly what I did. Sometimes it means reviewing your research (I did that), reading back over previous chapters (I did that, too) and rechecking your plot outline (it's definitely a help to have a road map when you're on a journey!)

In my case I have often got baffled with the complexity of the politics I am dealing with as I am not a political science student and the ancient politics with all the plots and sub-plots and twists and turns is often very confusing. So I go 'back to the drawing board' so to speak, bring out my research notes, read through them again and again, until finally I clarify just what exactly went on and when.

One problem with the last bit I'd written was that I had thought it sounded too similar to a previous chapter segment I'd written in the point-of-view of Polyperchon. However, when I read back I realized this wasn't the case. So instead of having to scrap what I'd written for my first draft I was able to keep it and proceed.

Another small problem was figuring out the dialogue between the Macedonian generals. What would they say in this particular situation? How would they react? How would Polyperchon, in particular, react when given the bad news he is about to receive. All the way through my novel this has been a challenge -- to make the voices of the Macedonians sound genuine, like the voices of rough warriors and not my own. As far as I know, I think I've nailed it, but often I have to stop and look through other novels of the same period (written by men!) to see how they handle the dialogues.

Another thing that often stalls me is figuring out the time-lines of events and trying to be as true as possible. I've run into this before and decided that as this is not a history book it isn't really necessary to be 10o% accurate because what is really 'accurate' according to those ancient time-lines considering that the histories were written several hundreds of years after the fact and the calanders of measuring time then is different than now. I still like referring to the line I read by another author in the National Post
"A historical fiction writer can take any number of liberties with the facts." Since running into criticism earlier on about this. I have now adopted this as my mantra.

So, with all these steps taken, I looked forward to see where I am going, and I found it really easy to complete the chapter segment that had stalled me on the road to THE END. Now I am ready to proceed with the journey. I even found myself jotting down random notes last night so I have a clear start for the next scene There's one more chapter segment to write and then one more complete chapter to finish. Then a bit of work on the Prologue and Epilogue. (Some of this has already been written.) So I'm that much closer to the end of my journey.

(NOTE: Some of the characters, such as Polyperchon, continued on long after the end of my particular story so their future activities will be mentioned in the Afterword so readers will know what became of them. Some died or were murdered. Some faded into oblivion. Some went on to become successful and famous. Amazingly a lot of the generals lived to very old ages. They were indeed a hardy lot of characters!)

MOUNT OLYMPUS

WHAT'S WYNN BEEN DOING?

MOUNTAIN LAKE AND WILD FLOWERS

What's Wynn been doing? Wynn's been on a road trip. These are just a couple of the many photos I took. I'll post a few more soon on my other two blogs, especially the http://travelthroughhistory. blogspot.com Here's how this came about. I was offered a media trip, all expenses paid, to this mountain resort called Three Valley Gap. There's a ghost town there and a wonderful collection of antique cars and railway memorabilia. As I write travel stories mostly slanted to history, this was right up my alley. So of course I accepted.

Three Valley Gap is about a six hour drive from the Coast so I invited my friend Andrea along.
She drives a nice little jeep and I knew we'd have a super time together. They listed her as my official 'photographer' so the two of us were off on 'assignment'. It's a lovely drive to the mountains and the weather was absolutely perfect, glorious autumn weather, warm and sunny.
We enjoyed our leisurely drive there, arrived late afternoon.

THE LONG, WINDING ROAD

The chateau was far more than we'd expected. It's a huge complex right at the convergence of three mountain valleys, at the end of a lake. The size of it was rather daunting, especially as it was the end of the season so hardly anyone was staying there. Quite something to have the place to ourselves -- well, more or less!

Problem was, the restaurant there closes at 7 pm and there is no bar. We didn't think to stock up on wine for the weekend. But we enjoyed ourselves wandering around the place, and especially touring the ghost town which has a lot of historic buildings from various places around the area all put together like a frontier town, with lots of artifacts and interesting things to look at including this incredible antique car collection, and a collection of old rail cars that brought back some childhood memories.

We drove into the nearest town, Revelstoke, the next day but it was closed up tight because it was Sunday. You could have shot a cannon down the street! It's basically a railway town built in a very pretty mountain setting.

Before we left the chateau on Monday we treated ourselves to a six minute helicopter tour. If I can figure out how to put movie clips up on my blogs I'll add a clip of the tour. It was so quick that it hardly seemed it had happened before we were landing again, but it was fun.

On our way home we stopped at another historic railway site -- where the last spike was driven connection the rail lines from East to West. And then, because the weather was so gorgeous, we took back roads, meandering through the mountains and valley by the lakes and farms. We stopped at Salmon Arm and had coffee with my daughter, stopped at a farm to buy fresh produce, home made sausage and at another place where they make fresh cheese. Then we pulled into Vernon and had a little visit with my friend Rosie.

It was midnight before we arrived home again after our little adventure. Then I've had this very busy week starting with an early breakfast meet Tuesday with Argentina Tourism and then my classes.

I'll have to write a new blog about my classes, especially my new Life Writing group which is so exciting and inspiring! Besides this I've been catching up on writing and just finished my story about walking the barrios of Santiago Chile. Now it's time to get back to the novel so I will be posting a new Progress Report soon.

THE CHATEAU, THREE VALLEY GAP B.C.