Saturday, June 26, 2010

Combining Creativity

Anyone who reads my twitter feed probably knows I also make jewerly in addition to working on my novels. While each of those creative endeavors is it's own thing there are times when they interact with each other. The fantasy novel I'm preparing to revise was started in part thanks to me pondering character ideas while working on a chainmaille bracelet. The magic part came later, though my character pondering provided my first glimpse into this fantasy world.

My main character works with metals, she does chainmaille along with other types of armor. It is her occupation in the start of the novel, which she leaves to discover what else is out there. In addition to this novel I have in mind one or two more to follow my character as she gets involved in more of the conflicts of the land. Where I am right now with the novel is fleshing out the world more, getting to know the different groups of people. Their customs, their histories, what the various groups think of the other groups, and so on.

Getting back to the jewerly aspect of this combined creativity, I was sorting through bits and pieces of things I'd made and found a spiral of wire from awhile back. As I was playing with the spiral I held it up to the back of my hand and thought it would be a neat focal for a bracelet. I looked at it longer and envisioned other spirals from the bracelet and had another thought. This type of bracelet would be something worn by the higher society ladies in the novel series. With clothing and adornments for the different people I'm keeping in mind their occupations. People doing more physical labor aren't going to be all decked out with various pieces of jewerly and their clothing would allow enough movement to do their jobs. They would have simple trinkets while my upper class could have more bangles, and more intricate layers of clothing.

The bracelet I made: (thumbnail linked to Flickr)
Spiral Bracelet

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice bracelet, Claire and interesting to hear how your novel writing and jewellry making interweave. It must be great to have more than one strand to your creativity.

Claire Goverts said...

Thanks :)

I've always been into multiple creative pursuits, which is fun. Though I have to be careful not to get into to many different things that have a lot of supplies. I used to draw when I was younger, but the practice was frustrating. I'm still working on my writing craft which lacks the frustration of the drawing.