The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Wander here, wander there, I will wander everywhere

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

 

CC/Dan4th

CC/Dan4th

Take grey, rainy Sundays where the sky will either break into blue or descend as powerful drops.

 

Add one day off, a pair of Sperry Topsiders, the city of Boston and a bored writer.

What is the result?

Wandering through areas I know well, and neighborhoods with interesting buildings is a perfect way to spend the afternoon. I’ve wanted to see the Rose Garden for a while now, having sprinted passed it a couple of months ago, so I figured today would be as good a day as any. The same goes with the Fenway Victory Gardens. Feeling bold, I walked amongst the gardens, peering into them and snapping a few pictures.

The creativity of others is inspiring. A few lines for poetry snuck into my head as I viewed hidden garden after hidden garden.

Where is she?

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I haven’t updated lately because I’m working at my college; free time is next to nonexistent.

I’ll be back home in a little over a week; updates will actually occur.

Goals for the summer:

Work

Blog more often

Work on first draft of The Continent

Maybe let you all know what The Continent is all about sooner or later

Interview TC main character Livius for the blog.

No end in sight. A bit of a problem for short stories.

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Do you need to know where you’ll end up before starting your journey?

No, I’m not philosophizing. I’m planning.

I’ve come up with a few ideas for short stories, but I don’t know how to end them. A wee problem, eh? I’m afraid to start writing, as I want these stories to be short. Maybe flash length. Gershdernit.

Short stories, fairy tales and writer’s block

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

They’re slipping from my fingers. Plots, characters, dainty ideas and robust ones. Try as I may, I fear that I cannot hold onto them, or bend them to my will.

As The Continent is still in its planning phases, I decided to work on some short stories and maybe some flash fiction (stories under 1000 words). But as I put my pen to paper, I have nothing.

Could it be that I’m just out of practice? Despite writing daily for over a year (not to mention those years through high school and early college), I haven’t composed much in terms of completed stories, only the novel and three quarters of a rather blah fan fic. I need practice with pulling together a tight story. Why does my Muse abandon me like this?

On the plus side, I’ve decided to do “research”, otherwise known as reading a whole lot, and hoping that some good comes of it. There’s no one quite like Ray Bradbury when it comes to short stories.

Names, names, glorious names!

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

For days, I’ve been meaning to look up more Dutch, French and Italian names to populate The Continent.

I finally got around to it, and rediscovered my favorite name site(s):

Behind the Name and Surnames.

These sites are particularly helpful. They collect and sort names from different cultures (including seperate sections for mythologies and “ancient”) with pronounciations, meanings and statistics.

Writing with some foreign words

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I love other languages. I took German in middle school (not to mention smatterings of Russian, French and Spanish), Spanish in High School and Italian in college, plus several failed attempts to teach myself Welsh.

CC/ Unprose

CC/ Unprose

Doesn’t work.

Anyways, I like having characters of different nationalities, and using expressions/words to convey that. In The Continent, Liv is Dutch (no, his first name isn’t Dutch, but his family has a naming system they follow religiously).

Anyways, I thought it would be cool if various vessals had names in their home languages. The ship Liv served on ( briefly) is called The Beacon.

I looked it up in Dutch.

Baken. Baken. Bacon.

Although, I have also found “Baak” as another translation. I think I may go with this one.