What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

I'm rereading the Iliad for inspiration on my short and novel. I'm looking for phrases and rhythms of speech I can adapt, and so far, I haven't found anything.

But if nothing else, I've forgotten how good a read it is, if odd to modern eyes.

And I still can't stand Agamemnon. And every time I read Atreides, I think of Dune, which I know is backward, but I can't seem to help it. Maybe when I'm done with this, I'll reread Dune, too.

CathleenT said:

I'm rereading the Iliad for inspiration on my short and novel. I'm looking for phrases and rhythms of speech I can adapt, and so far, I haven't found anything.

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What translation are you reading? In my experience, that has a huge impact on your engagement with the story. I never liked Fagles - too freely interpreted, language too archaic - or Lattimore - Latin names for the gods? nuh uh. But I love Hammond. Don't just stick with whichever one you first read it in. Try a few and find one that speaks to you.

I wrote 1,000 words today. That's the most I've written in a while. I also did some editing on another project.

CathleenT said:

I'm rereading the Iliad for inspiration on my short and novel. I'm looking for phrases and rhythms of speech I can adapt, and so far, I haven't found anything.

But if nothing else, I've forgotten how good a read it is, if odd to modern eyes.

And I still can't stand Agamemnon. And every time I read Atreides, I think of Dune, which I know is backward, but I can't seem to help it. Maybe when I'm done with this, I'll reread Dune, too.

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Cathleen, I was going to suggest a different translation, but Kalli beat me to it!

I'm currently going through the same thing with the Poetic and Prose Edda translations from Old Norse. It's quite interesting how the same stories can read much differently from one translation to another.

Wouldn't it be fabulous to have the ability to read every text in its original version? I always feel as though I'm missing something by having to read translations.

So, Paddismac and Kalli, the translation I'm reading is by A.S. Kline.The wording doesn't bug me, although I'd certainly be willing to try another.

Some of the problems in adapting I think are due to modern expectations. Homer does a lot of adding to the name soup - son of Peleus, sons of Atreus, Atreides, son of Cronos, Greeks, Danaans, Achaeans, etc. I personally enjoyed tracking down the allusions, and the extra names never bugged me, but I'm hardly a typical reader in that sense. I can certainly add more adjectives, like white-armed Hera, but again, I'm fighting modern expectations on that one. Rosy-fingered dawn would be considered cliche in anything BUT Homer.

And I would love to read it in the original Greek, but I never wanted to quite badly enough to learn it. I didn't even learn much Latin since I was a post-Vatican II baby. I know enough Spanish to get by on jobsites (sometimes), and I can read a little French, but that's not much help. Growing up in a monolingual society wasn't helpful in terms of language skills.

Yay for a thousand words, rwm! My word counts are depressingly low right now. I'm going through the first half of my manuscript, adding scenes and description, but that's somewhat balanced by compressing sentences and deleting phrases. I'm almost a thousand words up in four days, but the manuscript's improved, too, so that's the main thing. I've got the next scene worked out (finally!), but I'm embarrassed to admit my sub-plot for the gods in Olympus for Bellerophon lacked cohesion. It was mostly cameo appearances related to Lero's narrative. I want that plot to have the Olympians as three-dimensional characters with arcs of their own, not just have that narrative service the events in Lero's life. And I want it to tie into the later Trojan War.

All I've got right now is an idea that Aphrodite and Athena compete, and Aphrodite loses out, which would set up the desire for the later competition with Paris, at least for those two goddesses. Athena and Poseidon are mending fences, mostly as a result of a common interest in Bellerophon. And Zeus and Poseidon are somewhat at odds, because I've got my antagonist, King Proteus, sacrificing frequently to Zeus, and my MC is Poseidon's son. It's not enough for riveting conflict or a cohesive narrative.

Something will come to me. I've scheduled a phone conversation with a beta who's quite good at batting around story ideas, and I'm trying to outline narratives. But I don't feel like I can really write much in the way of new narrative until I've got my story-behind-the story worked out. And it's tricky, because I don't want to cross that deus ex machina line either, even though it's very Greek.

I picked up an old story from 2014. Wow, I forgot how much I love it. I'm not sure why the story slipped onto the backburner in the first place. Anyway, I sat down and told myself I'd write the next scene. Next time I glance up at the clock it's 3am and I put down 7k words. That was a nice surprise! I haven't written 7k in one session in a looooong time. I wasn't expecting it, either. It just came out. Pretty excited to write more today!

7,000. That's awesome, Blinkk!

Yay, Blinkk.

I'm away from the desktop on a job site, but that doesn't keep me from going over scenes in my head. Right now, I am giggling because I dumped a whole new wheelbarrow of plot complications on my characters.

Wow, way to go blinkk! I've never done so many. What's your usual word count?

I've managed almost 3,000 words so far today. It feels so good to write a decent amount two days in a row after so much time of struggling to write. Yeah, it's for a sequel to something that's unpublished, but at least it's writing. Plus, I'm leaning more and more toward self-publishing. I write because I love it. Pursuing trade publishing has almost killed that love for writing.

