Bibliomancy Method of Choosing Quotations.

Frank Herbert, author of the Dune saga, and one of my heroes, started each chapter of his inspired and inspiring novels with a quotation from a source he made up himself.  Ass an homage to this series, in my Takuhi trilogy, I started making up my own “sources” and quotations.  But somewhere around the 16th chapter of Takuhi’s Daydream, my quotation well ran dry.  Then it occurred to me: Shakespeare is in the public domain.  Why no do a bit of bibliomancy?

Bibliomancy, for those of you who don’t know is the divinatory practice --mancy denotes method of divination.  Biblio--for book. Biblio-- comes from Byblos, a Phoenician/Ledanese city that has been occupied from 7500 BCE to the present day under an Arabic name was known throughout the ancient world for its parchments and papyrus, in short, supplying everything you needed to create books, or scrolls as they were shaped in ancient times. Books as we know them today or codices did not come out until much later.  Biblioteca, Spanish for library.  

Most often bibliomancy is done with a Bible.  Those who are Muslim can also use a Quran. Mormons could use the Book of Mormon.  The essence of doing bibliomancy is to pick a page at random, and without looking select a passage or verse.  Since I am not an adherent of any Abrahamic religion, I selected the works of Shakespeare. Thee is a funny story about using the Bible for advice when at a critical crossroads, indecisive about what to do.  A desperate minister used his Bible for such advice. The passage he came to was “Judas went and hanged himself.” “No! No! That can’t be right!” He selected another verse. “Go thou and do likewise.”

Accordingly, I opened the works of my old friend the Bard to a random page.  I ran my finger down the page without looking, and stopped. It was a line by John Falstaff, a man who I guess was an historic figure, although I had always figured him to be a character made up by Will himself.  I copied the quotation to the beginning of the chapter. I did it again for the next chapter and the next. I am now at Chapter 24, and considering moving to a book of Irish faery tales I received from my daughter for Yule.  This kind of bibliomancy can be used in many ways, but as the minister discovered to his horror, not to be followed in one’s subsequent actions. After all, you might end up with the suicide scene near the end of Romeo and Juliet.

Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up next month, and already I have signed up and declared my project.  How many of you, O dear readers, are participating? It’s sure to be a fun time for all. If we are quarantined, thanks to this virus everyone is panicking over, we are sure to get a lot of writing done.

Designing Names for Aliens Using Letter Tiles

You all play Scrabble, right?  Well, did you ever do anything with the letter tiles that the inventors of the game didn’t plan on?  I used a character naming generator site to name my characters. The names all sounded like they’d belong to your neighbors down the block.  I needed names that you would know just by looking at them that they are not of this Earth. I had started with small paper letters, but they were too small.  Once you hit forty, you start being afflicted by what optometrists and ophthalmologists quaintly call presbyopia, or elder eye. I acquired my first pair of bifocals and started wearing them constantly, from the time I opened my eyes in the morning, until I retired for the night, with breaks taken out for showers, naps, and putting the hair around my face in curlers.  

One day I was idly clicking through Amazon when it hit me.  I started looking for Scrabble games, then just the letter tiles by themselves.  .I could get a set with the last few dollars of the gift card my daughter had sent me as a combined Xmas and birthday gift.  To make a long story short, I ordered a set of 100, and 2 of those tile holders. When they arrived, I took a handful of letters out of the bag, and arranged them facedown on the holder.  Abdioueat. Looks Hawaiian, doesn’t it? Or maybe Native American. But sprinkle a couple apostrophes in there, and you get , Abdi’ou’eat Starts to look pretty alien doesn’t it, and if you are an ethnographer or a Kulturologist, you discover that this is the name of the chief of a hilltop village/tribe.  Never mind how you would pronounce it, unless you are reading it aloud. Now, I suppose you could cheat and change the letters around, breaking up that string of vowels with the few consonants provided. It starts to look more like this:. Baouteidai .Use your faithful apostrophes, and it starts to look more like this: Bao’ute’idai .  The ‘can stand for letters or sounds not present in our English/Roman alphabet, much like the clicks and pops in the X’hosa language of Africa. Don’t consider yourself limited to just apostrophes. The `or ~ can be used to represent other sounds not present in our alphabet. Ba’ou`teid~ai starts to look pretty exotic, doesn’t it? Pronounce it how you Will, you’re the author, after all. 

