(no subject)

[ismenin]

Giggles. Forty four years ago, I looked like this. Tempus Fugit. :D Clickie on pic for the biggah.


New Year's resolution - to post more. So there.


Does any other writer of fic write the way I do? It tickles me, but this is the way I do it...

Picture the scene. Elijah is talking to Dom, telling him a sad story, sitting on a wall, on the bridge at Beauvallet. He has just finished his tale, when, suddenly, a rider approaches. It is a messenger.

I stop there for my afternoon snooze, cos I'm knackered. I have no idea who the messenger is, or why he has come, what he will say, or what the DomLijah will do or say about it.
All I do know, is when I pick up my pencil, (I type with a pencil) to resume my story, I'll find out what is going on.

I feel guilty sometimes when folks tell me they storyboard everything, and have copious notes, and research stuff. If I had to do that, I'd never write anything. The only things I might look up are a few names apposite to the period I'm writing in. I rely on my memory, I'm too tired to do more!

And I feel a fraud when people say how meticulously researched my stories are. They are not. I write from memory, as I said, and I write from periods in time I like. But I always make them Alternate Reality (not Alternate Universes, my DomLijah are not on the planet Zog). I do this because if I want Lij to be Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, I don't want someone telling me, in humungously long detail, that they didn't have such-and-such in the Seventh Dynasty, or that there was no pharaoh named Knefer-Lijedifer. :D

Of course, all comments and suggestions on my stuff are welcome. If I make a boo-boo, I like to be told about it, and I will put it right, if I think it a valid point. So if you see stuff you aren't sure of, do tell. I might explain why I want it there, or I might change it, just for you!

For example, if they'd had no potatoes, patate - a conflation of the Quechua word papa, and the Indian word, batata, in Peru in the 1500's, I'd have looked pretty daft, at least in my own eyes, and I don't like looking daft.
Being an AR, of course, it doesn't matter whether they had potatoes or not, but I like to try to get it right. They had thousands of different types of potatoes, though. Even now, there are more than four thousand sorts.
Mind-blowing, isn't it?

In my present story, I have things they did not have in England in the twelfth century. Mainly because a) I like them there (e.g., strawberries) and b) I want them there! That's me! Besides, Elijah and Barebone both were in Outremer, and brought things back, and have access through trading ship, to exotic goodies. (In case I fancy Turkish Delight, later on! Mmmm!)

So there. That's usually how I write. I sit down, and write what comes, and I stop, having no idea what comes next, until I sit down again at the keyboard.

I'd be interested to learn how the other writers out there compose their stories. Feel free to join in. :D