[Northerner]

@Rochellaine, that’s good to hear. Like Kate, I was getting worried too.

And, @kate-flournoy, I was in a writing group before, on Ravelry (Hope might remember it), and a lot of the older writers left for another group, leaving just us less experienced ones, and so through all this I’ve been remembering the downturn that group took in terms of quality.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

I came here intending to make an on-topic post, but I think I’ll just back slowly out now. . .

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@kate-flournoy a series about the importance of the past? We don’t see that often enough anymore. I mean, we all know it’s good not to be sentimental and dwell on some (made-up) version of a part era which was perfect, because there wasn’t one except for a very little while before snakes got the power of speech, but it seems like the vast majority of people nowadays are trying too hard to rush forward without either consulting the past to learn from its mistakes or stopping to think whether they should be going the way they are. And while I am a bit biased, since I like studying distant and obscure historical periods, and know more about how to get a job in 11th-century England than in my own day (wait, what’s my own day again?), we should have a balance and some of both sides, neither exclusively forward-looking nor backward.

(Do I spy some Tolkien influence in that idea? Probably?)

Oh, this got long. Still, it’s under 400,000 words. . .

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

I’ll second @emma-flournoy for being a very good beta reader (and I’m sorry I shoved that story into hibernation before you guys got to finish it), and her presence as (how shall I say this?) an interested and educated reader to constantly remind us writers what we’re doing this for.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@Dekreel

(Coming a bit late to this, sorry — hurrah for Spring Break and a chance to catch up on the forum! — but I sympathize with this a lot. So I thought I’d add my two cents.)

When I first started writing, I didn’t quite get that other living writers existed. I mean, if you’d asked me were new books getting published every year, I’d have said yes. But I didn’t understand that what I was doing was anything like that. So I didn’t compare myself to Tolkien (whom I loved and still do; he got me started on telling myself stories before I fell asleep at night, so you can blame him for my madness, I guess) or anyone else. And I was decently confident, because all I was doing was writing for fun. Then I kind of got the idea that this was what I was doing with my life, and — not anymore.

See, when you start taking writing seriously, you suddenly feel the weight of your responsibility, and you realize how high the standards are for good writing, and it’s overwhelming. Naturally you can’t measure up to any of this. (And you don’t know at the time, because you haven’t seen them, but the authours who now rank so high — they had years of solitary writing which will never see the light of day. It took a long time to get that good. You might be in that stage right now, but it doesn’t mean the mature stage won’t someday come. It may be twenty years. But it’s fine.)

So I think that doubt is perfectly natural. But since it stops you writing, it’s a bit counter-productive, so we do want to get rid of it. As someone else suggested, praying “Thy will be done” is very helpful. It makes you stop focusing on the exact way you think is best for things to get done, and forces you to trust God’s — as yet invisible — plan. (Also, I second Daeus’ suggestion of the Lord of the Rings. That book is awesome and may make you cry. I always get choked up when Rohan arrives, and I’ve read it easily a hundred times, and I don’t cry easily. But “I will not say, Do not weep; for not all tears are evil”.)

Another thing is, most of us on KP are young, and so there’s no way we can have the experience yet necessary to write great books. In a decade or two we’ll look back on our best writing from now — yes, all of us, even Hope and Daeus and I daresay even Josiah — and cringe a bit because now we know so much more than we did. We might manage a good book or two, or an amusing short story, or a decent poem. But the great works of literature are, frankly, a bit beyond our reach. Can any of us yet equal Homer, or Dante, or Milton, or the Gawain poet, or whoever composed the Song of Roland, or Tolkien? I know I can’t. In forty or fifty years, who knows? Keep at it steadily, remember some times call for throwing words onto the page so you can edit later, and others call for quality over quantity, and moderation in everything (thus say the Greeks).

I was going to post this in the Advice thread when I came here just now, but I can’t find it, and it may do you some good, so have this too.

Read.

Read books that make you laugh or cry, really well-written books and the occasional bad example, because you can learn from those too. Read in your chosen genre but not exclusively; avoid a narrow view of what can and can’t be done. Read Dr Seuss and the dictionary and Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God. Read books that seem old, because they were written in the slightly unfamiliar adjective-laden, longwinded eighteenth-century style. Read books that make those seem like mere infants: Plato, Chaucer, Beowulf, you get the idea. But most of all read books that challenge you. Read enormous tomes and thick philosophy and dip into a little theology (bonus points if it’s a translation from another language). (I’d also recommend learning another language, for the overachievers among us. Bonus points if it’s a “dead” language, or Koine Greek, or something.) You can’t learn if you’re never stretching and growing. Set yourself a challenge — not necessarily to read a lot of books quickly, but to go deep into books, thinking critically, analyzing (I know this comes easier to some of us than others). Read a lot of books which have stood the test of time.

