Rambling and nattering on.

Hi Folks,

It has been a challenging time for me. Back to school has been exhausting. The biggest hurdle, however, has been my mental health. After feeling somewhat better, but anxious, I have slipped into another depressive episode. I was talking with Beloved about how I was worried it was going to turn into the same kind of mess that last year was. I was (and, honestly, still am) very concerned that the depression was basically going to kill all of my writing projects.

I gave the bitter argument that no one wanted to read about struggling with depression. He looked at me and said that writing is one of my coping mechanisms. He also said that I should write for myself and if I choose to post it on a blog, then I should not worry about what other people had to say about it. It was something that I spent a good part of my evening thinking about last night and tonight. When things hit the point of 'I have to write SOMETHING or give up the blog.' in my head, I started transferring old reading journal posts.

I honestly can't say that the writer's group meeting on the 20th went well. I'm not sure if it is because I went in there anticipating problems and took every small sign of looking at me in askance as a sign of rejection. I'm not sure if it is because I have a legitimate reason to be anxious about some of the members. Or if it is just because I was having a bad day. Social phobia and past trauma combined with depression plays unpleasant games with your brain and your perception of the world. As such, I am going to give it one more try at the next meeting.

It is on the 4th of October. My guts are already roiling and the social phobic part of my brain is saying I should just not go because nothing good will come of it. I think part of my discomfort is the fact that I was the youngest person there by a solid 30 years. It makes my skin crawl because it brings back memories of past writing groups that were just plain creepy. (Some of them were creepy by the virtue of the excited exuberance of having a teen/young adult in the group where the median age is around 60. Others were creepy on the basis of some genuinely ... disturbing members. I left those ones in short order, where as the ones where I was the youngest person there by over 30 years were harder due to the fact that my Grandmother was so excited to have me go with her and my choice was to go or deal with some problematic stuff at home. As a teen, the way out of the house was always my choice.)

I have been finding myself extra anxious about social interaction on-line. I am fairly sure that this is just a natural extension of my anxiety about social interaction at large and the fact that a vast amount of my social interaction is via the internet right now. I am attempting to correct the inclination to basically hide with my bad feelings and bad thoughts when I can't fake being perfectly fine. It gets tough, though, because I have this idea that no one wants to read bad news or about someone's struggles. (Perverse humor in this is obvious considering my primary genre in fiction. I am not immune to irony, it seems.)

So, I am going to attempt to write more. I can't promise it is going to be what it was like before. It may be like this post today. Or, it may be something along the topics that I try to schedule for the day. Some days, there may even be things going on with format here when I feel up to wrestling with that. I have this idea in my head about how this thing should look. It is hard right now for me to translated it from brain fluff to words or even images right now. Scumbag brain is running interference right now. I kinda hate that guy.

But, I'll try to be back soon.

Book Review: Our Cosmic Habitat

Title: Our Cosmic Habitat
Author: Martin Rees
Publisher: Princston University Press Date: 2001

Already, I've finished the preface, the first chapter, and I'm half way through chapter two. This book is oriented much more towards the "lay man" physicist. It's a lower level then Hawking's work and doesn't posess the same ambitious drive to educate. It presents a more toned down and an effort to describe the current state of cosmology.

I'm a little over half way through this book and I'm rather bored. I clearly can see that this does not challenge my understanding of modern physics or cosmology. This is a primer for the newly introduced compared to Hawking's work. It's a bit of a disappointment.

I'm now 2/3rd (roughly) through the text and I'm woefully bored with it. I believe that I'm going to set this aside and work on something else.

[Note: As an introductory book, it is excellently written. If you can make it through highschool physics and a pre-calculus class, then you can get through this book easily. If you managed chemistry with out too much pain and higher level algerbra/geometry, then the book will be challenging. It seems to be a 11th grade reading level book, roughly.]

Original Publication Date: Mar. 25, 2002
Original Notation Dates: Nov. 2002

Book Review: When God Was A Woman

 Title: When God Was A Woman
Author: Merlin Stone
Publisher: Dial Press Date: 1976

This presents a pseudo-academic argument with it's political agenda clearly present. Yet, it does bespeak of a reasonable amount of scholarship. It is unfortunate that the author remains so heavily focused on the "matriarchal/matrifocal golden age" myth. It colors her work very much and takes what was very good and actually facinating archeological, anthropological, and historical research and puts a very heavy bias on the presentation. While I do agree that the Indo-Aryan invasion did bring great changes, I can not accept that the pre-invasion period was peaceful.

