It has been over two weeks since I last posted anything. It’s not that I haven’t been writing, I try to write half an hour a day. It’s not that I am running out of ideas already, I haven’t even started going into the culture of the city, the guilds or any of the other locations around the city. The problem is that I have been writing loads of half completed blogs, but lack the motivation to finish them. Such is the life of an aspiring writer I guess. I suppose I just need to buckle down and finish something. Of course, writing this post is complete procrastination and unhelpful to you or I, so I must add something something interesting.

I have been reading Elminster’s Forgotten Realms recently, despite my dislike of the realms in general (note: not Ed Greenwood, I loved his Geanavue book for example).

It was a really cheap buy at my FLGS and I thought perhaps it might contain some interesting and deep cultural information that might inspire me to add the same to the city. It does contain that information, but I can’t shake the overwhelming feeling that the cultures of the Forgotten Realms are modern, with renaissance and medieval trappings. The Purple Dragons for example, appear to operate as a modern police force, with high efficiency and incorruptability. This really rubs me the wrong way for some reason. I won’t bash on the book any more, because despite it’s failings, I would love for more books of this type to be written. I imagine the fantastic Year 1000, but set in Faerun, Harn, or the Scarred Lands.

That modern / renaissance pastiche that is Elminster’s Forgotten Realms reminded me not to make the same mistake. I must not let modern ideas, philosophies and behaviours infect my writing too much. Of course, I am a product of my time and can never presume to write from a true historical perspecive, nor do I want to (my world is fantasy after all, with a mixture of historical and fantasy periods), but I think that if I keep this in mind, I can avoid falling into the trap of a fantastical façade over a modern society.