Why you should keep writing . . .
As Ann Aguirre wrote on Writers Unboxed last month, writing as a profession is all about rejection. Rumor has it that it’s possible to have your book snapped up by the first agent you send it to (Stephanie Meyer, anyone?), but if that’s not your name, that’s probably not you. It certainly isn’t me. I started writing fiction five years ago, dabbling in short stories and poetry, until I settled down to write my first novel, just to see if I could. It was a fantasy—complete with elves, swords, and magic stones—and I wrote the whole thing in six weeks while my infant son was napping. While I wasn’t so naïve as to think I’d finished it just because I’d typed ‘the end’, I edited it only twice before I let other people read it. A writer friend told me Read more…
The Anam Cara
The role of the anam cara or ‘soul friend’ in Celtic pre-Christian religion appears to have been that of a spiritual advisor. While much of the language today is from the neo-pagan/new age spiritual tradition, the anam cara does seem to be rooted in history. This post is a product of a long discussion with a hospital chaplain (waiting for my husband’s colonoscopy–all is well). We shared an interest in history and Celtic people, and he brought up the existence of the ‘anam cara’. He stated that within the pre-Christian tradition among the Celts, the ‘anam cara’ was a spirituall leader or ‘soul friend’ who saw a person through birth (even perhaps, as a midwife), maturity, and death. ‘Anam cara’ were true spiritual advisors. With the coming of Christianity, the Catholic church encountered significant resistance against conformity to Rome and one Read more…
Man’s Inhumanity to Man
Man was made to mourn: A Dirge, by Robert Burns Many and sharp the num’rous ills Inwoven with our frame! More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame! And Man, whose heav’n-erected face The smiles of love adorn, – Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! The following article from March 14, details the attacks in Lagos, Nigeria, which is one of the most war torn countries in Africa. It begins: “Nigerians woke last Sunday, to the news that more than 400 people of Dogo Nahawa community in Jos south area of Plateau state had been sent to their early graves by rampaging invaders. News of the attack spread like wildfire creating panic in parts of Jos North, which had earlier in January, witness another round of the orgy of violence that has now become and existential Read more…
Advice for New Writers
My advice is simple: just write. Sit down every day and plow ahead, with whatever word count goal you choose. And as you write, don’t think about the fact that you’ve never written anything longer than a twenty page paper and that was for a class you hated in college. Today, even if what you put on the page is terrible, no-good, the worst chapter ever inflicted on a word processing program, believe that through editing, educating yourself, and reading what other people write and say about writing, you can learn and improve. You can get better day by day—until one day you read over the two pages you managed to write the day before and think to yourself, ‘hey, that’s pretty good!’ Don’t think about publishing. It isn’t that a first or second book couldn’t be published, but that Read more…
Mount Badon / Caer Faddon (part 2)
Mount Badon, if it exists at all, should appear on the map somewhere. But where? There are many, many possibilities. First of all, we should note where Mount Badon is not. For all that Geoffrey of Monmouth embellished and expanded the Arthurian legend, he did history a disservice in supposing that King Arthur ruled all of England, Scotland and Wales. Geoffrey wrote his book under the patronage of Robert of Gloucester, who was trying to justify the rule of England by his half-sister, Maud. Thus, because Maud had roots in Normandy, so did Arthur; because Maud was hoping to rule all of Great Britain, so did Arthur; because Maud’s power base was in and around Gloucester, so was Arthur’s. Yet even in the twelfth century, for one king to control all of Great Britain by force of arms was extremely difficult. Read more…
Mount Badon
In the Arthurian legend, as well as in the historical record, Mount Badon (or Caer Baddon) is the location of Arthur’s last battle that pushed the Saxons back into England for a generation. All the literary sources, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, the last of the historical and first of the mythical, indicate its significance. This is what they have to say: Nennius: “The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur’s, and no one laid them low save he alone; and he was victorious in all his campaigns. ” Writing in 796 AD (Historia Britonum, Page 35) Annales Cambriae: “The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and Read more…
Rain (again)
