Category Archives: Writing

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Upset the Apple Tree

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Samhain                                                  Thanksgiving Moon

After the heavy snow a week or so ago, I looked out and saw that the bee hive had snow IMAG0929and some leaves on its top.  Odd, I thought, but didn’t go out to investigate.  Our orchard, where the bee hive is, is visible from our kitchen.

Today I went out to hitch up the cardboard sleeve which had slid down to the ground and attach it firmly for the winter.  That snow and some leaves on the bee hive was one of of our apple trees.  It had tipped over from the weight of the snow and landed on the bees.

(It was the tree beyond the bee hive in this picture.)

I cranked it back to vertical, tied it off to the fence with some plastic coated dog leads and realized it would require some more soil and some compacting before the snow flies, probably this week.

The bees now have their winter protection.  The garage is on the way toward reorganization, too.  I spent an hour and a half or so doing this and that, glad to get out of the chair, even though it is a Miller Aeron.

More Latin later.  Translating Lycaon from the Latin while I push the story through different paces in Dramatica.  That’s fun.

I also started reading Robert Silliman’s Alphabet.  He’s a language poet and this is a series of riffs beginning with each of the letters of the alphabet.  It’s a very big book.

(Zeus and Lycaon in Wedgewood)

 

Writing

Writing

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Samhain                                                 Thanksgiving Moon

Worked a bit more in Dramatica this morning, piecing together a story about Lycaon and his encounter with Zeus from Book I of the Metamorphoses.  Using Dramatica has already given me a new insight into the story itself and using it I have a couple of intriguing alternative tellings part way structured.

After that I worked on Missing, adding some character development and altering a character back into a Norse god.  This whole writing process, all of it, is fun.  Well, mostly fun.

Right now I’m going outside to rejigger the bee colonies cardboard sleeve which has slouched over the last few weeks and then I’m going to some work in the garage.  Later, more Latin.

Weather +Climate, Writing

Planning. Oh, Yeah.

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Samhain                                                                  Thanksgiving Moon

Yesterday I wandered into new territory with Dramatica Pro, a software program aid to writing fiction.  It will help me do the kind of advanced planning that my work almost never gets: character development, plot sequencing, character roles, key scenes, creating throughlines and how characters and action play off against them.

Still in the midst of learning it, will take a while.  It will take the spot of the MOOCs as my current learning experience.

I like these gray, rainy days but the brilliant flash of lightning and the roll of thunder yesterday afternoon brought a bit of seasonal displacement in its trail.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Latin, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

Everything You Need

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Samhain                                                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
Cicero

I’m set.  The library surrounds me as I write this and the garden is two weeks into its winter slumber.  Cicero and I agree about life’s necessities, books and a place to grow food and flowers.  Between them they service the body and the mind.

It’s a dull, grey November day. Rain dribbles out of the sky, unwilling to commit.  The temperature remains in a warmer trend, 45 today, a trend our weather forecaster says will remain until early December.  I hope so since we’re headed out across the plains a week from tomorrow, exposing ourselves to the wind driven weather coming down, with no topographical resistance, from the Arctic.

Finishing up ModPo and getting off the Latin plateau I had inhabited for many weeks has left me in a satisfied Holiseason state of mind.  Before them Modern and Post Modern ended and the garden got put to bed, the Samhain bonfire held.  So this is a time of endings, as Samhain celebrates, and festival season beginnings.  The unusual confluence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving means the whole last week of November will be celebratory. In December then we can focus on Yule, the Winter Solstice and the pagan side of Christmas.

In the coming weeks I look forward to finishing Missing’s 5th revision and getting it off to the copy editor, learning Dramatic Pro and using it as I develop Loki’s Children while I continue to work in the new “in” the Latin style that Greg pushed me towards.  This will also be a time when I consolidate my understanding of the Modern and the Post Modern and do some more writing around that, especially as it changes and informs my Reimagining My Faith project.

