Swords

I’ve been reading the Sword books by Fred Saberhagen. It’s been years since I read them last, and they’re so good. I’d like to be able to write an epic like that, covering years and years of the main characters’ lives, moving into the next generation. Anne McCaffrey did that as well in her Dragonrider books. I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a basic background that I can use for such an undertaking, but nothing is coming to mind. I can’t top the the Twelve Swords–they’re amazing and the story (ies) just sucks you in and carries you along–but it would be cool to come up with something similar. I’m inclined to look ahead in the world’s history, perhaps to an ice age, perhaps to society thousands of years hence, when all we are now has been largely forgotten, but then there’s the attraction of a whole separate world, as in Torin’s reality. I just don’t know. I want to be writing again, and I’ve been having some vivid dreams which I’m trying to remember to jot down when I wake up, since they tend to make such great fodder for stories, but I’m still stumped. With a bit of luck, I’ll think of something. Maybe I need characters first; although there are a few muttering in my mind, none of them is as loud as Torin used to be. Maybe I need to listen harder.