The weather is one of those things that everyone talks about, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent. In the sunnier parts of the world (such as Redlands, California), people would mention the weather only if we had any, as in “we’re having some weather, aren’t we?” It was as if the normal ‘weather’, which was sunny and hot, wasn’t weather at all. Given that the 18 months we lived there we had 5 inches of rain, you can see why they might think that way. At the same time, having grown up in Western Washington and lived in Britain, weather in those places is more a matter of discussing it only when it is not raining. My husband and I have been wandering around the Olympic National Forest this week. Just up the road is Forks, Washington (of Twilight fame). Read more…
The Nature of Knowledge
To humans, learning is like breathing–it comes naturally. What a human learns, however, is not natural and depends on the needs of the individual, the time she lives in, and what is available for her to learn. A thousand years ago, ‘book’ knowledge was the province of the Church and of the elite (usually male). Over the next two hundred years, formal education became more widespread. Cambridge University, for example, was founded in 1209 by a group of men dissatisfied with Oxford. When a man went to the university, his education began with the seven liberal arts: Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. After he received his Master of Arts, he could choose to study law, medicine, philosophy, or theology, upon which he would receive his doctorate. Knowledge, however, is not necessarily just ‘book learning’. While this afternoon my Read more…
Toxic Beauty
The Associated Press reported this story two days ago: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1236916/Dying-look-good-French-kings-mistress-killed-gold-elixir-youth.html A mistress of the French King Henry II died from her beauty regime which involved drinking liquid gold, designed to prolong her youthful allure. The story reads: “The French court believed gold harnessed the power of the Sun, which would be transferred to the drinker. Alchemists often acted as apothecaries and prescribed solutions made up of gold chloride and diethyl ether.” This, of course, is hardly the first instance of toxic beauty regimens. The modern Botox injection or silicon breast implant are only two examples, but both women and men have harmed themselves–not always unknowingly–throughout history. Galena, for example, or lead sulfide, a toxic substance, has been used in kohl since ancient Egypt. This site talks about the use of lead in Ancient Rome: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.htm “Lead was a key component in Read more…
Time Travel part II
In terms of modern inventions that could be implemented in the Middle Ages, with the available technology, there are two which seemed most likely to make a difference to medieval people. The first was simple sterilization: washing hands, submersing implements and wounds in alcohol, and boiling. Just taking these precautions could decrease rates of infections as well as keeping mothers who would have otherwise died of childbed fever alive. The second is gunpowder, or rather, ‘black powder’, which is its earlier incarnation. It is made of charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate or saltpeter (found, for example, in bat guano). It had actually been invented by the mide 1200s, but wasn’t put to broad use in Europe until the mid-1300s, when it was being made on a broad scale for the English crown. To return to 1282 Wales, then, and be able produce Read more…
Twilight of Avalon Video
Anna Elliott, who posted on this blog not long ago, has just released a video for her book Twilight of Avalon, the first in a trilogy. The next book, Dark Moon of Avalon will appear in May 2010. In the meantime, enjoy her video and buy her book! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpj6WItY_Qc Twilight of Avalon: She is a healer, a storyteller, a warrior, and a queen without a throne. In the shadow of King Arthur’s Britain, one woman knows the truth that could save a kingdom from the hands of a tyrant… Ancient grudges, old wounds, and the quest for power rule in the newly widowed Queen Isolde’s court. Hardly a generation after the downfall of Camelot, Isolde grieves for her slain husband, King Constantine, a man she secretly knows to have been murdered by the scheming Lord Marche — the man who Read more…
Wisdom Teeth
Although within fiction and movies, there is a sense that hygiene was poor and few people lived into adulthood with all their teeth intact, people did care for their teeth in the Middle Ages. Herbs and mouthwashes existed that allowed people to do so: http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/teeth.html At the same time, it is certainly true that tooth extraction was extremely common, and probably one of the few means of dealing with a rotten tooth. http://www.ada.org/public/resources/history/timeline_midlage.asppeople If people didn’t care for their teeth, they lost them, as the following image clearly indicates (copyright to the British Library Board). I’ve been rereading Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series. These books are a joy to read, if only because Peters is a master of her craft and it is enjoyable to note how beautifully she strings words together. But she also writes about an area of the Read more…
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