I broke the belated 7,000 word mark on this new story the other night. I haven't been able to consistently knock out the 1,000 word per day minimum I'd loosely wanted to achieve, and not because, as much as I'm tempted to place responsibility wholly on external causes, I haven't had enough time.
Well, in part that's actually true - I haven't had enough time to achieve that kind of result. That's just how it's been since late December/early January: my first niece was born, followed by my mum's arrival from the UK, my second niece's birth, my dad's departure for life in Thailand, my involvement in various design projects I've been trying to develop personally and getting people to take a look at my novella manuscript. And work. Work takes time, too. None of it's bad, of course, or at least not bad to any significant degree, but it does mean I haven't had the time to focus on getting words down on paper. Or screen, as is actually the case.
However, I'm experiencing one of those times I think many writers must have wherein the story is just sitting around, waiting to be told, but before it can be the build-in has to be written: the slower, less-action-packed introduction of the main plot without giving the main plot away, the implication of something else being afoot or the suggestion of a twist to justify the story's existence in the first place. Who wants to write all of that boring stuff? Well, I do, yeah, but I want to tell the story - not spend time laying the foundation for it.
Which is, of course, difficult. You can't build on ground you haven't prepared to hold a structure; you can't launch into a story and expect it to stand up to scrutiny when you haven't actually told the pre-story aspects of it. A plot can only take a story so far. The rest has to be about the people the plot happens to and how they respond to the major points along the way.
I once wrote part of a story I may have mentioned before called Chimaera, having only the vaguest semblance of a plan for its plot. I made it to the 10,000 word mark and realised (as I believe I may have detailed in a previous entry, but if not, here it is!) that I didn't really have a proper reason for the story to be 10,000 words long. It was a story not really being told, almost. A long story not being told. As you might imagine, 10,000 words is a fair bit of time and effort for not a whole lot.
Of course, it wasn't that not a whole lot had happened within those 10,000 words; a lot had. But I'd added elements in that I had thought about as interesting additions but which hadn't really earnt a place in those 10,000 words; they weren't necessarily contributing to a set goal at all, instead suggesting some nebulous idea of a goal that I hadn't really set in stone. The words are there, the ideas are there, just where are they leading? I'm still not 100% sure on it.
In this case, though, I'm sure. 7,000 words isn't a short story. Technically it very well could be, actually. It's certainly a long essay. But it's not an introduction to a story, is what I mean, as much as it is. In 7,000 words a lot can happen, even if it doesn't seem to be. At this point I've introduced the protagonist, the deuteragonist, and several others who generally might count as a collective tritagonist given that now that I've begun writing about them, a secondary plot has cropped up as a potential alter-aspect of the primary plot.
I like to write organically, I'll admit: I've said before that I've tried and failed at writing purely organically, as in, without a planned-out scaffold upon which to build a full story, but I can't spend a decade on the other hand planning out a story and having everything squared away before I start writing. It just doesn't work for me. I need some freedom to flesh things out, at least, and to weave in extra filaments - something I was still doing not so many months ago when I realised I could expand my novella to include a character who had previously been more just a plot device as a more rounded individual whose presence was greater than to merely propel the story between points a and b. In the case of this newer story I went a bit overkill with the plan, I think, but in a good way: I started with three pages from start to finish, and then began again, adding detail into the story in its plan form, ending up with 24 or so pages in total before writing commenced. Yet even with that this subplot hadn't really occurred to me until I was able to think about whether two characters who were exhibiting similar behaviour were linked in more ways than just that they lived in the same place and each had young-ish children. As you might guess...the answer is a resounding yes. The situation has moved from them simply being general neighbours who experience the same things in the story to them being sisters - a fairly simple transition, but one which allows a wealth more undercurrents to be brought into the story. And I'm pretty excited about that.
It's late, and frankly I suppose my entire point was that I'm excited I have 7,000 words, even though it's taken me so long, and also that even as I'm writing the story is crafting itself. That's what happened with my novella, too: as I wrote it, it showed more of itself as it should be written. I'll go ahead and say I could very well beat 40,000 words this time!
Friday, January 30, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Continued consideration
After thinking about it...maybe eventide has grown on me as the word to use.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Why communication isn't, or at least shouldn't be, accidental
One thing I detest, just really, absolutely detest, is wildly incorrect grammar passed off as being completely accurate. I don't want to come across as a complete chump when it comes to grammar, but there are certain ways of saying or writing something that are correct...and some that are the precise opposite.
I realise there's a problem in being so fixated upon correct grammar: different people speak and write in different ways, and over time linguistic practices change. However, there are just some practices without basis except a lack of awareness of what correct English looks and sounds like.
I have an issue, I'll say, with people saying "lay" when they mean "lie", for instance. In order to say "I lay", you either have to be speaking in the simple past tense ("Last night I lay on my bed"), or you must be speaking of performing an action upon something else ("I'm going to lay the paper upon the table"). Otherwise you have to use "lie": "I lie down", "I am lying down", "I was lying down". It really frustrates me to hear or read people using words that are inappropriate to their intended meaning. Yes, certainly, I understand what you're intending to say; however, that doesn't mean I should be doing the interpretative work for you because you're using the incorrect word. And it's a pretty simple situation: treat lie vs. lay as you would rise vs. raise. You wouldn't say "I raise" without saying what you raise - and so too you wouldn't say "I lay" without saying what you lay. Even if you're raising yourself up or laying yourself down, you absolutely must state what it is you're raising or laying. If you're just speaking of yourself in the simplest sense, you'd say "I rise up" or "I lie down". Simple as that!