With these tools, you can come up with . people’s names, place names, and even your own alien language.  It’ll probably never compete with Klingon, but your only limit is your own imagination, and isn’t that what you’re using to write your own novel/novella/story anyway? I’ll be using this system while plugging any holes in Takuhi’s Daydream as I edit and revise it, and during April as I complete my intergalactic novel during Camp NaNoWriMo.  Patricia says she’s going to release each installment of the Takuhi trilogy one at a time, once I complete Takuhi’s Daydream, so be looking for those to come out on your favorite platform.

More Words Dusted Off & Used Again

This is another episode in the life of an amateur philologist.  As the log- will tell you, it’s about words, the philo-meaning love for ist meaning person a philologist is a person who loves words.  As a child, I studied the origins of both words and personal names, believing that the meaning of a name held clues to that person’s character.  I spent my babysitting money on baby name books to appropriately name the characters in my stories. This was long before the days of personal computers or the internet, so I typed my stories on my mother’s, and later my own typewriter.  

Once in jr. high, due to a transgression, the nature of which I do not now recall, I was sentenced to a couple hours of detention, and the teacher in charge very unwisely assigned us to copying pages out of the dictionary.  I say unwisely because while he may have gotten the desired groan from the boys, in my case it was a squeal of delight. Here I was exposed to a whole wonderland of new vocabulary. He would have done better to have given me the sports pages.  That would have quelled my feeling of delight.  

to suppress; put an end to; extinguish:

The troops quelled the rebellion quickly.

to vanquish; subdue.

to quiet or allay (emotions, anxieties, etc.):

The child's mother quelled his fears of the thunder.

Instead, I chortled my way through the punishment, which for me, was no punishment at all.  to chuckle gleefully.

verb (used with object), chor·tled, chor·tling.

to express with a gleeful chuckle:

to chortle one's joy.

noun

a gleeful chuckle.

A word listed with chortle was snigger.  I always pictured this one cartoon dog sniggering.  My favorite reference defines it as snicker.

WORDS RELATED TO SNIGGER

dump, twit, gird, slam, deride, jest, rally, caricature, leer, snicker, swipe, insult, lampoon, decry, travesty, crack, scorn, smile, gibe, slight

They’re probably not old words, but they’re good words which onomatopoeically describe the words themselves.  The great Bard William Shakespeare would have loved them. If he didn’t use them himself, which I believe he did, in at least one play, he should have.  

Fustilarian is a word the Bard did use as an insult, but the dictionary lists no definition for it, but from the context I can guess at the meaning.  It would mean someone fussy about his appearance, but has no basis for being so. 

onomatopoeia noun

the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.

a word so formed.

the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.

What words would you like to see dusted off and used again?  Words are the very stuff of writing, so there is the connection to writing.  Words are both my tools and my toys. What are words to you?

Dusting Off Old Words, and Using Them Again

This week’s blog has to do with words, yes, words, the very stuff of writing.  After all, we writers use words to paint pictures in their readers’ minds. I got the idea when I posted on Facebook my love of taking an old word down out of the mental attic, dusting it off, and using it.   The word in question was personable. It had been years, if not decades since I had heard someone use the word, but it seemed to be a very apt descriptor for the cashier who had waited on us at the supermarket last week.  Yes, we go shopping. What, did you think we had our groceries delivered? Nat not! That’s a luxury we cannot as yet afford.  

But back to “personable.”  of pleasing personal appearance; handsome or comely; attractive.

having an agreeable or pleasing personality; affable; amiable; sociable.

Christina certainly is that, and that’s how I described her, mostly by her personality.  When it comes to a colorful vocabulary, nobody can beat the people of Shakespeare’s time for colorful insults. Such as “Thou pusillanimous scurvy  lout!” Lout is another good old word that ought to come back into fashion. Without looking it up in my friend dictionary.com, I would guess it to have a similar meaning to oaf.  an awkward, stupid person; clumsy, ill-mannered boor; oaf.  I was right; a lout is similar to an oaf. I don’t know about you, but I pick up the meanings, or at least the connotations of a lot of the words I use from the context in which I find them.  It is only later that I feel compelled to look up the denotative meaning in the dictionary. The denotative meaning is the dictionary meaning of the word. Have you noticed: louts and oafs are almost always male?  What word would you use to describe an awkward or clumsy woman or girl, I wonder.  