Reading poetry more regularly will also be part of the next few weeks, too.  I want to continue my immersion in poetry.  One of the ModPo teaching assistants, Amaris Cuchanski, said poetry is the leading edge of consciousness and I believe she’s right.

 

Dogs, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Thank God It’s Frida

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Samhain                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

Latin with Greg this morning.  I felt like I’d made good progress with my work, but in doing the translating with him, I hit a snag.  There was a long sentence, six verses in length, with a complicated structure, hinging on a definition of a verb that was, Greg said, esoteric.  Getting that one out of whack made the entire six verses difficult, entangled. Just when I began to feel incompetent (not a feeling I enjoy), Greg pushed us further into the translation.

Once we got out of that briar patch my work improved.  “Perfect.  You’ve got it!”  “It was just that complex sentence and ferunt (the verb in question) that messed you up.  You kept at it.  That’s the key.”

“Oh, tenacity I have.  I’ve got too much time in this to give up now.”

Kate’s away at a continuing medical education event on pain.  After Greg and I finished I fed the dogs, made lunch and took a nap.  Gertie, who rehurt her leg, came in and snuggled up next to me.  This afternoon she’s moving much better.  Good to see since she’s been down for a few days.

Finished up ModPo with assessments of four other student’s essays and watched a beginning video on Dramatica Pro, the new writing software I purchased.  I plan to use it to build Loki’s Children, but before that I have to learn how to use it.

With Latin on a steady course and ModPo finished, I’ve just got Missing and Ovid to occupy my days.  And they’re plenty.  With, of course, learning how to use Dramatica.

 

 

Friends, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Education for Everyone

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Samhain                                                              Thanksgiving Moon

Back from sheepshead.  The goddess let up and gave me some good cards tonight, one very good hand in particular.  A roll of the dice for Fortuna.

Finished the last ModPo poet today, the last video of Al Filreis and the gang doing close readings.  I still have my assignments to write, but I’ll finish those tomorrow.  I chose not to get a certificate in the Modern/Post Modern class, but I’ve earned one in ModPo.  There are 35,000 people in the class.  35,000.  That would be a crowded lecture hall.

The revolutionary impulse of the MOOCs is just beginning to be felt.  The university will have to have a rethink in not too many years with this technology working on the disaggregation of education in the same way the net has disaggregated so many things before it.  This will work to the benefit of many constituencies:  the poor, the geographically isolated, the third phasers, adult learners of all ages, even the traditional college student for whom the cost of four years has become a leaden albatross hung around their neck at graduation, a weight rather than a celebration.

Missing’s fifth revision has begun to open up very exciting possibilities, ones I didn’t see before.  I’ve reentered the story with the same enthusiasm I had when I first wrote it.

Four more verses of Ovid done.  Greg and I talk tomorrow, the first session where I’ll be using the new technique of staying “in” the Latin.  I’m looking forward to gaining more facility with it.

GeekWorld, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Still Plugging Along

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Samhain                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

Working through the revisions in Missing, having fun, surprising myself.  About a third of the way into the manuscript, though the later chapters have more work than what I’ve done so far.  Ways of knitting themes and character development with the narrative come more easily at this stage.

Got a new piece of software today, Dramatica Pro.  I’m hoping it will help me deepen my work while making it more exciting.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  It’s supposed to take a long time to learn.

Five more verses of Ovid.  These verses had a textual problem that had me digging around in the Oxford Classical Text’s version.  It’s supposed to be the best manuscript available now.  The Metamorphoses presents certain problems since it’s oldest manuscript dates from the 9th century, seven to eight hundred years after it was written.  The Aeneid, for example, has some fourth century manuscripts, still within the time of the Roman Empire.

And finished up the next to last poet of ModPo. I’ll finish tomorrow and start on my assessments on Friday.  Yeah.

Art and Culture, Latin, MOOCS, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Just Glad For Them To Be Over

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Samhain                                                            Thanksgiving Moon

Finished the quick page through of Missing and have decided on key steps to take next. There will be some formatting, substantial rewriting at the end, amplification of descriptions in certain parts and a bit of rearranging.  My goal is to finish before we leave for Denver.