It's not a big deal, I know. People aren't dying for the misuse of certain words. Nor are people suffering grievous bodily damage from misuse of adjectives as adverbs ("I'm good" when what is meant is "I'm well")...but misuse of words, and the use of incorrect classes of words, really can affect what it is that people interpret your meaning to be.
I would say I generally agree with the statement that choice of, say, "basal" words really encourages the perception of the speaker as somewhat uncivilised. Don't mistake my meaning: I swear. I probably swear a little too much, or at least too readily. Particular swear words can be useful in an emphatic sense - they really can increase the gravity of the statement being made quite effectively. Perhaps not, though, if they're being used as fillers as well. And often enough that's exactly what they're being used as, merely taking up space in (typically verbal) communication and derailing the message from effective and direct to muddled and unimaginative. There is the aspect of social decorum, certainly, but even if one only argues that if you're always saying "fudge", or something very similar, then use of the word "fudge" colours your language, and your command of it, as quite limited, rightly or wrongly.
To me effective communication is extremely important. Just in the first instance, if my writing were full of errors, misused punctuation, or incorrect verb forms, I should expect any readers I might have to be thoroughly confused and potentially turned away from my work. And, to be perfectly honest, I can't bring myself to buy petrol at a local gas station because of their billboard, which says "Your six sense, tells you to buy petrol here" (the italicised portion is the part I'm not quite sure of. The first sentence is the part that preoccupies my mind whenever I read it due to the appalling grammar). For an international petrol company to be represented so thoroughly badly does nothing to add positivity to its already reasonably tarnished image due to certain events in the past few years. I'm sure you may have an idea which company it may be, but that isn't the issue; the issue is the use of the cardinal "six" when the ordinal "sixth" should have been used, coupled with the inappropriate use of the comma dividing a singular clause into two partial, and incomplete, clause fragments. Yet this is printed in large format upon a billboard which obviously cost a fair bit of money to have designed, printed and subsequently affixed to the side of the petrol station's main building. It challenges me to think nobody saw the issue with such a low standard of English in a country wherein English is an official language, and indeed is the most widely-spoken of the two recognised official languages. That is, of course, going so far as to presume any proofing of the design was done and it wasn't just slapped together. But even then, shouldn't the printer have seen the error and said "Hey, is this really what you want to say?"
But then there's the issue of being edited, and losing your initial intent because either you've been too critical of your own choice of words, or someone else has come along and altered them to fit their own perspectives.
A good example of this, well known to some, is when J.R.R. Tolkein had his "elven" changed to "elfin" by a zealous editorial agent wishing to use correct English. I'm not prepared to be critical of such an agent by calling them over-zealous: the entire point to having an editor is to pick up on errors, assess how well this follows that, and generally just smooth out the kinks the author may not have picked up on themselves. Had this instance of "correction" not been re-corrected to reflect Tolkein's wholly intentional use of "elven", we might have had a completely different idea about what "elfin" means these days. As it is the former has a degree of sophistication to it, of ideals, of all the other stuff people writing of elves like to have their readers infer about their magical better-than-human race, and the former is relegated to usage as a descriptor for wee little things, cutesy curly-toed shoes with bells on and sometimes children. The way a person chooses language is far more than just about what they're trying to say, and very much about the image they're trying to create with the junction between implication and inference.
I myself am partial to using correct English. The trouble is, though, that British English and American English are often of enough difference that in choosing one, the benefits of the other are sacrificed. For instance: the verb "cancel". In American English, the preterite form of "cancel" is typically spelt "canceled", with one l; yet in British English it's "cancelled", with two ls. In neither case is the emphasis placed on the second syllable: an event is never cancel(l)ed, but cancel(l)ed - despite the fact that by doubling a consonant in such a way in English (among other languages) the stress is indicated to fall upon the syllable containing it. The same is true of "focus" - my mum tends to spell the past tense as "focussed", whereas I prefer the leaner "focused". Of course, the problem here may be that someone may interpret the pronunciation of "focused" to be less aligned to "focus" and more to "focuse", or even "focuze". On the other hand, if "focussed" needs a double-s to maintain the s-sound, why drop the second s at all? To be frank, I prefer British English. It's what I've been trained to use as my first language, and there are many things in American English which don't make sense to me. However, I can also see things in British English, like needless consonant doubling, which are of equal senselessness - and I can't just ignore them, either. I suppose, in that case, I choose a blend. Never shall you see an unnecessary ll or ss; but then nor will you ever see a z (which to me is a zed) used in place of an s. And, dependent on where you're from, you may have seen that I did use the British form of preterite - with the terminal e.
Speaking of uselessness: apostrophes to indicate plurals, in any instance, cause me to grind my metaphorical teeth. I've seen all sorts of catapostrophic (did you see what I did there?) misuse, and while the typical "paper's" or "number's" makes me shake my head and wonder what thought process led to that kind of typographic abomination (I also love hyperbole), what really gets to me are the following:
Decades with an apostrophe between the last number and the pluralising s ("1990's");
Acronyms, which technically should be written with a fullstop between the capital letters to indicate they stand for whole words themselves, followed by an apostrophe and the pluralising s ("ID's");
Words ending in s followed by an apostrophe but no pluralising s ("glass'");
Letters followed by an s with an apostrophe ("A's")
Others. So many others.
