Weathertop With Strider walking beside me, the journey felt steadier. There was direction now and fewer guesses. A sense that the story had a spine, even if the details were still changing. So I did what felt like the obvious next thing. I pushed the story forward. And almost immediately, it pushed back. A scene didn’t land the way I expected. A character choice felt thin under scrutiny. The shape of the story revealed a weak point, not loudly, but enough that it couldn’t be

Bree   After the ferry, the pressure lifted. Not completely, but enough to breathe again. Enough to enjoy the process instead of bracing against it. The story stopped chasing me, and for a moment, I let myself relax.   As the ideas got a little messier, the laughter crept back in. I stopped gripping the outline so tightly and remembered why this was fun in the first place.   Gandalf was still there, the spark, the belief, the reason I started, but he wasn’t standing next to m

The First Step Outside the Shire A clay-style animated scene featuring two fantasy characters and a small dog in front of a hobbit-style house. A short video introducing Chapter 5 of The Baldr Experiment: taking the first step outside the Shire. Every great story begins with an unexpected visitor. Not always at the door, sometimes during a dog walk. Yesterday, my Gandalf arrived. I’d done my Mission Possible planning, stages mapped, colour-coded, feeling organised, composed,