Salvete, readers.
I was walking along, and I saw a rock in my path.
It wouldn’t get out my way like a sensible rock, so I kicked it aside.
The rock slightly bruised my toe. The wound was mild, but the pain brought tears to my eyes.
I was so angry, I went out and found some more rocks and kicked them.
Again, the rocks hurt me.
Therefore, I am oppressed by rocks.
Until next time,
Valete
Salvete, readers!
One of the best experiences of my life was working as an education officer at a small antiquities museum. I loved seeing how different people reacted to artefacts…
Archaeologist: Well, we can clearly see the fertility motif, and our most accurate dating technique puts it somewhere in the late Archaic period, and the decorative style and clay are consistent with Attica. But without knowing the exact provenance, I’d hesitate to identify the artefact more precisely. Let’s call it a ‘ritual object.’ Please don’t cut my funding.
Historian: I can’t find any reference to this object in the literary sources. Are you sure it exists? Please don’t cut my funding.
Historian 2: Wait! If we interpret it *this* way, it fits my hypothesis! And this obscure German scholar published a paper on it 84 years ago, and that proves it! Please don’t cut my funding.
Philosopher: Well, existentially– Oh, I’ve lost my funding.
Museum patron: Gosh, how much is this stuff worth?! Your discipline must be really, really well-funded! Wait! Are you sure you should be displaying that in a museum? Think of the children!
Adolescent museum patron: When’s lunch?
Pre-adolescent museum patron: Hee hee, doodle!
Thirty-three year old museum patron: Hee hee, doodle!
Until next time,
Valete
Salvete, readers!
We continue our epic quest with chapter 3 of The Fellowship of the Ring.
This chapter, when you get right down to it, is about friendship. And, um, procrastination. It’s not the greatest start to the adventure, but it does feature some important character building and foreshadowing. After receiving the mission to save the world, Frodo’s responds by shilly-shallying a bit: ‘To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start.’ A couple of months go by. Then eventually our hero sets out with Sam and Pippin on a walking holiday to Mt Doom, after he gets Sam away from the beer, of course. Soon, they have a close call with a wraith. The tension builds! Our heroes are very nearly in danger! But then they are promptly rescued by an infuriatingly cheerful band of elves, who by coincidence fate happen to be passing by. Their leader, Gildor, advises Frodo not to go alone on his quest, but to take a few trusted friends with him.
There are many moments in this chapter whose significance only really becomes clear upon re-reading. For instance, Frodo looks at himself in the mirror and worries about his weight, and later declares that a bit of walking will make him ‘thin as a willow-wand.’ Given how much the quest will wear upon him down the track, this seems ironic. Sam offers to share Frodo’s load and lies that his own burden is light. That little moment tells you everything you need to know about Frodo and Sam’s relationship. The theme of their friendship will continue throughout the story.
Ah, the elves. They are strange, and deliberately so. Their power is such that dark creatures flee before them, but superficially at least they seem… Frivolous? Jolly? And incredibly self-absorbed. The elves initially dismiss the hobbits as dull, and only offer help when Frodo reveals he knows their language and lore. He asks Gildor, the leader of the band, for advice on how to elude the wraiths. Gildor responds with a knowing shrug and tells Frodo that he is walking toward certain doom, but he’ll find his courage. Somewhere. Thanks, dude. Tolkien goes to great lengths to show the elves are not human, to the point where they aren’t really relatable as characters. But is that the point? If we can relate to the otherworldly, then perhaps it’s not really otherworldly at all. Perhaps I should be more like Sam, and just appreciate the opportunity to visit Faerie.
Stray observations:
Until next time,
Valete
Salvete, readers!
It was a tumultuous month, to say the least.
One of my old friends passed away a few weeks ago. Dealing with this ended up being a large focus of my month. I had planned to attend a local writer’s event, but the funeral was organised for that afternoon. Theoretically, I guess I could have attended the event in the morning and then gone to the funeral, but I thought it was better to focus my energies on helping out my friend’s family that day. Then I delivered a eulogy at the funeral. That’s one of life’s less pleasant story-telling exercises, but really vital. Stories can help people heal. The important thing, as always, is to speak from the heart and make it real. This person was an important character in your life, so you want it to be as genuine as possible. A few people came up to me afterward and said how much they appreciated my speech, so I guess I did okay.
I decided to take a week off from blogging after that. Sorry about that. I needed some head-space.
In the end, finances prevented me from attending this year’s CYA Conference in Brisbane, but I’m really thrilled to see that some of my writer friends have experienced such success this year in the pitch sessions and learned so much from the panellists. And gosh, I’m particularly happy that somebody to whom I gave some encouragement at last year’s conference did so well in the competition! Well done to everybody, but particular congratulations go to the organisers for making this conference as special as it is.
Things are steaming ahead on my current novel. It’s going in a rather different direction to what I initially envisioned, because the characters aren’t quite who I thought they were. Initially I had intended to retell the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf from the viewpoint of a teenage girl. Beowulf was going to be a love interest. However, after spending about 10,000 words developing the female protagonist, I realised it would be a real disservice to her if Beowulf came sweeping in. She doesn’t need a male love interest to be a well-defined character. If anything, adding a male protagonist was in this instance going to undermine her characterisation by robbing her of agency. The solution, of course, is to remove the Beowulf framework and let the story stand on its own. It’s inspired by Beowulf, but is no longer an adaptation. The novel is an original historical fantasy whose heroine is a Viking girl. Stepping away from the canonical text is absolutely exhilarating. It has given me the freedom to create something wholly new, and to take my characters to places they never could have otherwise.
Meanwhile, my amazing co-authors and I are pretty much ready to submit our article for peer review. I’ll keep you posted on that one. I also got some good writerly news last week, which could lead to some better news in the future… But that’s all I’ll say for now.
Until next time,
Valete