I should say there's a fair bit of responsibility that should be assigned to the it's/its pair: for a long time I didn't realise that the possessive didn't have an apostrophe at all, which on first glance is atypical of many possessives in English. Of course, it turns out that it actually isn't: yours, his, hers and theirs have no apostrophes either, yet are spelt correctly and indicate possession. But the confusion remains, because possessives using nouns and not pronouns, as a fair rule, require the apostrophe: "my brother's brother" becomes "his brother" when I substitute the pronoun for the noun. However, I stand by the claim that a little thought about why "glasses" is a simple plural noun and doesn't need an apostrophe and the last s taken away would mean that we, the people, would not then have to read such things as "glass'".
And maybe a little thought as to why a comma is needed in a sentence may lead to subclauses being opened and closed between two such marks, rather than a subclause being opened and never closed. For instance, the title of this post. So many people would write it like so: "Why communication isn't, or at least shouldn't be accidental." I've referenced this already when I touched upon using commas (badly) to break a single clause into two partial clauses that just hang there, incomplete. The issue is that sentences have clauses in them; commas can be used to separate the clauses into more readable fragments. But those fragments need to be readable as separable parent-child clauses that apply to a preceding piece of information and are clearly delineated from the original clause. In this case the over-arching clause is "Why communication isn't accidental"; the secondary clause is "or at least shouldn't be", and it applies directly to its parent as a separate modifier - not as blurred into it like some chimaeric parent-child blend.
And yet here I am, at the end of all of this, about to say something of heresy: do what you want to do with language. I don't at all mean be a total jerk and use the worst words you can just because you're "doing what you want", because regardless of how free you deem yourself to be in terms of communication, you're still responsible for any communication you engage in. What I'm saying is: learn the rules well enough to know what you're doing when you break them...and then go ahead and break them, as long as you can describe how you're breaking them and what your intent in doing so is. That's why puns work so well. That's why alliteration and certain neologisms or word-amalgamations are so fitting: because they're done with intent and show understanding and appreciation of the finer workings of language.
I quite like neologisms, actually. And puns. But the whole point is, words that are well-chosen may not even have to be actual words, provided they're still well-chosen. They serve a purpose. For instance, in the story I'm currently writing (in case you're interested), I'm debating whether to use "eventide" or not. The issue for me in this case is that to my eye the word is of the sea: the prominent portion is "tide", with "even" an adjective applied to indicate that it is neither high nor low. In reality "eventide" actually is an archaic way to say "evening" ("even" is also an archaic way to say "evening", seen in terms such as "evenstar", an old name for the planet Venus as seen from Earth) - but the inference I take from it is less one of dusk or twilight and more one of a time of day associated with the ebb and flow of the ocean. So I am tending towards "eventime", which is not a word, but is similar enough to be read as one and not at all without justification as a neologism. Even a single letter can make a difference, changing the entire focus of a word from one thing to another.
The whole point here wasn't actually to decry the terrible spelling and other textual errors that I see around me, but to say that language can be fun. And beautiful, too. It doesn't even have to follow rules, really, or at least, it doesn't have to follow them to the letter, as long as it makes an effort and when and where it doesn't follow the rules it has a reason for its foray away from them. It can't be accidental, and it shouldn't be just writers, copywriters, editors, designers or professionals who take communication seriously. It should be everyone. We should all be using language as a tool already made for us and bending it the way we want it to bend, rather than under- and misusing it because we don't quite understand how to use it to its fullest. Language isn't complex just because it can be, but because it has to be in order to express everything its users want, or might want, to use it to communicate. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It's all by intent and the way we use it should be too.
I realise there's a problem in being so fixated upon correct grammar: different people speak and write in different ways, and over time linguistic practices change. However, there are just some practices without basis except a lack of awareness of what correct English looks and sounds like.
I have an issue, I'll say, with people saying "lay" when they mean "lie", for instance. In order to say "I lay", you either have to be speaking in the simple past tense ("Last night I lay on my bed"), or you must be speaking of performing an action upon something else ("I'm going to lay the paper upon the table"). Otherwise you have to use "lie": "I lie down", "I am lying down", "I was lying down". It really frustrates me to hear or read people using words that are inappropriate to their intended meaning. Yes, certainly, I understand what you're intending to say; however, that doesn't mean I should be doing the interpretative work for you because you're using the incorrect word. And it's a pretty simple situation: treat lie vs. lay as you would rise vs. raise. You wouldn't say "I raise" without saying what you raise - and so too you wouldn't say "I lay" without saying what you lay. Even if you're raising yourself up or laying yourself down, you absolutely must state what it is you're raising or laying. If you're just speaking of yourself in the simplest sense, you'd say "I rise up" or "I lie down". Simple as that!
It's not a big deal, I know. People aren't dying for the misuse of certain words. Nor are people suffering grievous bodily damage from misuse of adjectives as adverbs ("I'm good" when what is meant is "I'm well")...but misuse of words, and the use of incorrect classes of words, really can affect what it is that people interpret your meaning to be.
I would say I generally agree with the statement that choice of, say, "basal" words really encourages the perception of the speaker as somewhat uncivilised. Don't mistake my meaning: I swear. I probably swear a little too much, or at least too readily. Particular swear words can be useful in an emphatic sense - they really can increase the gravity of the statement being made quite effectively. Perhaps not, though, if they're being used as fillers as well. And often enough that's exactly what they're being used as, merely taking up space in (typically verbal) communication and derailing the message from effective and direct to muddled and unimaginative. There is the aspect of social decorum, certainly, but even if one only argues that if you're always saying "fudge", or something very similar, then use of the word "fudge" colours your language, and your command of it, as quite limited, rightly or wrongly.