A word that came up often in my reading of English Romantic novels, such as those by the Bronte sisters is  biddable, which means willing to do what is asked; obedient; tractable; docile:a biddable child  We don’t see that word much anymore, unless you are talking about playing cards.  Nowadays, a biddable girl is the one most likely to get herself into trouble; good for the story, bad for the girl.  The word is much more likely to come up in the conversation of elder female relatives of the young girl in question, than in anyone else’s conversation.  I can’t see two gentlemen describing a young lady as biddable, can you? A lout would probably nudge his fellow lout and wink feverishly, “She’s very biddable, and very personable too, don’t you think?  Didn’t raise the slightest objection to my suggestion. But did it most biddably..” And now the poor girl is bundled off to a convent somewhere, to spend the rest of her days in seclusion, the subject of a scurrilous scandal.

Scurrilous, another good word we hardly hear anymore.  It means grossly or obscenely abusive:

a scurrilous attack on the mayor.

characterized by or using low buffoonery; coarsely jocular or derisive:

a scurrilous jest.

With almost daily scandals in use by the US Clown-in-Chief, you’d think we’d hear or see it more often.  

I hope you’ll join me in this fun pastime.  Look to this space for more on my writing.

Interviews: The Path to Fame

Tuesday morning Patricia and I sat down for an interview.  One of the questions involved a term I hadn’t heard of before.  I had heard of writer’s block. I fight it constantly, like a lot of other writers.  But readers’ block I hadn’t heard of before. Patricia explained it as when you just can’t get into a book or story you’re reading. I explained that I was going through it at that very moment with a book I was reading called Goblin Corps (author’s name withheld)  I’m sure he worked very hard on his book, but I just can’t get into the story.  

I may well have used up my 15 minutes of fame by now, but it’s all right, because several of my friends who don’t want fame gave me theirs.  I need fame, because as an author my success depends on it. My favorite song by the late great David Bowie is “Fame.” It’s funny about writing.  It’s the one field I can think of where participants actively encourage those who might well become our competitors. But maybe not. After all, we are each in pursuit of our niche audience; our own special corps of readers.  My readers may find your books tedious, while your readers may find mine frivolous, and so on it goes.  

I finally thought of the word I was searching for this morning to explain how I feel when I’ve been writing.  Endorphins get released from my brain into my blood stream, and so I spend the rest of the day riding a writer’s high.  It gets to be that way when you are doing your rue Will, what you were always meant to do, and I discovered this without going into seclusion for six months to do the Abra Melin working.  It’s a working some magicians perform, to attain knowledge and conversation with their Holy Guardian Angel. But I knew mine in life, and he was always encouraging about my writing. In fact, he described NaNoWriMo as “the Olympics for writers.”  I have always fancied this comparison of writers with athletes. One of the hints I drew from a book I have on outwitting writer’s block is “the ugly notebook,” where I warm up my brain in preparation for writing, just as an athlete or dancer warms hir muscles in preparation for performing hir sport or dance.

We discussed briefly my current project about exploring the Andromeda Galaxy after using their new friends’ technique of felding  space to get there when it is millions of lightyears distant. She was tickled when I told her that the dominant life form is feline.  They have a very delicate hold on the galaxy, mostly performing the administrative tasks necessary to hold their empire together.

It was an enjoyable experience, so much better than when I used to be interviewed for a job.  Now I’m being interviewed for what I was always meant to be, a writer, and that’s as it should be.  Stay tuned for exciting news regarding my next release from Crimson Frost Books.

World Building> Culture>Invented Religion

When world building, the religion or ideology you choose to saddle it with can flavor the entire culture.  Look at the influence Western Christianity has had on both Europe and the Americas. Sure, there are some Native American influences on Latin American Catholicism, see for example the Virgin of  Guadalupe being the Aztec goddess Tonantzin syncretized to the Virgin Mary. And there are other examples, too numerous to mention in Central and South America.  

