'Bout that time, eh chaps? (FBB's thread)

Depression is a bitch.

More to the point: I've been depression's bitch for far too long.

Basically, while feeling miserable is, per se, a fount from which history tells of many a writer has supped and gone on to create masterpieces, it's not the base emotion of depression.

Apathy is.

Cold, grey, quiet, smothering apathy.

And it's pretty much the best (worst?) poison you could manufacture to stay a person's writing efforts. Forget drink (Hemmingway swore by it), forget drugs (Hendrix's Purple Haze? The Beatles' Glass Onion?), forget death (well okay, maybe not death. That said, Tolkien's Silmarillion has done alright, no?); apathy is the real killer of the creative work.

That said, I've decided to try and chip away at some of the writing goals I have by committing to writing a little each day (just a tiny amount-- 100 words per day, for starters) on some of the incidental/peripheral stories surrounding the larger world I've been creating; sort of like the tales of Middle Earth's peoples that Tolkien wove prior (and during, and after) to writing LotR. The aim is to help massage out some of the lumpier areas of the story while simultaneously thawing my own apathy towards capturing, with words, the strains of flavoured colour I hear in my mind.

So, um, yes. The plan, over the coming weeks/months/etc., is to post up a chunk of story (either a shorter, self-contained story or else a slightly longer one over several installments) every few days or so. I hereby give people permission to bug me on my profile if I haven't posted anything within a week of the last time I posted in this thread (you can bug me here more often than that, but expect things to be about once every 3-4 days, irrespective of in-thread bugging ).

[Next post due: ~12/07]

 

So, best intentions aside, RL business (helping open a B&B) and exhaustion/depression (can't tell which some days) have screwed over most of my attempts at writing. That said, I have actually begun and thus can (somewhat) sate your curiosity, @icemusher. (It's only the opening paragraph, soz, but it should give you an idea of where this first tale is going + an initial feel for the world I'm hammering together.)

Also, you people are getting a 1st/2nd draft, so it'll be understandably a bit rough. I'm just looking to see if I'm getting the story across clearly at this point, not so fussed about how pretty the prose is. (If anything, it's too verbose atm. Needs a good trimming down in the edit cycle. )

This first story is from a collection I'm tentatively calling Campfire Tales (all names at this point, both titular and in-narrative, are placeholders. If people particularly like a name though, please say so). It's called The Fall of the Powers and Breaking of the Peoples.

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This is not a story of the beginning of all things, of the founding of the heavens and the spheres, of the establishment of the powers and spirits, of the arrival of the tribes and peoples. Instead, it is a story of what happened after the genesis of these things, of what once was and how it became what it now is. It is the story of how the great powers fell into corruption, abandoning the ways they had been charged to keep, and of how afterwards the peoples were broken and scattered as the great powers made war on one another, the losers then taking flight with what tribes would follow and cursing all others to doom and sorrow.

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{edit}
Forgot to say: Please, please feel free to ask about the things you'd like to know more about. Some things already have a lot of detail worked out, where's others that have almost nothing beyond a (placeholder) name and a vague idea of where I'd like to go. If you ask about something and there's nothing there I'll sit down and work it out so, really, you're doing me a great favour by inquiring. :3

 

Woo! More text! \o/ Again, not a lot, I know. And it's still pretty rough/crap, I know that too. But it's a huge thing to be actually getting anything done at all atm. So I'll take my victories where I can.

In the end I've decided I'll just put in a link to the whole thing in the OP once I finish the story, rather than editing posts constantly. In the meantime, here's the next bit, @icemusher.
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Now, of all the spirits and powers there were none whose strength, beauty, and wisdom compared with the greater powers: Kali-Ishtira, Uqugth, and Thulcuor. Charged by the creator spirit with the keeping of the heavens and the spheres, these three governed all that had been made and through their collective rule all things were caused to flourish as the creator spirit had designed.