To me effective communication is extremely important. Just in the first instance, if my writing were full of errors, misused punctuation, or incorrect verb forms, I should expect any readers I might have to be thoroughly confused and potentially turned away from my work. And, to be perfectly honest, I can't bring myself to buy petrol at a local gas station because of their billboard, which says "Your six sense, tells you to buy petrol here" (the italicised portion is the part I'm not quite sure of. The first sentence is the part that preoccupies my mind whenever I read it due to the appalling grammar). For an international petrol company to be represented so thoroughly badly does nothing to add positivity to its already reasonably tarnished image due to certain events in the past few years. I'm sure you may have an idea which company it may be, but that isn't the issue; the issue is the use of the cardinal "six" when the ordinal "sixth" should have been used, coupled with the inappropriate use of the comma dividing a singular clause into two partial, and incomplete, clause fragments. Yet this is printed in large format upon a billboard which obviously cost a fair bit of money to have designed, printed and subsequently affixed to the side of the petrol station's main building. It challenges me to think nobody saw the issue with such a low standard of English in a country wherein English is an official language, and indeed is the most widely-spoken of the two recognised official languages. That is, of course, going so far as to presume any proofing of the design was done and it wasn't just slapped together. But even then, shouldn't the printer have seen the error and said "Hey, is this really what you want to say?"
But then there's the issue of being edited, and losing your initial intent because either you've been too critical of your own choice of words, or someone else has come along and altered them to fit their own perspectives.
A good example of this, well known to some, is when J.R.R. Tolkein had his "elven" changed to "elfin" by a zealous editorial agent wishing to use correct English. I'm not prepared to be critical of such an agent by calling them over-zealous: the entire point to having an editor is to pick up on errors, assess how well this follows that, and generally just smooth out the kinks the author may not have picked up on themselves. Had this instance of "correction" not been re-corrected to reflect Tolkein's wholly intentional use of "elven", we might have had a completely different idea about what "elfin" means these days. As it is the former has a degree of sophistication to it, of ideals, of all the other stuff people writing of elves like to have their readers infer about their magical better-than-human race, and the former is relegated to usage as a descriptor for wee little things, cutesy curly-toed shoes with bells on and sometimes children. The way a person chooses language is far more than just about what they're trying to say, and very much about the image they're trying to create with the junction between implication and inference.
I myself am partial to using correct English. The trouble is, though, that British English and American English are often of enough difference that in choosing one, the benefits of the other are sacrificed. For instance: the verb "cancel". In American English, the preterite form of "cancel" is typically spelt "canceled", with one l; yet in British English it's "cancelled", with two ls. In neither case is the emphasis placed on the second syllable: an event is never cancel(l)ed, but cancel(l)ed - despite the fact that by doubling a consonant in such a way in English (among other languages) the stress is indicated to fall upon the syllable containing it. The same is true of "focus" - my mum tends to spell the past tense as "focussed", whereas I prefer the leaner "focused". Of course, the problem here may be that someone may interpret the pronunciation of "focused" to be less aligned to "focus" and more to "focuse", or even "focuze". On the other hand, if "focussed" needs a double-s to maintain the s-sound, why drop the second s at all? To be frank, I prefer British English. It's what I've been trained to use as my first language, and there are many things in American English which don't make sense to me. However, I can also see things in British English, like needless consonant doubling, which are of equal senselessness - and I can't just ignore them, either. I suppose, in that case, I choose a blend. Never shall you see an unnecessary ll or ss; but then nor will you ever see a z (which to me is a zed) used in place of an s. And, dependent on where you're from, you may have seen that I did use the British form of preterite - with the terminal e.
Speaking of uselessness: apostrophes to indicate plurals, in any instance, cause me to grind my metaphorical teeth. I've seen all sorts of catapostrophic (did you see what I did there?) misuse, and while the typical "paper's" or "number's" makes me shake my head and wonder what thought process led to that kind of typographic abomination (I also love hyperbole), what really gets to me are the following:
Decades with an apostrophe between the last number and the pluralising s ("1990's");
Acronyms, which technically should be written with a fullstop between the capital letters to indicate they stand for whole words themselves, followed by an apostrophe and the pluralising s ("ID's");
Words ending in s followed by an apostrophe but no pluralising s ("glass'");
Letters followed by an s with an apostrophe ("A's")
Others. So many others.
I should say there's a fair bit of responsibility that should be assigned to the it's/its pair: for a long time I didn't realise that the possessive didn't have an apostrophe at all, which on first glance is atypical of many possessives in English. Of course, it turns out that it actually isn't: yours, his, hers and theirs have no apostrophes either, yet are spelt correctly and indicate possession. But the confusion remains, because possessives using nouns and not pronouns, as a fair rule, require the apostrophe: "my brother's brother" becomes "his brother" when I substitute the pronoun for the noun. However, I stand by the claim that a little thought about why "glasses" is a simple plural noun and doesn't need an apostrophe and the last s taken away would mean that we, the people, would not then have to read such things as "glass'".
And maybe a little thought as to why a comma is needed in a sentence may lead to subclauses being opened and closed between two such marks, rather than a subclause being opened and never closed. For instance, the title of this post. So many people would write it like so: "Why communication isn't, or at least shouldn't be accidental." I've referenced this already when I touched upon using commas (badly) to break a single clause into two partial clauses that just hang there, incomplete. The issue is that sentences have clauses in them; commas can be used to separate the clauses into more readable fragments. But those fragments need to be readable as separable parent-child clauses that apply to a preceding piece of information and are clearly delineated from the original clause. In this case the over-arching clause is "Why communication isn't accidental"; the secondary clause is "or at least shouldn't be", and it applies directly to its parent as a separate modifier - not as blurred into it like some chimaeric parent-child blend.
