A love for History

Let me tell you something: I love history.

I cannot properly tell you how much I love history. I think I was one of the few children who would sit and watch a history documentary with my dad and enjoy it. And although I have my favorite areas of history I love learning about (Medieval times, ancient Rome and Egypt and random highwaymen/outlaws/thieves to name a few) all of history is pretty cool to me.

I just. History is awesome. It's like a giant book of our past; all of us characters with our own back story. (maybe that's just the writer in me, I don't know) The human race writing itself. Most of the time without a thought that we are doing it.

History also helps the future. If we learn from the mistakes and successes from the past, then our future would be brighter. We can avoid the pot holes and blunders of times past, and maybe make up for it.

As a writer, I find inspiration in history. For example, my current work in progress is about two brothers who go off to find the Book of Merlin. A great sea going adventure. Even though no such book exists, the story is influenced by Arthurian legend. I had to research pirates and 1700's sailing techniques and other such bits to make sure my story was at least reasonably accurate.

I cannot tell you how often I lost track of time just reading up on random history. Pirates, after looting a ship, returned a stone fireplace they stole because it belonged to Jack Daniels. Poland avoided the Black Plague because it was cleaner than other countries around it due to it's populace being mainly Jewish. George Washington's teeth were not made of wood, but instead from cow teeth.

I understand that not everyone shares this love as history as I do. (Yay for me that my whole family enjoys history.) In fact, some may even find history-gasp-boring. To each their own. I, for one, cannot stand math. But I need to have a working understanding of it to function. Also, it's useful in writing, believe it or not. Same goes for history. It's important to know something of history when writing; you never know when it might come in handy.Characters and worlds in your writing have history as well. Without them, well, your people and the lands they live in is just blank. And blank is boring. Build the history, because that gives purpose. It explains things. I'm not saying tell your readers the complete history of the country of Arei and the rulers. But sprinkle that history throughout the story to flesh it out.


Plus, those people miss out on awesome stuff like this:

Or this:

( These are my favorite song and skit from a children's show in Britain called Horrible Histories which is fantastic. Sadly, it is not available here in America. I suggest looking it up on Youtube, it is both hilarious and informative)

When Your Mind Plays Tricks on You

Earlier this week, my husband and I celebrated our seven-year wedding anniversary. I can still remember the special details of that day – the look on my husband’s face when we saw each other for the first time, my dress, our first dance, the cake (I love cake with all of my heart - almost as much as I love my husband).

The thing I was most excited about was walking down the aisle. I had dreamed of that moment for years and I knew exactly the music I wanted – Canon in D. I love how it starts out softly, but by the end it’s practically soaring.

When the big day arrived, I was so excited and nervous. I spent hours getting ready, making sure every single curl stayed right where it was supposed to, my tiara was on straight, and my something old, new, borrowed and blue were in place. Finally, it was time to start the ceremony. I stood arm-in-arm with my dad outside of the sanctuary, anxiously waiting for the moment we could start walking. After what felt like forever, the ushers opened the doors. The music swelled as we started our walk. At the end of the aisle was my husband-to-be, looking just as excited as I felt. I sailed down the aisle with my dad, blinking back tears and smiling as he escorted me to the love of my life. It was perfect.

A few months later, my husband and I decided to watch our wedding video. I couldn’t wait to hear how the music sounded. But something wasn’t right. In my short walk down the aisle there were tempo changes, missed notes, and one very awkward three-second pause.

“What’s wrong with the video?” I exclaimed. “That’s not what it sounded like on our wedding day.”

My husband looked at me like I was nuts. “That’s exactly what it sounded like. It was terrible.”

He was right. It was terrible. But I’d been so excited, my mind made it sound how I wanted it to.

I have a tendency to fall into this trap when I’m writing. I’ll get so caught up in a scene that I don’t take that step back to remind myself that the reader is not in my head and I have to paint him/her a clear picture. If I don’t, I risk jarring him/her with missed notes and tempo changes. I’ve imagined a whole world filled with characters, but I can’t put everything about them in my story. If I did, my characters would never be able to get anything done. But what does get into the story has to be consistent.

I struggle with this problem even more after I start revising – did I leave that earlier part in that affects this later part? Or did I take it out? How can this character jump from a castle window to the ground below when earlier I had him swimming across a moat to escape?! Why did this character’s name switch spellings after chapter 3?!

I’ve noticed that like the situation with my wedding video, these little issues seem to pop when I’ve spent time away from my book. When that happens, it usually doesn’t take too much effort to fix them.  

It also helps to have critique buddies that pay very close attention to the details!

I have a Dream of Knives and Words

My sister graduated Saturday. As I watched my little sister cross that stage to shake the hand of school officials and receive her diploma I was reminded of when I walked across that stage. The only thought running through my head was, "Please don't trip. Please don't trip. Please don't trip. Don't look at the crowd," (Even though I had performed on stage before being an orchestra student, I still didn't like the attention)

After that stressful part of the ceremony, after realizing that I was finally done, I thought about what life would hold for me know. No longer was I bound by the school structure. My dreams were there in front of me, just waiting for me to grab them.

