Clarifying the Self with a Master Fantasist
Or rather, his works. May and June 2025.
When I was in my tweens and early teenage years, I was lucky enough to be lent almost all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
At the time, I was just enjoying myself. I didn’t think of myself as a writer (although I did, even then, write my own stuff).
Consciously, I was simply an avid reader, and a pupil in school.
That was it.
It took me a long time to have that lightbulb moment, to understand what was actually going on beneath the surface of Me.
Even now, it still takes a while.
Welcome back to the non-fiction section of Exploring the Eyrie. These free-tier posts go out roughly every two months during the weekly schedule, and are my thoughts on fiction and the writing life:
Earlier in 2025, I reclaimed some balance between online and offline activities.
After that, I managed, for the first time in years, to read a novel in full, partly in support of Ukraine.
During May and June, I dipped into Discworld.
Or, more accurately, I started thinking about what influence my earlier binge-reading might be having on my own writing today.
It wasn’t just Discworld back then. Fantasy in general was my first love, followed by historical classics. Later, when I realised that yes, I am actually a writer1, I naturally looked to the authors of those stories to see how they got going.
I was looking for similarities. Terry Pratchett once spoke2 about how his novels didn’t come to him all at once. He likened it - I’m paraphrasing, now - to mist melting away over the countryside, revealing landmarks at random.
That is pretty much how I write my own longer fiction: in snatches, here and there. I don’t always know where it’s going3 - but I don’t have nothing, either. Once I have enough snatches, I can plan the whole.
How about you? If you’re a creative, how do you get started?
Things I Already Know But Don't Always Know That I Know Them
During May and June, I realised that it’s a similar process when I try to gain clarity about myself: random lightbulb moments, here and there.
That realisation itself counts as one such moment. I did know that storytelling is connected to intuition and the subconscious self… I just hadn’t found that connection inside me. Not properly.
I think I have, now - at least, the time gaps between my lightbulb moments are narrowing.
I feel more certain. I’m able to get a grip on the themes of my life so far, and how these turn up in my fiction.
I’m also finding it easier to take action. It was in May, for example, that I managed to return to Substack.
Re my novel-writing, I got back to basics. I’ve long known that I’d like to follow my characters over the whole of their lives… so, applying Occam’s Razor4, that means I write for an adult audience.
That conclusion sounds simple enough, but I already have child and/or teenage characters, which are obviously better suited to children’s/YA fiction. On the other hand, adult protagonists in these books only tend to appear in flash-forward epilogues.
And then, I read both children’s/YA fiction and adult fiction. So, I wondered, which one am I writing?
Yeah. I was going round in circles again. It’s another reason why I resolved, this year, to detach: I need to fix on X without letting Y get in the way… otherwise, Z slips out of my hands like I’ve been trying to catch hold of the mist.
The mist, meanwhile, clears in its own time. Becoming aware of it, however, seems to be helping.
Oh, and here’s the biggest help from Discworld: the joy I feel when reading. I’ll write about this in my July-August post but, essentially, it’s to do with the magic of enthusiasm.
It’s maybe even the energy restoration I’ve been looking for.
Watch this space.
Copyright © E.A. Colquitt 2025. No AI was knowingly used in the creation of this work. No portion of this work may be used for training AI without written permission from the author.
As well as a reader.
See: Terry Pratchett, ‘Straight from the Heart, Via the Groin’, in A Slip of the Keyboard (Corgi, 2015).
Nor do I claim to be on Pratchett’s level.
Which I could have sworn turns up in Discworld, but I can’t remember where, or even find a source for it. Answers in the comments, please.