And yet here I am, at the end of all of this, about to say something of heresy: do what you want to do with language. I don't at all mean be a total jerk and use the worst words you can just because you're "doing what you want", because regardless of how free you deem yourself to be in terms of communication, you're still responsible for any communication you engage in. What I'm saying is: learn the rules well enough to know what you're doing when you break them...and then go ahead and break them, as long as you can describe how you're breaking them and what your intent in doing so is. That's why puns work so well. That's why alliteration and certain neologisms or word-amalgamations are so fitting: because they're done with intent and show understanding and appreciation of the finer workings of language.
I quite like neologisms, actually. And puns. But the whole point is, words that are well-chosen may not even have to be actual words, provided they're still well-chosen. They serve a purpose. For instance, in the story I'm currently writing (in case you're interested), I'm debating whether to use "eventide" or not. The issue for me in this case is that to my eye the word is of the sea: the prominent portion is "tide", with "even" an adjective applied to indicate that it is neither high nor low. In reality "eventide" actually is an archaic way to say "evening" ("even" is also an archaic way to say "evening", seen in terms such as "evenstar", an old name for the planet Venus as seen from Earth) - but the inference I take from it is less one of dusk or twilight and more one of a time of day associated with the ebb and flow of the ocean. So I am tending towards "eventime", which is not a word, but is similar enough to be read as one and not at all without justification as a neologism. Even a single letter can make a difference, changing the entire focus of a word from one thing to another.
The whole point here wasn't actually to decry the terrible spelling and other textual errors that I see around me, but to say that language can be fun. And beautiful, too. It doesn't even have to follow rules, really, or at least, it doesn't have to follow them to the letter, as long as it makes an effort and when and where it doesn't follow the rules it has a reason for its foray away from them. It can't be accidental, and it shouldn't be just writers, copywriters, editors, designers or professionals who take communication seriously. It should be everyone. We should all be using language as a tool already made for us and bending it the way we want it to bend, rather than under- and misusing it because we don't quite understand how to use it to its fullest. Language isn't complex just because it can be, but because it has to be in order to express everything its users want, or might want, to use it to communicate. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It's all by intent and the way we use it should be too.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Folktales and such
There may be one of you, out there somewhere, wondering why I chose "folkfable" for the address of this blog. It's not exactly euphonic, really; perhaps it's the doubling of the f-sound. The name is really just a slightly different take on "folktale" or "folklore" - and to be completely honest I'd far rather have taken one of those names, but words so common and well-established had probably long ago been taken and weren't an option for me to take myself.
It's not surprising, is that. There's something about words like "folklore" - they bring to mind the sense of magic, and great encyclopaedic compendia detailing different creatures and characters that live in the corners of houses or in caves or high on mountain peaks. Folklore, from my perspective, is a way of explaining the world, and building a sense of history and meaning to aspects of the experienced environment and lived culture. A folktale in relation is a means of expression of that - something which communicates that worldview, that history, that environment and that culture.
And it's funny what you learn when you're exploring folklore and reading folktales. I had initially thought the name for so-called bog lights and fairy lights, will-o'-wisps, referred to the will, the sentient driving force, of the light. It turns out the "will" portion is, by folktale, a reference to a character called Will, doomed to remain in our world after death by his lack of prudence and sense during life. Whether the aetiology is reactive - that it is an attempt to explain an existent name for an existent phenomenon - I'm not sure, as I profess to be no expert folklorist...but I'm tempted to wonder. My idea of the name referring to the mind of the fire itself seems so much more appealing.
But that's my point, I think - that folklore is a way of giving meaning to something noticed and seen. There's folklore surrounding the name of the will-o'-wisp, expressed in folktale and my own inane attempts at explaining it before I read (not more than a week ago, in fact) that the name seems explicable as a literal name, a proper noun. The actual phenomenon has its own folklore, though of course the two are intimately bound together to give sense to each.
Also my point is to suggest that I like folklore. In essence, that's what I'm currently focusing my writing efforts upon: the establishment of my own voice in telling folklore tales. Fables, I suppose, makes sense - one can't really have a tale without some kind of remedy or resolution. People haven't historically really been fans of cliffhangers, unless they lead directly into the next portion of the story and tell some wider part of a greater story.
I have admiration for those who are willing to sit down and try to knock out some kind of massive, sweeping opus, particularly when they've built up their own histories and invented their own worlds in the process. I'm not at all unlike the many people out there who love the escapism of entirely new settings, far away from the expectations of our hum-drum daily existences. We live in relatively predictable times wherein work is the major motivating force behind a lot of what we do, and (pretty sadly) enjoying life and loved ones is something we squeeze into our spare time if we have enough time to really have any spare. And the whole point in reading fiction is for a sense of escapism, as well as the associated feelings of investment and being privy to the events and aftermath of storyland crises (though I don't mean to say these are the only points. Everyone has their own motivation for reading). I dare say it's also why people love movies so much - entertainment in the form of being shown a story, rather than just being told it, is a chance to invest in something else, to follow from start to finish the events that occur to someone or someones, as if we have experienced them ourselves.
I know, I've studied graphic design: "there are no original thoughts; everything has been thought of before". I don't necessarily subscribe to that viewpoint - it's a horrifically general and pseudo-omniscient perspective and, unlike some people I've met before, I don't really have time, energy or desire to still believe (like we all do when we're younger and think we know everything anyway) that I have greater knowledge or am just more correct than anyone else and can possibly say "hey, let's all be cynical and talk about how limited we are and how much everything is just a repeat of an earlier idea. True originality is an illusion, man...". But. Well, folklore - already established and well-attested to - is by nature unoriginal.
