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thoughts on some of the important plot details such as the lordship of the fairies. The notebook was added to as and when I figured out new things that I wanted to include. When I would finally begin writing in earnest, this notebook would be referred to so that I would remain consistent.
1989-90
The adventure that is university meant that T'Tenneb continued to exist mostly in my mind. Over the next few months, I thought about it a lot, adjusting and honing the storyline. As I walked around the campus, or cycled to the shops, I would play little scenes in my head, usually unconnected. Taking bits from my own life and putting them into the setting of my own little world. I would toy with various ideas for a while to see if they worked. If they did, I stored them away in my memory until I could find a place in the plot to put them. If they did not work, then they were put to one side. A couple of the ideas that were discarded were a giant paper aeroplane, and the fairies carrying Rachel and Alex when they flew.
By the time the summer came around again, I had the storyline pretty well mapped out. I knew what would happen at the beginning, and I knew how I wanted it to end, plus a couple of events in the middle, but how to get from one bit to another was still a bit hazy. The characters had become very real though, maybe because are. I even used Elenopa as my computer password as it was easy for me to remember and no one else would guess it.
The next big step creatively was during my summer placement. I was supposed to be learning engineering skills, but I spent most of my six months at a desk and so I had plenty of time to think. This was the first time that I read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and apart from the brilliant story I remember studying the maps and decided to draw my own. I have never been very good at drawing, so I gave a page from a notebook to the person at the next desk and said, "Draw me a shape like an island, with some smaller islands to the side." This she did, and what she drew was almost exactly what I wanted. I just had to shrink some of the smaller islands, but that is what T'Tenneb has been ever since.
The other memorable feature of Tolkien is the poetry. The characters are always singing. I have been able to write poetry for most of my life, and the Hobbit's songs set my mind going. For some reason, there was a lot of scrap computer paper on my desk and I started scribbling. I don't know where it came from, but it poured out, one poem after another. Elenopa's lament, the marching song, Tremag's chant. All but two of the songs in T'Tenneb were written at this time, and after I had scribbled them down, I put them in the order that they would appear in the book. This shows that the basic plot was complete just a year after I had begun planning, although I still needed to add the colour and life of the fairy community to turn it into a decent story.
Only one line of poetry had to be cut. This is because I had originally had the fairies possessing magic power (telepathy and telekinesis) and it had been mentioned in the poem. As the book developed, I realised that the fairies would not think of their power to fly, or other magic, as magic because everybody would have the same powers. Something is only magic if we do not understand it. Also, Nala's importance would be diminished if he didn't have exclusive rights to magical power; so the fairies lost their magic. As it was, the fairies' magic did not play a part in the plot, so nothing was lost in that sense. I still think about magic and its place within my universe. At the moment I believe that everybody has the ability for magic within them but it manifests itself in different ways. With the fairies it is flying, although it is a natural phenomenon with them and so not viewed as magic. In our world, we have turned from magic to technology and so have little sense of the power that is dormant within us. Those that develop their sense of magic can increase their power and eventually become a wizard. Wizards will be discussed elsewhere.
1990-91
During my second year at university, I continued adding more detail and layers to my story.
Tremag got a face. Our maths lectures that year were taken by two lecturers, which is a bad move because they didn't know what each other was teaching. One lecturer wasn't too bad, but the other one, everybody hated. He just couldn't teach us, and so I decided to turn him into Tremag, along with his big nose and constantly blocked up nasal sounding voice. That was when I decided on Susan's line 'Now I know this is a nightmare, he looks just like my Maths lecturer.'
One other character was created this year. Cire. It is surprising to think how complete my story was by this time, yet now I could not conceive of T'Tenneb without him. As with so many of my other characters, Cire is based on a real person. I was involved in the annual musical production at Uni., and for this one year only so was a good looking tall guy. Well I had no chance with him before he left my life forever, so I did the next best thing and put him in the book as Elenopa's closest friend.
Although the amulet had been in existence from the early planning stages, It was now that I created a bit of its history. For some reason, I was thinking about creation stories and decided that T'Tenneb would need one too. Well, God became the Great Wizard and he created the world with the help of the stones in his rings. These in turn created the element stones
(Continued on page 3)
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