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 |   Maybe meandering, possibly peripatetic and indisputably irregular. |
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So here it is.. a blog. Repository of some of my present musings and interests. Sometimes things pop into my head that should probably stay there - it is possible I shall share at least some of them here. (Naturally I shall filter out the ones about my sordid obsession with the culinary dark arts, one has to protect the innocent!) Please feel free not to take this too seriously, much of it could wind up being snippets of things that amuse me. Yesterday I came up with this: Few politicians can be considered first class, but not a few are number twos. What can I do with it? Nothing springs to mind, except perhaps blog it. Perhaps in some other life I'm a failed stand-up comedian. I have the beginnings of an idea to introduce another player into the Mr Moonlight story, a nice visual has occurred to me, and a summoning gone wrong seems appropriate. When I finish up here I shall literally put pen to paper. I find writing at least initially longhand helps my ideas flow. When I type up what I've written, I give it a first revision at the same time, and as a bare minimum check my spellings and grammar . I do want to keep tabs on my current reading here. I usually have several books on the go at the same time. Currently I am working through 'Pyramids' by Terry Pratchett. I reread Pratchett's books over and over - usually at work where they provide much needed amusement whilst I eat breakfast. 'The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle', by Stuart Turton was loaned to me by a friend who shares a love of murder mysteries, (especially Agatha Christie's works). It is a new take on the genre and very very clever. The protagonist occupies different bodies - a selection of the guests at the house where Evelyn is murdered. Each day he spends in a different guest, and he has been tasked with discovering the murderer - or maybe saving Evelyn from actually being murdered, it is hard to tell. The book twists and turns and is quite intriguing. 'New Science - Principles of the new science concerning the common nature of nations' is an English translation by David Marsh of 'La Scienza Nuova' by Giambattista Vico, published in 1725. Not far into this yet, I had to find a copy of the frontispiece online, as it wasn't included in the Kindle edition. The first part of the book explains the idea - and uses a detailed description of the frontispiece to convey this. So being without it would have made things somewhat harder. 'The Complete Works of Michael De Montaigne' is again a translation, this time by Donald M. Frame. Montaigne's Essays are famous, I kept reading about them, so treated myself to a nice hardbound copy to dip into - usually just before bedtime. So there we have it - a blog entry - enjoy! (whispers almost inaudibly 'Bon Appétit). |
| Finally I have read all of Herodotus' 'Histories'. It has taken me many many years to get around to this, and two false starts. I feel very happy about it. A lot of it was frankly a slog to read. Some of it was very interesting, and my overall impression is that I'm glad I don't live in those times any more, they were extremely barbaric. Ah yes, I wondered if you'd catch that one. Histories was just one of a ten volume list of books that I made on 6th July 2022. I hope to get to finish all of them. Oh well, one down and nine to go. I may choose one of the easier ones to try next. Perhaps Brain Story, by Susan Greenfield. Overall though, my reading is very much back on course. Kindle informs me that I have read every day for 367 days, and every week for 104 weeks. I have picked off a lot of the books that were bought on a whim and then not read. It was bugging me. Overall I feel personally a lot better than I sometimes do. Getting things done tends to do that. Today I looked at a story I began years ago. I have over twenty chapters written. Not sure how good any of them are - they aren't posted in WDC by the way, so this isn't a covert plea for reviews. The chapter I read was fun, I'd completely forgotten writing it. Writing has been on my mind a lot recently. I'm wrestling with how to write better characters. That is - how to make them seem more realistic? Although randomly assigning them personality traits is a possibility, I see this as generally unhelpful. I have been thinking that everyone in a story really needs to have a point to being there. That is - they need to support the plot. Or do they? Can someone just be in a story so that it isn't 'flat'? I have considered taking each character and imagining how would the story read if they were the protagonist? What makes them tick? What do they think and or feel about each of the other people in the story? What do they care about - what do they do - both as work and as a hobby or as an obsession. It seems an enormous task to think about it all, especially as generally speaking I like to write and see where it takes me, and look up details as I go along for verisimilitude. I haven't reached any conclusions, but I do know that I have at least three part developed works that I have written several thousand words of apiece. It would be very satisfying to take any one of them up again and move them forwards to a conclusion. I've even considered going through the October Prep steps again for one of them. I can finish things - and I can work consistently on things - i have done so successfully more than once. Now I want to work (more) onpicking up where I left off, and finishing a longer work. |
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). I mostly reject that. I'm eating rice with an egg this morning but Pannya just brought me chocolate milk from 7/11 (bless him; I really don't need it).