My capacity to translate while “in” the Latin seems to be growing.  In the passage from today Jupiter is very mad and has decided to destroy the mortal race.  Which he will do, later on in the book.  How?  By means of a flood.

I’m down to the last two poets in ModPo, plus the four assessments of other’s writing assignments.  After two and a half months of considerable work in ModPo and Modern/Post Modern, I’m experiencing that end of the quarter blah.  I don’t really want to finish the work, but I’m going to because I’ve invested so much now.  I get this filled up feeling, brought on by choices I’ve made, yes, but it’s still there.

These were two really good courses and worth the time and effort, more than repaying the work.  Just glad for them to be over.

Writing

Rewriting is Writing

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Samhain                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

Once more into the breech. Or, the revision.  Something feels odd, but I’m enjoying the revision.  I didn’t believe it before, but the writing is in the rewriting.

I read somewhere that there are two types of writers, ones who plan, plot, outline and those who discover their story as they write.  I’m of the latter camp once I get going.  I do a good bit of research and I sketch out on a large pad the general flow, big ideas, things I don’t want to forget; but, then I dive in and start writing, see where the process takes me.

This means I produce a first draft that is, in effect, my outline.  Somewhere in there is the story and it may not be the story I thought I was writing.  Or, as in the case of Missing, it is the story I thought I was writing, but a lot of other cool ideas occurred to me as I wrote and I added those.  Discovering them along the way, they just seem worth sticking in.

Revising is, at least in part, identifying those parts and taking them out.  In this instance I will probably be able to use most of them in the next book, Loki’s Children, but it could well be that they would go into a file and never again see a page or screen.

Revision though is additive as well as subtractive.  There’s not only the Michelangelo act of paring away the words that aren’t the story.  There is also the painterly act of filling blank portions of the canvas, balancing the picture, making the colors pop.  Both of these come into play during revision.  Anyhow, I’d better get to it right now.  Later.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Humanities, Latin, Literature, Myth and Story, Photography, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Missing, In the Dark Wood, Lycaon

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Samhain                                                               Thanksgiving Moon

Involved with what is, I believe, technically the fifth revision of Missing.  20,000 words went out today, a whole story line about a goddess and her giantess assistance.  It included, too, a favorite part of the book for me, the Wyrm and the Weregild, a group of expert giant dragon hunters.  But this storyline does not intersect directly with the primary story in Missing and it’s now in the pile for Loki’s Children, which now has over 50,000 plus words available from the drafts and revisions up to now of Missing.

Some key names got changed, transitions made more clear.  I got about half way through a quick review.  Probably will finish with that tomorrow.  Then I’ll go back in and start adding some more description, some character development and I may, probably will, change the ending to give it more punch.  Thanks to Stefan for the idea.

Translated another four verses in the story of Lycaon today, too.  These were hard, either the Latin was thick or I was.  Maybe both.  Still.  Done.  That’s my goal per day.

Also worked on ModPo’s final week.  Two very interesting poets today.  Erica Baum is a conceptual poet who combines photography and found language to create intriguing works.  Here are two images we reviewed in class:

 

The first is from a work called Card Catalogues where Baum photographed certain portions of the New York University Library’s old card catalog.  Each photograph is a poem of juxtaposition created by the strange constraint of alphabetically organizing knowledge.  The second is one of several pieces from a work, Dog Ear.  These are all large photographs, Card Catalog is too, and she hangs them in galleries together, though each photograph stands alone.  This is part of the conceptualist idea that ambient language contains all we need as far as poetry.  We only have to work to find it.  But that work can be difficult.

The next poet is Caroline Bergvall, a French-Norwegian who works in English.  Her work is a ten-minute recitation of 47 different translations of the famous opening lines of Dante’s Inferno:

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.  from the Mandelbaum translation

This is a strangely evocative, haunting experience.  You can hear her read it here.

(Frame from a 1911 Italian film version of the Divine Comedy. The director’s name was Giuseppe De Liguoro. from this website.)