FREESPEAK
Trudi Canavan on the craft of storytelling
Trudi Canavan reveals the creative power of weaving. Looming deadlines etc.
Recently, at a talk about the ancient Greek myth of Penelope, I learned that words relating to weaving have the same origin as those for storytelling, specifically the words “text” and “textile”. So perhaps it was inevitable that, as a writer, weaving has become one of my main pastimes. I’ve always blamed it on the fact that writing makes you wait, often for a year or more, for a sense of achievement. Weaving can provide that satisfaction sooner. Writing has also worn out my back, so that to keep myself strong and pain-free I need to spend a good deal of time away from the computer. Weaving on a floor loom is a surprisingly mobile activity, gently using my whole body. It also keeps my hands busy while I’m untangling knotty plots, or provides a challenging distraction when I need a mental break. I’ve thought of entire stories while throwing a shuttle back and forth, eventually abandoning the loom to quickly type out an outline before returning to it to think over the details.
Millennium’s Rule is the first series in which I’ve drawn extensively on my knowledge of handcrafts. The two protagonists are makers: Tyen is an inventor and Rielle an artist. Other forms of making feature, including bookbinding, tapestry weaving, calligraphy, pottery and mosaic-making. These professions and pursuits are integral to the setting: in this universe creativity generates magic. Which is yet another reason for the powerful to surround themselves with beautiful objects other than showing off their taste and wealth – the production of these possessions also creates the source of their power.
I’m certainly not the first writer to connect creative activities with magic. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders sing and Glenda Larke’s Terelle Of The Watergivers trilogy changes the world by painting on water. Other writers, including Terry Pratchett and Lloyd Alexander, have included handcrafts to flesh out a character or world. After all, in pre-industrial societies most things were made by hand. Magical swords and rings have to be forged, thrones built, carved and gilded, and generally characters don’t wander around naked.
Humans have been making things since they conceived of the first tool. So much of what we need for survival requires making: clothing, food, shelter, weapons. Much of what we don’t need but desire does as well: adornment, religious objects, possessions that denote status. Even in post-industrial times when production of such objects was automated, they still needed to be designed.
And you would be surprised to know how many of our modern possessions are still made by hand. Last year, a search for some other information led me to a video about the textile workers in Bangladesh, and I fell down a rabbit hole of revelation after revelation. The “fashion” industry is one of the world’s most polluting, and is rife with exploitation. It would be a story of heroic, tragic characters in a dystopian setting if it were a novel, but it is a tale of real people suffering daily in order to produce cheap, throwaway “fashion”. An echo found its way into Successor’s Promise, though nothing as shocking as our world’s reality.
When new writers ask me where I get my ideas from, I look around and wonder how they can’t see they’re surrounded by them. Everything that has been made has a story. Who made it? For what purpose? Pick up an object and start asking questions about who made it, and you’ll find stories in abundance.
“MAGICAL SWORDS HAVE TO BE FORGED, THRONES BUILT AND GILDED”
Successor’s Promise, book three of Millennium’s Rule, is out on 19 September.