I like that. Folklore is very informative and can be very influential when trying to tell stories that are in their own specific form quite original. Many stories aren't original by way of being a completely out-of-left-field tale that bears no similarity to any story ever and every motif within it is utterly new and ne'er-seen-before, but they're original in the way they describe what happens, how they string events together, the perspectives they take. A story that possesses its own lore must, on more than just the "I didn't plagiarise this" level, be relatively original. Even if set in a world already known about, if the story itself is something which enhances the lore in general, if it expands the world in question and has its own reason for being, then that story is original. I don't know I'd call my seemingly plot-less version of a sequel to Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter original by merit of involving characters and the world of Ms. Jansson's invention, but in terms of the story within the context of the setting, the story itself was original. Embarrassingly ill-thought-through I'm certain, though my own memory fails me, but "original".
I struggled for a while to summarise to anyone who asked what I tend to write. I mean, should I give a summary of the plot? Should I describe it as fantasy, but not sweeping, epic, completely other-worldly, or focused on saving the world from imminent destruction? Well, I have before. It wasn't long ago, though, that the word "folklore" sort-of just coalesced in my mind. I hadn't really been thinking about it, and I can't remember having read it around the time - but that's exactly what I'm writing.
Well, folktales, I should say. The point of them isn't to be in a specific place in a specific year, or anything of the sort; there're no sweeping moments of epic battle, either. What I want to write about are local things: events that happen to people that may, if the story were to be told any other way and the moment of peripety were any other, continue on to be larger or have farther-reaching consequences, but that remain close to the ground and never seek to be too epic. I like real characters. I like flaws. I like faults. I like ill-considered actions and things being swept under the rug. I suppose that could be the same reason I like mythology, particularly Greek - the Trojan War has its place and is suitably adventurous and, again, epic, but in epic battle people become figures and lose their personhood...and I don't like that. I prefer reading about the conflicts, the successes, the humanity in the mythology. That the mythology is a tremendous genealogy certainly doesn't do it any disservice, but even ignoring that, understanding the human emotions of Perseus, of Atalanta, of Echo and of Tieresias is far more fulfilling for me than is hearing about the wine-dark sea and how glorious Achilleus was. It's funny, that's the first time I've really been able to articulate it in those terms: too great the story's scale and the personalities in it get lost and swamped. For me, at least. Others love the drama and movement from one high-stakes event to the next.
That's exciting, but it's not really a folktale, to me. I've quite liked The Hobbit each time I've read it (and no doubt will again in the future) because it's about a flawed, selfish/selfless character who goes on an adventure despite himself, whereas The Lord of the Rings, as much as I loved that the one time I read it (I admittedly lost focus in The Return of the King), really ended up being a series of events and convoluted detail that happened to some characters with whom I never forged the same bond. The story there was about the events and preventing or rectifying them, rather than about the characters experiencing events. Even as fleeting as many of the characters' appearances are in my novella, I still make sure that the story (and their parts therein) detail them experiencing events, rather than events occurring to otherwise austere people.
I don't know whether that makes any sense at all. To me it seems as if folklore and folktales are basically what my writing focus is, at least for now. Perhaps that's why the Moomintroll book of Tove Jansson struck that chord with me - on the one hand, here was/is this magical, fantastic and fabulous reality constructed around this central character and secondary characters, a bit incredible and leaving me a bit disturbed, in a good way; on the other, anything and everything that happened was local, small of focus, decidedly non-epic, and perfectly complete because none of it ever needed to be a way to save the world from immediate, imminent hellfire. I love that. Not everything needs to be a literary Hollywood blockbuster with dragons, larger-than-life actions and even larger reactions, or impossibly meandering plots about saving the world. If a story has all the special effects and drama already, then cool...but I'm really quite enamoured with the idea of folktales. That's the kind of story I want to tell.
It's not surprising, is that. There's something about words like "folklore" - they bring to mind the sense of magic, and great encyclopaedic compendia detailing different creatures and characters that live in the corners of houses or in caves or high on mountain peaks. Folklore, from my perspective, is a way of explaining the world, and building a sense of history and meaning to aspects of the experienced environment and lived culture. A folktale in relation is a means of expression of that - something which communicates that worldview, that history, that environment and that culture.
And it's funny what you learn when you're exploring folklore and reading folktales. I had initially thought the name for so-called bog lights and fairy lights, will-o'-wisps, referred to the will, the sentient driving force, of the light. It turns out the "will" portion is, by folktale, a reference to a character called Will, doomed to remain in our world after death by his lack of prudence and sense during life. Whether the aetiology is reactive - that it is an attempt to explain an existent name for an existent phenomenon - I'm not sure, as I profess to be no expert folklorist...but I'm tempted to wonder. My idea of the name referring to the mind of the fire itself seems so much more appealing.
But that's my point, I think - that folklore is a way of giving meaning to something noticed and seen. There's folklore surrounding the name of the will-o'-wisp, expressed in folktale and my own inane attempts at explaining it before I read (not more than a week ago, in fact) that the name seems explicable as a literal name, a proper noun. The actual phenomenon has its own folklore, though of course the two are intimately bound together to give sense to each.
Also my point is to suggest that I like folklore. In essence, that's what I'm currently focusing my writing efforts upon: the establishment of my own voice in telling folklore tales. Fables, I suppose, makes sense - one can't really have a tale without some kind of remedy or resolution. People haven't historically really been fans of cliffhangers, unless they lead directly into the next portion of the story and tell some wider part of a greater story.