Also, it is very difficult for me to accept the premise that during the Paleolithic and Neolithic period that there was this Great Goddess cult, the feminine version of the Judeo-Christian religion essentially. Nor, I must say, that said cult was spread across the world. While there are varios iconographic simmilarities through out the world cultures at that stage of development, the Goddesses worshiped were clearly very different. I belive there are stages to the deveopment of human society, and with these stages there are sub-stages that they go through. The development of religion/spirituality and iconography to accompany it is clearly one.

I'm again inclined to questions the connections drawn between the various groups. The structure of the ancient Hebrews, the Indo-Aryans, and the Bramhins of Hinduism, is only simmilar on the surface. The imagry of fire-gods, storm-gods, and divine power expressed as a cataclysmic natural event/force was/is not esclusive to the Indo-Aryan race that swet through the Persian, Caracas/Balkins and Indian regions. This same structure, including an aristocratic priestly class can be foudn through out the world. It can even be found in our more "advanced" culture of the "Western" world. Hence, the rights and privilages ascribed to clergy of nationally recognized religions and the local belief systems interplay with politics. Areas where a particular branch of Christianity are of signifigant majority (or presence) will be influence to act in accordance with the ethos of said sect.

I believe that Stone is engagend in wishful thinking. Much like those who insist that the development of the theories of modern physics is dependend on the study of oriental culture and religion. I suspect the use of such arguments is due to a lack of knowledge of the philosophical and logical roots of european thought. Stone could really have built the argument better if the emphasis wasn't so heavily placed on a particular premise. A premise that the author did not state to be a primary point in her argument.

If Stone built her argument, focused it on the different points from the outset rather then developing contet, it would be a more concrete text. On the whole, a very engaging work. Well written, though I don't agree with the premises entirely. Very good research. I was disappointed that the points that cultural links between the Levite priests and the Hittites weren't developed. With how Stone presents them, it looks like they're a combination of circumstancial research and conjecture. 

It is a good start, however, in a field of writing that was just developing at the time.

Original Publication Date: Mar. 25, 2006
Original Notation Dates: Nov. 2002

I'm going to do WHAT?

So, the social phobe author is going on an adventure right in her own backyard. The Livingston County Writers and Poets club is meeting tomorrow at the Chip Holt Nature Center. This is literally right around the corner from my house. I'm more than a little nervous about this. That said, I recognize it would really do me a great deal of good to go and have something resembling a social life.

I am planning on bringing my bullet journal and my writing journal. I'm leaving the morning pages stuff at home because that is the sort of thing I'm supposed to not share with people. It's like my daily journal (and interestingly the content is shifting in that direction too despite my efforts to stay focused on writing in there). Both are private and generally not something to let most anyone view.

Wish me luck or something. If it goes well, I'll be attending both meetings on a given month (first and third Wednesday of the month). I just worry that it is going to be a situation where I'm the youngest person in the room and I completely don't fit in at all. Because social phobia says this would be a horrible thing and I should just give up before I try. Scumbag brain is getting medicated for this jaunt.

My work on rebuilding plot maps is slowly progressing. Other things have been getting in the way today, like paying bills and dealing with papers. Because not everything is going to be about writing, yanno? Next Tuesday, I will have the next installment of The Iron Lily up. The following Tuesday, I should have the next installment of Dacia's War, provided everything goes according to plan.

Craft of Writing: Organize and Attack with Mind Bullets!

I am adjusting my bullet journal and how I approach writing again. It seems to be a thing that I am going to do regularly. This is not a bad thing, just time consuming. Still, as I work on this, I am finding the creative well is beginning to fill up again. Perhaps the biggest change that I have made over the last few weeks is just making a point of dedicating a solid two hours everyday to journal writing. Spending that time focusing on myself is actually helping me find my voice again. A fantastic thing when you have been in a writing slump, to be honest.

In the pic below, I changed my layout a little bit. The weekly work log is divided up into three sections. The one at the extreme left is morning, the middle is afternoon, and the final is evening. I am also now adding appointments in so that I can keep better track of time spent on things. I also deliberately added blogging to my list of daily tasks. As I am having some difficulty staying on top of work for different books, I added a section noting my major things to get done this week on that front as well.

I am still in the process of getting plot maps done. It has been frustrating work, but this is what happens when I don't write down what I was planning and I have to back track to figure out what to do. I did have a brainstorm Friday night when I was out picking up takeout for dinner and found my way out of one plot hole. Maybe I'll get lucky and find another bolt of inspiration to resolve other plot holes.