Getting away from Christianity now, I wanted to develop an antagonist for my intergalactic contact story, which I am now in the process of creating.  The evangelical jesoids proved to be too easily killed, and I wanted an antagonist with some oomph behind him/them, so I decided to invent my own religion.  Although decidedly alien, being from another galaxy (Andromeda) and all, I wanted this faith to have the most annoying characteristics of several Earth religions I knew of, namely evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Hare Krishna, and Scientology.  

One factor that stands out, for me, anyway, will be male leaders with hypnotic control over their flocks.  These leaders have supernatural power over their flocks. They can get them to do anything for the good of the cult, including sacrificing their  very lives.For this exercise, I also decided to bring out a concept I’d used in a piece of fanfic I’d written some 40 years ago, the opposite of the Force, the Flow.  It does what you might imagine it does; it flows over a person, enabling hir to do what s/he would reckon to be impossible, if not highly unlikely. This means s/he can go invisible, flow under doorways, and teleport.  S/he would have total command over matter and mass. Of course, I’ll have to think of some limitations. It wouldn’t do to have hir be omnipotent, after all, and maybe hir power is relative to hir status within hir congregation.  Yeah, that’s the ticket, I’ll go with that.  

Of course, were you to invent a religion, it would have vastly different parameters, depending upon your experience and reading on the topic.  See what you can do, starting with a tabla rasa, a clean slate, so to speak..

A Writer's Greatest Tool--Hir Sub/unconscious

What is a writer’s greatest tool?  No, it isn’t your PC, your laptop, your tablet or your favorite pen.  It’s right between your ears, and yet as large as outer space itself. It is where all your ideas come from, the fount of all our symbols and images.  Sigmund Freud called it the subconscious, and Carl Jung called it the unconscious. I put it on 2 different levels, and call it the sub/unconscious. We are only dimly aware of the subconscious.  It comes through in our dreams, and some of the things we say when we are not thinking. The unconscious comes through literally when we are unconscious, under anesthesia or from an accidental blow to the head, or the hallucinations of a schizophrenic or under the influence of LSD or shrooms.  

They are different for everyone, and are the sum total of everything you’ve ever experienced, through life experiences, books you’ve read (including the Bible.  A frightening amount of images come from religious imagery) TV or movies you’ve seen. If you are religious and go to a church where an effective orator is preaching, many images can come from listening to that person’s sermons.  All this is uploaded to our own personal mental Cloud, to use computer terminology, and can be accessed almost spontaneously.

In the days before I made friends with my own sub/unconscious, I used to try to scare myself with these images because I was then writing a novel about a woman who was being pursued by something so horrible that she could not even face it.  This will be featured in a forthcoming novel. I wanted to see what was so horrible that one could not even face it. Then there is what Paul Atreides said in Dune to his grandmother the Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Mohiam, “Try looking into that place where you do not dare look.  There you will find me, staring back at you.” I have tried looking into that place which is unlookable to “us, to women.”There I only see a reflection of my own face.

Then, sometime in my late forties, (I am now only a couple weeks short of turning 73) I made the conscious decision to make friends with my own sub/unconscious, and do you know what happened?  The images I used to frighten myself with no longer had the power to frighten me. I could look upon the face of the Christians’ pet thought form Satan himself, and be unfazed. I imagined the bloodiest scenes I could, the better to describe them for my stories, and still I was unfazed.  Now I wonder why this is. Have I become so callous and inured to these scenes that they have no effect on me? Has observing violence on television gotten me so unsensitized that I am immune to any emotional effect? I have a tendency, when things bog down in a story, to start a war or an argument among my characters.  

There are three and a half months until the first Camp NaNoWriMo, and I already have an idea for it.  Where did that idea come from? (See last Thursday’s blog about where story ideas come from.) Superficially it came from a show I was streaming on Netflix called The Pyramid Code, that that idea germ merged with some memories in my mind about Nikola Tesla, and before I knew it, I had a full blown story idea in my head.  Certainly some images from my sub/unconscious must’ve gotten in there and clinched the deal, because soon I was scribbling the story idea in my notebook, which I keep in the bookcase headboard of my bed.  

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to make friends with your sub/unconscious.  Who knows what hidden treasures you can discover between the veils?