You’ll look up from finishing a particularly satisfying book one day and realize that your brain is teeming with ideas again. Then go write them down.

I highly recommend, by the way, Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” and his poem “Mythopoeia”. I’ll end with a quote from its end (well, end of the paper — the Notes go on a bit longer. Tolkien liked a lot of parentheses).

“But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man
is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated
legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work,
with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his
bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with
which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he
may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come
true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give
them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.”

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@anne-of-lothlorien

Let us join the throng!

Oh, the gangly youth. . . *dies laughing* “He. . . amuses me.”

I’d love it if we could all get together sometime like this! Though considering our average age and budgets, it would be rather difficult.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

*Peeks in* You rang?

Oh, hi, @Alia. For as rare as INTJs supposedly are, there’s a lot of them here, so you’d think the INTPs would be more represented too. But apparently not. Here I am, though. And contrary to the stereotypes, math and computer science have never held any charm for me.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@that_writer_girl_99 that’s my major too! It’s not so bad, I guess. I’m learning more about good stories from my History and Philosophy classes, though, and even the Literature ones are good for that kind of thing as long as it’s not on anything modern (except perhaps as examples of what not to do). And I’m a senior and have had some proper Creative Writing classes. It could be just the school I’m going to, but I’d say, try a Literature class (preferably on something not modern) and see if that’s any good.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@lady-iliara Thank you!

 

I think that should be enough, unless anyone else really wants to do it. Thanks, guys!

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@that_writer_girl_99 I understand. What year are you? What’s your major?

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@Shannon, little sisters have a way of reading over people’s shoulders anyway. . . ask me how I know.

@Aislinn-mollisong thank you!

@Ethryndal, much appreciated!

If you ladies would like to get me your e-mail addresses without waiting for someone at KP to be a go-between, you can use the Contact form on my blog here: https://ofdreamsandswords.wordpress.com/contact/.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@Shannon, hopefully you won’t be my only beta, so don’t worry too much :). And practice is a good way to get better at these things.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@Shannon:

Alyona inherited her black hair, pale skin, and red lips from her mother, who died giving birth to her. Her father remarried to give his daughter a mother, but when he dies, her stepmother, Akilina, indentures her to her (Akilina’s) brother, who keeps a curiosity shop. Alyona has only her mother’s portrait, painted by her father, left of her old home.
One day someone brings in a set of nesting dolls with pictures of saints on them. Alyona is up late that night, reading, and at the stroke of midnight the dolls turn into seven little men. They befriend her and sometimes, when she’s up late, help her with her work of sorting through donations and mending the broken ones.
When a young doctor, who spends many of his days saving those wounded in clashes between various factions in the civil unrest shaking the country, comes into the shop to buy the portrait of Alyona’s mother, she tells him it is all she has left. He has already paid for it, but he promises to cherish it, and says he will let her come visit it, if she wishes. They strike up a friendship.
All seems to be going well, but Akilina learns from a magician imprisoned in her mirror that Alyona, far from being broken by her servitude, is thriving, and this is more than the jealous woman can bear. It will take more than a set of wooden nesting dolls, or a penniless young idealist, to save her now, when a woman scorned is thirsty for her blood.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

Daniel’s rank is Bumbling Henchman? Am I the only one who finds this laughable?

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Northerner]

@daughteroftheking “Anything with step in front of it is evil” — Okay, now I want a fairy tale with a) an evil set of stairs, or b) a set of stairs which grumbles about everyone assuming it’s evil (it’s not) because it’s made of steps.

@princessfoo I have a story-in-waiting where the princess goes ahead with the arranged marriage to the prince without any drama about it, because she’s sensible. Oh, now I really want to write it again.

@Ethryndal, dragons and chivalry come to mind. Though not every fairy tale has romance — have you read any of the Andrew Lang Coloured Fairy Books? There’s ones from all over the world in it. You get some from different countries that are pretty similar to each other, and then some very, let’s say, unusual ones.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3)

[Author]

Posts