In time, however, each of the greater powers came to care for some particular facet of their keeping to the exclusion of all else. Kali-Ishtira found herself drawn to the management of earth, sea, and sky. Uqugth, to the husbandry of all creatures that the creator spirit had brought forth to inhabit the spheres. Thulcuor, seeing that his brother and sister had devoted themselves to the greater part of creation, instead chose to study and try to understand the man-creatures who had recently begun to emerge through small, short-lived tears in the world that, occasionally, would suddenly appear before vanishing again just as quickly.

And so it was among men that Thulcuor, greater power and appointed keeper of the heavens and the spheres, first learned conceit.

 

Sorry, I know it's been over a month since my last post here, but this will also be a shorter post due to needing to spend the rest of the day working on an essay (due this evening).

@Vampire - Thanks.

@icemusher - It's definitely a placeholder name (unless it grows on me further, I guess) but if I were going to say it aloud it'd prolly run something like this: you-CUE-goth with the 'o' in goth being swallowed/cut over by the 'g' (which is quite guttural) and the 'th' being emphasised such that it almost (but not quite) turns into a hissing sound (e.g. "gthh").

"The spheres" is basically a referral to the planets in that region. So the physical sphere of planet (earth, water, atmosphere) along with everything that lived on/in it.
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Initially, not even Thulcuor realised that he was changing in intent and purpose. He believed that to truly care for these man-creatures he needed to understand them, and that to understand them he needed to walk with them and learn their ways. So Thulcuor went among the peoples who had begun to take up residence on the sphere we now call takThulcuor and sought to learn from them all that he could.

And what he saw grieved Thulcuor (though he knew not what it was he felt at first, for until that time he had not known unhappiness or discontent). For the man-creatures and their offspring did not abide according to the designs set by the creator spirit but instead acted out of their own interests and desires. This was foreign to Thulcuor who, although it had always been of his own choosing and to his delight, had until this point only ever acted in ways that were within the pattern set by the creator spirit and had harmonised with its design.

 

So, after a reasonable amount of storyarc revision I'm stepping away from the above story. Apologies. It'll result in something better thought! :3

In the meantime, here's something I wrote down just today that's an encapsulation of how I deal with people I beat who are bad sports (both my younger siblings as well as pretty much anyone else). I'm hoping to revise it into some blank verse, but for the moment it's just prose:

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You got rekt, mate.

Like it or not you played hardball with someone older and more experienced than you, who knows how the rules work and where to apply them, and you lost.

Now, you can either graciously learn where you went wrong, and thus avoid screwing up the same way again, or you can block your ears and set yourself up for future failure.

Up to this point I've not mocked you, nor have I rubbed defeat in your face; but, if you insist on badmouthing what was a clean play on my part, know that you're only losing all over again.

And, strange as it may seem, your on-going loss will hurt me infinitely more than your victory ever could. Because nothing pains like seeing willful ignorance, and knowing that you can do nothing about it.

And so, to hide my disappointment that you still don't get it, I will laugh.

And laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Because laughter is always better than tears.

Even if it they hurt the same.

 

So I've begun again the story cycle I set aside back in Nov. It's definitely a grander vision than I had previously intended; but I think I've finally got enough material to form a basis for the rest of the work. Here's a piece of lore I've been tinkering with:

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For all things there is a time.

All things.

A time for beginning; a time for ending.

A time before; a time hereafter.

A time within the bounds of histories' age; a time without.

...​

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Stressed out majorly by uni assessments; but it's nice to have this little piece of my mind that can be free. :3

 

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The universe is a vast loom upon which the fabric of reality is woven. This is a story of the history of that fabric.


It was in a vast plane—given shape, substance, texture and colour by an almost infinite patterning of threads—that the Aeir first awoke. For an uncounted time they lay still; entranced so by the living, seething display that when at last they stirred from their wonder, it seemed as if they woke anew from a reverie stretching back into eternity.

====

 

Why bother what?
Why bother writing?
To practice, to get feedback, to have a place to put your work.

 

Oh, okay. That makes more sense, haha.