Summer's End: Harvest Festivals of Evandar

Image from Pexels.com

The autumn is a season of harvest. While the harvest of the world of Evandar is far more labor intensive than harvest in much of the real world, it is a time of largess and celebration (when the harvest is good). For the people of Evandar, autumn is considered to begin with the first major harvest of the major crop of the region.

Generally, this is the wheat or other grains that were planted as late in the last year as possible so that there is grain growing as soon as all is thawed. The practice was one that the people of northern Evandar developed to compensate for the challenges of the growing season in that mountainous region.

The first harvest celebration is known only as First Harvest. It is celebrated when the final field of early, ripe grain is harvested. A corn dolly is made and left standing in the field to draw the attention of mischievous spirits to the field rather than the places where the grain is stored. Sometimes, the corn dolly will be paraded around the field with great ceremony and people trying to douse the dolly with water. The general tone of the celebration is joyful. This is also a time when many marriages take place because the harvest is considered to be an auspicious time for weddings and they have no reached the time where multiple things are due for harvesting.

The second harvest celebration is a few weeks later. The second full moon of autumn is known as the Harvest Moon and under the light of it (and by the light of bonfires) there will be harvesting done out in the fields. At the same time, however, there are races, feasting, and celebrating. The Harvest Moon celebration is also one of the ones that is focused on fertility. A pregnant woman will be chosen as the Harvest Queen and sit upon a throne of sorts. She will for the evening outrank local nobility and, later, rule the time between Harvest Moon and the final celebration. The Harvest Queen is housed in the local noble's home as an important guest. When the final celebration comes, the Harvest Queen is sent back to her home with a chest that holds the donations and gifts of homage that she received. (Most often, the gifts and such are things that she would need to care for her child and manage her household.)

The final harvest celebration comes after the first frost that lasts beyond sunrise. This is known as the Cold Harvest. Some also call it the Blood Harvest. During this final harvest time, herds are thinned and meat is prepared for storage. Where the other celebrations are filled with joy and excitement, the Cold Harvest is a time of great solemnness. The Harvest Queen kills the first fatted stock animal with an invocation that the animal's death be taken by the bane-workers (the deamons) and the animal's blood keep their thirsty lips away from human throats.

Serial Stories Update!

Hi folks!

The major depressive episode that was approximately a year long is finally gone. Unfortunately, I've rather lost the thread of where I was going with both of the stories. This week, I am in the process of back tracking through the past installments. My goals are to reestablish what the plot was that I had been working on and to build upon it to get things moving forward again.

It may sound odd but these two very different stories are connected. And they connect to the main stories of the Umbrel Chronicles. In fact, there are going to be two major characters from books six and seven showing up once I reach the place that it makes sense for it to happen. There will be some other easter eggs between the serial stories and the novels. This is something that I do have fairly clear recollection of planning on doing.

The challenge is to recover what the mechanics of said eggs was going to be. Right now, they're scrambled. They say you can't unscramble an egg. A chemist once told me that with sufficient resources, it would be entirely possible to do so by way of breaking protein bonds. Now, what does this have to do with my stories? Precious little, because advanced chemistry is not a thing yet in this fictional world. But, if it is possible to unscramble an egg with proper resources and time, it is possible for me to unscramble my plot lines too.

I do have one other thing to add to today's post. I want to apologize for how whiny Halthor has been. It wasn't my plan for him to be at that point, but the character is morphing. I am realizing that there are some deeper unresolved issues that he is going to be struggling with along side the original adventure/mischief of fate plot line. Hopefully, I will get a better handle on it and try to move Halthor from the 'teenage angst' position to 'struggling adult' position instead. Because he's not a youth and his personality was supposed to be more goal oriented and classic hero stature, with a few twists. This take on the Hero's Journey is not quite going as I planned.

Oh, before I forget, y'all are going to love to hate Al-Uzza. She is based on some individuals I have known in the past with their worst traits mashed into one person. But, don't worry, unlike some others in this universe, she is going to get exactly what she deserves for her malarkey.

Have a wonderful evening!

♥

Flora et Fauna: Bestiary & Herbal.

Hi folks!

I have vaguely talked about how I wanted to make an herbal manuscript in the style of the Voynich manuscript and other medieval documents. I have made similar statements regarding a bestiary. Today, I have begun assembling my supplies and making decisions on how to work things. The bestiary and the herbal are going to be in two basic black bound sketchbooks that you can pick up pretty much anywhere art supplies are sold.