I have admiration for those who are willing to sit down and try to knock out some kind of massive, sweeping opus, particularly when they've built up their own histories and invented their own worlds in the process. I'm not at all unlike the many people out there who love the escapism of entirely new settings, far away from the expectations of our hum-drum daily existences. We live in relatively predictable times wherein work is the major motivating force behind a lot of what we do, and (pretty sadly) enjoying life and loved ones is something we squeeze into our spare time if we have enough time to really have any spare. And the whole point in reading fiction is for a sense of escapism, as well as the associated feelings of investment and being privy to the events and aftermath of storyland crises (though I don't mean to say these are the only points. Everyone has their own motivation for reading). I dare say it's also why people love movies so much - entertainment in the form of being shown a story, rather than just being told it, is a chance to invest in something else, to follow from start to finish the events that occur to someone or someones, as if we have experienced them ourselves.
I know, I've studied graphic design: "there are no original thoughts; everything has been thought of before". I don't necessarily subscribe to that viewpoint - it's a horrifically general and pseudo-omniscient perspective and, unlike some people I've met before, I don't really have time, energy or desire to still believe (like we all do when we're younger and think we know everything anyway) that I have greater knowledge or am just more correct than anyone else and can possibly say "hey, let's all be cynical and talk about how limited we are and how much everything is just a repeat of an earlier idea. True originality is an illusion, man...". But. Well, folklore - already established and well-attested to - is by nature unoriginal.
I like that. Folklore is very informative and can be very influential when trying to tell stories that are in their own specific form quite original. Many stories aren't original by way of being a completely out-of-left-field tale that bears no similarity to any story ever and every motif within it is utterly new and ne'er-seen-before, but they're original in the way they describe what happens, how they string events together, the perspectives they take. A story that possesses its own lore must, on more than just the "I didn't plagiarise this" level, be relatively original. Even if set in a world already known about, if the story itself is something which enhances the lore in general, if it expands the world in question and has its own reason for being, then that story is original. I don't know I'd call my seemingly plot-less version of a sequel to Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter original by merit of involving characters and the world of Ms. Jansson's invention, but in terms of the story within the context of the setting, the story itself was original. Embarrassingly ill-thought-through I'm certain, though my own memory fails me, but "original".
I struggled for a while to summarise to anyone who asked what I tend to write. I mean, should I give a summary of the plot? Should I describe it as fantasy, but not sweeping, epic, completely other-worldly, or focused on saving the world from imminent destruction? Well, I have before. It wasn't long ago, though, that the word "folklore" sort-of just coalesced in my mind. I hadn't really been thinking about it, and I can't remember having read it around the time - but that's exactly what I'm writing.
Well, folktales, I should say. The point of them isn't to be in a specific place in a specific year, or anything of the sort; there're no sweeping moments of epic battle, either. What I want to write about are local things: events that happen to people that may, if the story were to be told any other way and the moment of peripety were any other, continue on to be larger or have farther-reaching consequences, but that remain close to the ground and never seek to be too epic. I like real characters. I like flaws. I like faults. I like ill-considered actions and things being swept under the rug. I suppose that could be the same reason I like mythology, particularly Greek - the Trojan War has its place and is suitably adventurous and, again, epic, but in epic battle people become figures and lose their personhood...and I don't like that. I prefer reading about the conflicts, the successes, the humanity in the mythology. That the mythology is a tremendous genealogy certainly doesn't do it any disservice, but even ignoring that, understanding the human emotions of Perseus, of Atalanta, of Echo and of Tieresias is far more fulfilling for me than is hearing about the wine-dark sea and how glorious Achilleus was. It's funny, that's the first time I've really been able to articulate it in those terms: too great the story's scale and the personalities in it get lost and swamped. For me, at least. Others love the drama and movement from one high-stakes event to the next.
That's exciting, but it's not really a folktale, to me. I've quite liked The Hobbit each time I've read it (and no doubt will again in the future) because it's about a flawed, selfish/selfless character who goes on an adventure despite himself, whereas The Lord of the Rings, as much as I loved that the one time I read it (I admittedly lost focus in The Return of the King), really ended up being a series of events and convoluted detail that happened to some characters with whom I never forged the same bond. The story there was about the events and preventing or rectifying them, rather than about the characters experiencing events. Even as fleeting as many of the characters' appearances are in my novella, I still make sure that the story (and their parts therein) detail them experiencing events, rather than events occurring to otherwise austere people.
I don't know whether that makes any sense at all. To me it seems as if folklore and folktales are basically what my writing focus is, at least for now. Perhaps that's why the Moomintroll book of Tove Jansson struck that chord with me - on the one hand, here was/is this magical, fantastic and fabulous reality constructed around this central character and secondary characters, a bit incredible and leaving me a bit disturbed, in a good way; on the other, anything and everything that happened was local, small of focus, decidedly non-epic, and perfectly complete because none of it ever needed to be a way to save the world from immediate, imminent hellfire. I love that. Not everything needs to be a literary Hollywood blockbuster with dragons, larger-than-life actions and even larger reactions, or impossibly meandering plots about saving the world. If a story has all the special effects and drama already, then cool...but I'm really quite enamoured with the idea of folktales. That's the kind of story I want to tell.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Something quick, something meagre
I haven't been so disciplined with my writing over the past few days. My word count is currently 1,430, and I hope before bed tonight (very soon...) I'll at least hit 2,000.