I still want to make my books the best products I can, but it's freeing that I don't feel so caught up in what agents and publishers want. I'm writing what I want and what I think readers of my kind of stories want.

I have not made any real progress in the last few days, only a few hundred here and there where I can catch a little bit of time. Really itching to write. I'm so glad I participated in that Beta Swap. Critiques always motivate me to write, and this story was one where I was seriously losing interest and kept setting aside for other WIPs when this one is on more of a time crunch.

What a great day, Blinkk! They don't happen very often for me, and not at all recently, but when they do, only the story seems real. It's like it becomes your whole world. I love those days.

Transferable skills from trying to write novels and mooching around on the internet: I just aced a typing and data entry test - 71wpm 100% accuracy* - and got myself a temp job starting tomorrow

*I can do 90wpm but had to pause every now and then to check for typos

If only novel writing was so simple....

phantasy said:

Wow, way to go blinkk! I've never done so many. What's your usual word count?

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aww, thanks you. It's usually somewhere between 1k-3k

chompers said:

I have not made any real progress in the last few days, only a few hundred here and there where I can catch a little bit of time. Really itching to write. I'm so glad I participated in that Beta Swap. Critiques always motivate me to write, and this story was one where I was seriously losing interest and kept setting aside for other WIPs when this one is on more of a time crunch.

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Everyone's been talking about the beta swap. What makes it so awesome, Chompers? Why is it different from the beta forum? I haven't participated in it, and I can't really tell you why. Maybe next year I will.

neandermagnon said:

Transferable skills from trying to write novels and mooching around on the internet: I just aced a typing and data entry test - 71wpm 100% accuracy* - and got myself a temp job starting tomorrow *I can do 90wpm but had to pause every now and then to check for typos

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Wow, congrats! I can do just over 100wpm but it's never 100% accurate when I type that fast. I've actually never reached 100% accuracy on those tests. 71wpm at 100% accuracy is amazing! Good for you! Congrats on the job. I hope everything goes well.

I just realised that two of my characters (MC and his sister) have major daddy issues.

She's much younger than her husband - in fact she was 12 when she fell in love with him, a man of thirty and already married! It was only a few years after her father had drunk himself to death, so she was looking for a nice steady, older man to give her a sense of security. MC was only 18 and still reeling from the huge responsibility thrust onto his shoulders, struggling with his own lack of paternal guidance, so he was kind of relieved to let another man look after his sister and take some of the pressure off. He still thought she was too young to marry, and had his doubts about the age difference, but in ancient Egypt a girl is a woman when she bleeds, so... hoping that's enough to escape the connotations of said older man being a pedo... :s

Kallithrix said:

I just realised that two of my characters (MC and his sister) have major daddy issues.

She's much younger than her husband - in fact she was 12 when she fell in love with him, a man of thirty and already married! It was only a few years after her father had drunk himself to death, so she was looking for a nice steady, older man to give her a sense of security. MC was only 18 and still reeling from the huge responsibility thrust onto his shoulders, struggling with his own lack of paternal guidance, so he was kind of relieved to let another man look after his sister and take some of the pressure off. He still thought she was too young to marry, and had his doubts about the age difference, but in ancient Egypt a girl is a woman when she bleeds, so... hoping that's enough to escape the connotations of said older man being a pedo... :s

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Nahhh, you're fine. My man and I are in an age gap relationship, and we're not even from ancient times. It's all in how you write the relationship. My guy and I don't even recognize our ages anymore. A lot of people say that about us. As long as the relationship is written in a good, healthy, way you'll be fine.

And hey, if you want to make a pedo relationship, you can do that too. Hell, the couple can be the same age and it can still be a pedo relationship. Age doesn't make it automatically one way or the other. It's all in how it's written.

I'm reading a chunk of my WIP aloud. I don't normally do this, because I can usually hear it in my head already. But this bit is an Australian speaker, so I'm reading it aloud with an Australian accent and I'm catching areas where it's a bit harder to say in Aussie-speak. Haha.

I think it might be time to make my writing about having fun more than anything else. Between school and work, I won't have the time to write and pursue publication (or to market if I self-publish). I'm only 25. It's not like I won't have more time to pursue a writing career once I have a stable day job.

Blinkk said:

Nahhh, you're fine. My man and I are in an age gap relationship, and we're not even from ancient times. It's all in how you write the relationship. My guy and I don't even recognize our ages anymore. A lot of people say that about us. As long as the relationship is written in a good, healthy, way you'll be fine.

And hey, if you want to make a pedo relationship, you can do that too. Hell, the couple can be the same age and it can still be a pedo relationship. Age doesn't make it automatically one way or the other. It's all in how it's written.

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Oh, I've been in my fair share of age gap relationships too - my last boyfriend was 20 years older than me. It's not about the age gap, it's more about the fact that she was 12 and married a man of 30!