Now, I haven't really achieved all my dreams yet, and some I probably never will. But that doesn't stop me from thinking of them from time to time. So, here are a few of my dreams:

Write a book- Always there. No matter what scenario I put myself in, I was always a sideline author or full time writer. Writing was always a part of my life.

Become a Zoologist- Sadly, this one was left behind in my childhood. But because I wanted to at one point, my thirst and love of the Animal Kingdom has never been forgotten.

Have a personal Library- I'm working on this one. I have a bookshelf overflowing, two totes under my bed, a stack in my closet, a drawer full, and random piles of books everywhere.

Learn archery- I don't mean with today's compound bows (they are ugly) but with traditional bows (longbow, recurve that sort of thing) I would also love to learn to throw knives/fence.

Travel the world- I've a pretty good start on this one, though I have yet to make it out of the country.

I have other little odds and ends I would like to do and see, but  these are the ones that I keep constantly in mind. If we lose sight of our dreams, then it seems like the world has grown dimmer around us. But with our dreams, even at the edges of our minds, the world seems just that much more bright.

A Whole New World

            The setting of my current WIP (a YA Fantasy) is something that I’ve come to think of as “vaguely medieval.” By that I mean there are some elements of magic set in somewhat medieval times, but I took some liberties with styles of speech, etc.

            Creating your own world can be both exhilarating and terrifying. What do people eat? How do they dress? I filled my world with some things most people would probably expect to see in YA Fantasy – castles, kings and queens, spell-casting wizards, knights, travel by horseback.  

            Then there were some things that popped into the pages that I hadn’t thought through.

            Throughout the story, characters reference angels, hell, etc. Not a lot, but enough. I hadn’t even thought about it when I was writing the story. But after reading a few chapters, one of my friends pointed out that if I had created a new world, how would they know about the Christian faith?

            Well. I guess they probably wouldn’t.

So do I leave the references in? Make up a different religion? But religion isn’t really central to the plot of the story. I don’t want to spend five pages explaining the religious beliefs of a people I made up. I’ve got a story to tell! So do I not mention religion at all? But all cultures have some sort of religion, right?

This friend also told me I kept describing the passage of time in terms of hours, seconds, minutes.

            Guess what? Not a thing in medieval times. Gotta figure out a different way.

            This is what I struggle with.

            Turns out that the excitement of creating a whole new world is counteracted with the difficulty of putting something together that’s consistent without turning into just a bunch of stuff I cobbled together. I don’t want to get into such crazy world building that my story gets lost in the details of the setting. I’m not writing high fantasy. This is not an epic journey requiring the aid of four maps, a translation guide, and an index on the history of the kingdom in order to understand the story.

But I don’t want to lose credibility with my readers for not looking like I at least tried.  

The words I use will (hopefully) conjure clear pictures for my readers. If I write, “A princess sits on her throne,” you’re going to be able to picture that in your head. If I write, “A snarthox sits on her gammawatts…” well, nobody knows what that is because I just made it up. It’s so much easier to use the first description if that’s the general idea I’m trying to get across.

            Obviously I’m not going to say “everything about this world is exactly like medieval times, except there are flying cars and everyone addresses each other as “bro.” No one heats up a Hot Pocket for lunch, goes to happy hour, or asks the king if he knows the score of the Yankees game. But I’m having trouble finding that happy medium. Little pieces of modern times keep managing to sprout up no matter how hard I try to weed them out.

            And maybe there is no happy medium. At the end of the day, I have to do what is true to my story. Just writing out my feelings on the subject has been very therapeutic (as writing seems to be quite often!)

            What I’ve been doing so far is trying to keep things as consistent as possible. I don’t want my dialogue to be exactly the way people talked in medieval times – obviously I want to keep it clear of modern slang, but it would change the whole tone of the story. I’m trying to keep it light. But I don’t want people to read it and think ‘light’ means ‘the author is too lazy to do her research.’ If I don’t know something, I try to research it as best as I can and then move forward with the story.

           

Inspiration

On Saturday, my sister (who is a senior this year) had an art gallery at the high school. There were a lot of talented artists there, and I was impressed by some of the pieces. And sometimes I wondered at what influenced them.

Living in the same with an artist is difficult. Well, it is when it's my sister. Art supplies are strewn everywhere, at times the room smells strongly of paint, and it looks like a fire hazard. But in spite of this, I love her art and  encourage her in it.

She gets inspired mostly by actors or tv shows. (or whatever happens to be floating in her brain) As a result there is a lot of Doctor Who and anime.

A Painting of Kyo
It's my favorite birthday present from my sister

And that got me thinking. What am I inspired by, in my writing?

Music, books, movies, art, they all inspire me. Either with a character, or scene, or even plot line. History inspires me a lot as well, because sometimes the real thing is stranger than fiction.

Basically anything and everything could have the potential to inspire. Living life, liking things, going new places, trying out hobbies they all can have an impact on your writing.