In my defence it has, so far, been a pretty busy year. My niece (the first of her generation in the family) was born on the 31st, about an hour before the new year, and so my attention has been (quite willingly) directed towards her and my brother and sister-in-law instead of typing, as well as to my dad and stepmum (both are moving to Thailand, with my stepmum flying out yesterday and my dad to follow in several weeks), and my mum (who flew in from the UK yesterday to meet my niece and in preparation for my sister's baby to arrive, which should be in a little under two weeks). All of that, coupled with various shifts at work and some amount of trepidation over related opportunities to pursue my health-focused career in the US, hasn't left me with the greatest amount of energy or time to devote to getting word on page.
I remain hopeful that the rest of this week (today was Tuesday here) will allow me greater literary successes...but we'll see.
In my defence it has, so far, been a pretty busy year. My niece (the first of her generation in the family) was born on the 31st, about an hour before the new year, and so my attention has been (quite willingly) directed towards her and my brother and sister-in-law instead of typing, as well as to my dad and stepmum (both are moving to Thailand, with my stepmum flying out yesterday and my dad to follow in several weeks), and my mum (who flew in from the UK yesterday to meet my niece and in preparation for my sister's baby to arrive, which should be in a little under two weeks). All of that, coupled with various shifts at work and some amount of trepidation over related opportunities to pursue my health-focused career in the US, hasn't left me with the greatest amount of energy or time to devote to getting word on page.
I remain hopeful that the rest of this week (today was Tuesday here) will allow me greater literary successes...but we'll see.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Procrastination
I have to say that January the 1st wasn't the hotbed of typing I had imagined it might be. Instead I felt an unfortunate mix of glum, inadequate and generally directionless - as one might when facing a night shift and wondering which path to take in life.
I realise that sounds slightly contradictory: how can one be directionless and have paths open to be walked?
The answer is...because life is full of those irksome things called questions and uncertainties. I'm not a big fan of those. Some are alright, but others not so.
So, one falls to procrastination. I remember my mum once telling me "If you're not sure what to do, don't do anything". I agree to a certain extent. When every option seems as good or as bad as the others, choosing is always going to be a process riddled with doubt and hesitancy and one will always wonder "what if I had opted for A, rather then B?" These are the things that keep people up at night, unless you're like me and look after premature babies at night instead.
I also disagree, though. The thing is...by not taking a step forwards, all you end up doing is holding place at whatever crossroads it is you've come upon, and life doesn't move forwards. And you can't sit a test and just abstain from answer because that equals a big ol' fail.
Yesterday was a day of that. "What should I do? Should I do this? Am I good enough?"
Actually, that "good enough" issue is a bit of a chronic debilitation: it plagues me. Over the past couple of days I've wondered whether I'm good enough with my writing to make any sort of impression as an author. Will people understand my message? Will they like the story? Or is it all just one big pipedream that I should've let disperse in a wispy cloud of smoke? It's familiar to us all.
In the end, though, I started writing. Procrastination didn't quite win. I got a whole 384 words knocked out - yes, a pitiful amount, but it's a start. I have the plot synopsis I wrote over the past month-and-a-half, which is like a series of smaller goals comprising a larger, singular one. And I think that's important: having goals. Important for me, I mean - maybe some people are more the types to just sit down and see where their keyboard leads them, but I have to at least draft the blueprint before I start fleshing out a mock-up. It works. It doesn't mean I follow the synopsis to the letter, of course; actually I do tend to find I can hang a lot of just-thought-up creativity on a set guide like a plotline, but if I don't at least have my path laid out before me it all seems to get to a certain point and then fizzle. So much drive and nowhere destination to head towards is a bit of a nasty situation. So I have the story, and I have the start, and that's pretty motivating.
I've spent too much time on this blog post.
I realise that sounds slightly contradictory: how can one be directionless and have paths open to be walked?
The answer is...because life is full of those irksome things called questions and uncertainties. I'm not a big fan of those. Some are alright, but others not so.
So, one falls to procrastination. I remember my mum once telling me "If you're not sure what to do, don't do anything". I agree to a certain extent. When every option seems as good or as bad as the others, choosing is always going to be a process riddled with doubt and hesitancy and one will always wonder "what if I had opted for A, rather then B?" These are the things that keep people up at night, unless you're like me and look after premature babies at night instead.
I also disagree, though. The thing is...by not taking a step forwards, all you end up doing is holding place at whatever crossroads it is you've come upon, and life doesn't move forwards. And you can't sit a test and just abstain from answer because that equals a big ol' fail.
Yesterday was a day of that. "What should I do? Should I do this? Am I good enough?"
Actually, that "good enough" issue is a bit of a chronic debilitation: it plagues me. Over the past couple of days I've wondered whether I'm good enough with my writing to make any sort of impression as an author. Will people understand my message? Will they like the story? Or is it all just one big pipedream that I should've let disperse in a wispy cloud of smoke? It's familiar to us all.
In the end, though, I started writing. Procrastination didn't quite win. I got a whole 384 words knocked out - yes, a pitiful amount, but it's a start. I have the plot synopsis I wrote over the past month-and-a-half, which is like a series of smaller goals comprising a larger, singular one. And I think that's important: having goals. Important for me, I mean - maybe some people are more the types to just sit down and see where their keyboard leads them, but I have to at least draft the blueprint before I start fleshing out a mock-up. It works. It doesn't mean I follow the synopsis to the letter, of course; actually I do tend to find I can hang a lot of just-thought-up creativity on a set guide like a plotline, but if I don't at least have my path laid out before me it all seems to get to a certain point and then fizzle. So much drive and nowhere destination to head towards is a bit of a nasty situation. So I have the story, and I have the start, and that's pretty motivating.
I've spent too much time on this blog post.
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