But the story is set 8 years later, when they're happily married with 3 kids, so I don't think it'll be an issue. There's just this little niggling worry in my head that people will accuse the guy of being a child molester, when it was actually the 12 year old wearing the trousers in that particular relationship

Hey rwm,

I've been spending an incredible amount of time watching Brandon Sanderson's teaching videos on youtube. He wrote a bunch of books, too, before he published. It can't possibly hurt, whether you end up going trade or self-publishing. If you have say, six polished novels, then you can query them one after another. If an agent expresses interest in your next project, then you can immediately present them with another one (I gather that's what Brandon did, from his lectures). Or if you end up going self-pub, you have a number of books to release to get your name in front of people and keep it there.

So, it's hard to see a downside to this plan. And maybe you're just waiting for the right timing on the kind of stories you write.

And chompers, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before this, but I enjoyed your WIP start in the beta project. Good luck with the Australian lingo; I haven't even attempted anything but American at this point. Unless you count the Greek guy, but even there, I'm just trying to avoid too many obvious colloquialisms. It's amazing the things I can't use. I really wanted ramrod straight, but that would be terribly anachronistic before guns and cannons.

Kallithrix said:

There's just this little niggling worry in my head that people will accuse the guy of being a child molester, when it was actually the 12 year old wearing the trousers in that particular relationship

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A healthy niggle I fear. I'm about as open minded as the next guy and I just don't see how you can paint that bit clean.

If your story is culturally disconnected from the reader then maybe, but set today, a twelve year old girl doesn't get to wear the trousers unless she's told to go put them on.

I doubt that guy character would be received well.

Kallithrix said:

But the story is set 8 years later, when they're happily married with 3 kids, so I don't think it'll be an issue. There's just this little niggling worry in my head that people will accuse the guy of being a child molester, when it was actually the 12 year old wearing the trousers in that particular relationship

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Given that your story takes place in Ancient Egypt, I think the aforementioned culture gap will shut up most of the whiners.

Now, one thing that is always asserted in child-bride threads on another board I participate on, but which I have never seen substantiated in research, is that while girls of 12-13 were often married in the past, the husband usually waited until they were more like 16 to get it on. Girls younger than that are just not ready for pregnancy and birth, and that was recognized even in the past when rectovaginal fistulas due to difficult births were unfortunately not uncommon. Once your child-wife has one of those, in a society that can't perform surgery, you won't even want her in your home again, never mind want to . . . um . . enjoy her again.

So marrying her doesn't bother me from a historical standpoint. Having three kids already, eight years later, that speaks of some lack of forethought on the husband's part. Unless you make two of them twins, or something.

tiddlywinks said:

I just spent all afternoon happily editing along...only to realize that I was editing in a...um, er, slightly older version of the novel..

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You're not the only one who's ever done that.

Then there's what I did. The other day I put in a good work session and when I closed the document and saved it, apparently the mouse pointer slipped over to Don't Save when I wasn't looking and, well, it didn't save it, natch. Everything I'd done was gone. I wept and gnashed my teeth and tried my best to reconstruct everything...and today I'm thinking I'm going to have to just chuck all that anyway.

The writing life is not for the easily discouraged.

Kallithrix said:

Oh, I've been in my fair share of age gap relationships too - my last boyfriend was 20 years older than me. It's not about the age gap, it's more about the fact that she was 12 and married a man of 30!

But the story is set 8 years later, when they're happily married with 3 kids, so I don't think it'll be an issue. There's just this little niggling worry in my head that people will accuse the guy of being a child molester, when it was actually the 12 year old wearing the trousers in that particular relationship

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Maybe it's because I've read tons of historical fiction and married-young are more the norm than not, but that would never cross my mind if the story didn't specifically bring it up.

Blinkk said:

And hey, if you want to make a pedo relationship, you can do that too. Hell, the couple can be the same age and it can still be a pedo relationship. Age doesn't make it automatically one way or the other. It's all in how it's written.

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That's an interesting point.

Blinkk said:

Wow, congrats! I can do just over 100wpm but it's never 100% accurate when I type that fast.

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I can if the keyboard is perfect -- feather-light touch and silent. My old Silver-Reed typewriter was good, and my 286's antique BTC keyboard was even better, but... no Winkey. I can't survive anymore without a Winkey!

CathleenT said:

And I still can't stand Agamemnon. And every time I read Atreides, I think of Dune, which I know is backward, but I can't seem to help it. Maybe when I'm done with this, I'll reread Dune, too.

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Haha, I was the other way around. Took quite a while for the name to stop doinking my brain from Dune into another era entirely.

As others note, translator matters. Some speak with the spirit of the original; others only manage the letter. I used to collect translations of ancient Greek this-and-that, and sometimes you almost can't tell it's the same work. Been so long I can't recall names but there was one fellow who was head and shoulders above the rest for sheer readability.

tiddlywinks said:

I just spent all afternoon happily editing along...only to realize that I was editing in a...um, er, slightly older version of the novel.

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Been there, done that!

And then had to do a compare-and-paste, cuz it wasn't a Little Thing Easily Reproduced.

What's on my mind about my writing today: OMG at this rate I. am. never. going. to. finish. *bangs head against keyboard, conjuring up images of monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare*