writing | Karavansara

11 March 2013
by Davide Mana 9 Comments

Why Bother?

(it’s A LOT less romantic than that)

Writing a blog is really a great source of ideas.
An example?
It’s 23.33, sunday night.
In theory, in about thirty minutes a post should go online on Karavansara.
And here I am, staring at the fog inundating my courtyard like a pool of soap water, and racking my brain for an idea.

And then, on my other blog, the Italian one, a surfer comments a recent post, asking…

Why do you care about the number of readers reading your blog?
Is it a matter of money – more readers, more donations?
Or is it a way to confirm how good you are? More readers means I’m a better writer?
Why bother about being read?

Now, ok, I’ll admit it – I’m facing a difficult week, and my first reaction is slamming repeatedly my forehead on the keyboard.
When someone that’s actually reading me asks me why I am interested in being read, the sense of emptyness and desolation scares me witless for ten seconds solid.
But then, c’mon, let’s think about it – here’s a theme for the new post! Continue reading →

8 March 2013
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

The cup, the plough and the sword

One of the straightforward, instant side-effects of reading Christopher C. Beckwith’s excellent Empires of the Silk Road is, one sort of starts thinking we are all at least a little Indo-Europeans/Euro-Asians in the end.
While the approach might initially seem rambling to the uneducated (such as myself), in the long run the Princeton University Press book builds data upon data, creating a very organic, concise but complete picture of the comings and goings of our Indo-European ancestors in the last… make it ten thousand years.

Now, while I like the later part very much as it provides tons of information which I might use to tighten up the revision of my non-fiction ebook about the Silk Road, I must admit the first chapter, with its catalogue of creation myths, really got me hooked.
There is this very consistent myth, found almost everywhere from China to the Mediterranean and Western Europe, which goes more or less like this… Continue reading →

6 March 2013
by Davide Mana 11 Comments

Mediterranean pulp?

[I’ll explain the groceries in a minute…]
Now, there’s an Italian, a Spaniard and an American…
No, it’s not a silly joke.
It’s what happened in a quick exchange of tweets, a few nights back, with two fine gentlemen from America and Spain respectively.
The subject was pulp.
New Pulp, if you will.
The question was – what about stories not set in the United States?

What about some international setting?

I contributed tha suggestion that, preserving the time-frame (stories set somewhere between the ’30s and ’40s), and the overall structure (character-driven thrills and derring-do), the Mediterranean area would be the perfect setting.

Just consider…

Continue reading →

5 March 2013
by Davide Mana 3 Comments

Soundtrack for a new project

I told you how I use music when I write.

Well, here’s a first piece from the soundtrack of a new project I’m working on.
Working on slowly, I should add.
I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.
In the meantime, enjoy.

27 February 2013
by Davide Mana 3 Comments

Music for Writing

Music was mentioned in a comment to one of my rambling “I’a writer, look at the way I do it!” posts a few weeks back.
I said I’ll write more on the subject of music and writing.
Here we go.
While it is not one of my favorite writing tools, I do use music when writing.

Music has, for me, three main functions :

as a distraction filter (for me, it works far better than Focus Writer and other such software)
as a soundtrack for my stories and for specific scenes
and as a tool to help me define characters.

Let’s see… Continue reading →