Tag Archives: Creative Writing
After A Memory of Light: The end of The Wheel of Time

Twelve years ago, on a dusty shelf in the back of a library I found a novel called The Eye of the world. It was a lofty volume but I thought i would give it a try. I remember in those days feeling lost for something to read. I had finished Northern Lights, The Subtle knife and The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman and was lost for something to read and so I started the wheel of time. I remember being immediately sucked in, it was to be the book that completely set me as a avid reader, especially of high fantasy. I recall reading the volumes over days, not being able to put it down. In many ways the wheel of time has been thee when I needed it the most. Those times when I needed to get away I could always immerse myself in the Wheel of time and forget.
Who am I and Why do I write?

I have been looking at my old writing and feel a bit impressed with myself. Its been years since I have looked at some of these things and the strange thing is, I don’t recognise my style at all. Many are written clearly by a younger, less mature but ultimately more experimental version of me. It’s strange to notice the lessons half learned in a piece that i thought would be the final version of my book. To think that ten years on the story has changed exponentially and for the better is a sobering one. I can see how the characters and the world has developed into a complex and varied entity, there have been hundreds of changes some minor some major and yet the spirit of what I was trying to create, the message remains in tact. I wonder how that has come about. The various exerts of writing seem to catalogue the places I have been in my life when writing them. Theres sorrowful ones written when I was in a dark place, and joyous ones that were written when I was happy. It seems that I have made a map of my emotional history, which takes just a little bit of reading between the lines to reveal. It made me think about the nature of writing, and why do I write?