I am still deciding between the different types of tools I want to use for illustration. While I love the vividness of the pens I have, I feel like they would not blend well with the medieval style. I have pencils, but I feel that they are too soft in coloration. I am still trying to pick the best way to put the color to the images. I have some very rough ideas of how to approach this. I am tempted to get my hands on some tempera paints and use them. After all,when the medieval documents were created, the colors were very vivid.

I know how to handle the text. I am going to be using a dip pen for this. The text is going to be written up in a script that I am in the process of developing. I think that the text is going to be the hardest part of this project. I will, however, be putting it forth in English. Specifically, it is going to be a polyglot of English from multiple eras, up to and including Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and early Modern English. This is going to be challenging, but I think it is going to ultimately be easier than using the language that I am still in the process of developing.

I will be adding to the images I post of these things a 'translation' of the text pictured. It will be using the spellings as fitting for the period that I am drawing from and include at times some lesser known letters such as thorn ( Þ ). Incidents where I am using unfamiliar to modern eyes spellings, I will include the modern spelling beside it in brackets and different colored font.

This is going to be a huge project. But, I think it will serve me well to get me back into the swing of describing this world. First images, ideally, will be done some time next week.This will be accredited to a character in the series and I will be the 'translator' of the document. Because I am a dork like that.

Craft of Writing: Bullet Journal manipulation & stuff.

So, the last several weeks have been exhausting and chaos. Having both boys going back to school on Wednesday is a glorious thing and I hope to get a lot of stuff done. This hope has lead me to sit down and revise my Bullet Journal layout for the week. It still has the essential elements from the last two I shared.

I have added, however, a second page. The page is divided up into seven sections. Obviously, one section for each day. It is where I am going to use the 'rapid logging' technique from standard Bullet Journal practices to note what writing I get done on a given day. This is to keep track of two things. First, I want to keep some kind of record how much writing I am doing on a given day. I want to get an idea as to where my writing time is getting spent. If I am spending my writing session derping around on Facebook and Pinterest, I really want to catch that and correct it.

Secondly, I want to get a picture of what writing I am doing. I know this sounds just about the same as what I just said. The thing here is that I have a really wide range of topics that I am writing about. It is hard right now for me to tell where I need to do more work and where I can trim back my word count expectations. My goal is three fold on adjusting blog posts. First, I want to get back to posting consistently across all of my blogs. Second, I want to have my posts be of higher quality. And, finally, I want my blog posts to be a more efficient means of expressing what I have in mind.

So, this is why I made the adjustments to my weekly set up in my Bullet Journal. It is a small thing but it seems to be small changes that are allowing me to make forward progress. I am trying to focus on progress instead of perfection. I saw a thing on Facebook where they were encouraging people to focus on just 'do the thing' instead of trying to make it meet some nebulous idea of perfection. The argument is that perfection is not possible. Improvement, however, only happens when we do the thing many times and focus on completing the task.

I am shifting how I have my planning pages for my blogs set up. Up until today, I had them all together in one binder. Each one had its own set of colored pages and was divided into their own sections. Theoretically, this was the most organized method that I could have. Unfortunately, that big binder was big enough to be difficult to use. This resulted in little to no planning. I considered shifting blog planning into my Bullet Journal but remembered, again, that having everything together in some kind of mishmash really was the reason why I was separating things out.

Now, we have a bit of a glut of school supplies at my place. I took my multicolored paper and put it into folders for each individual little stack. Next, I am going to sit down and make a few adjustments to how I am planning on those stacks of paper. Right now, everything is just listed on the page. There is no outlines. Just vague topic notes. I have come to the conclusion that outlines are going to be necessary if I am going to actually get anything done. (By the way, this means more material coming for Dacia's War and the Iron Lily over the next few weeks. This week is a set-up week where I am trying to make things more user friendly.)

The biggest irony right now, however, is that I look at my stock pile of notebooks and I feel torn as to if I should grab one to start writing down a 'book bible' for the series that I am writing. I catch myself worrying some about this turning into a fiasco with a random pile of notebooks with a few entries in there and nothing more. This was sort of how things turned out the last time I attempted this level of organization. That, however, was almost 20 years ago and I was in the middle of figuring out what the hell I was doing at college.

I have obviously learned some things. My anxiety is understandable given how the last year has been for me. I am not going to give up. I have worked too hard to get to where I am now. And I still have a story to finish. (A story that is going to be approximately 20 books if I keep going at the rate I am with these books thus far.) I am turning 37 this year. I can't afford to let myself run in circles going 'what if I screw [XYZ] up?' and coming up with as many catastrophic images of disaster as I can think of. The last year was full of that. A good amount of it came from brain chemistry being off kilter. That's been addressed now. So, it is time to get back to work.