Discussing the Writing Challenges -- November and December 2010

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I think we all feel that about our own work, nixie. One of the reasons I always leave my entry until late (that and the fact that inspiration takes forever to strike!). It's an intriguing little tale, and no doubt will get Parson's exorcism fingers twitching.


Boneman, I never figured you for a friend of... er... better not go down that road, in case it gives the game away... (or are you an Aussie** in disguise?)


** spelling may vary...
 
The Judge said:
I think we all feel that about our own work, nixie. One of the reasons I always leave my entry until late (that and the fact that inspiration takes forever to strike!). It's an intriguing little tale, and no doubt will get Parson's exorcism fingers twitching.


Boneman, I never figured you for a friend of... er... better not go down that road, in case it gives the game away... (or are you an Aussie** in disguise?)


** spelling may vary...
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I like Leon Russell, though...
 
Don't blame me for that impenetrable clue, Mouse!

Anyway, the title "I, Shaman" is an anagram of "Samhain" -- effectively a pre-Christian harvest festival Samhain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Or as Ursa has it, a combination of Frodo's friend (Sam) and the Labour politician, Kenyan-born Shadow Minister for Wales (Peter Hain) -- except it isn't pronounced Sam-hain, as I understand it, but Sow-ain, just to make life complicated.

As for the literary conundrum, in case anyone wants to know that (and because having sweated over it, I'm determined to get the evidence out there!) the easy one was indeed I, Robot but that was chance through the anagram. The real one was the novel Harvest Home -- Harvest Home (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -- and the internal clues were Worthy, Fortune, the *ahem* seed spilling followed by blood, and the blinding. Oh, and the words "harvest home" themselves...
 
I know what Samhain is, and how to pronounce it. ;) Didn't get the anagram and no way would've got that through Ursa's clue! I've no idea who Peter Hain is.

Not heard of Harvest Home!

Clever stuff though. :D
 
Day 2 into November and i am loving the entires so far, love, love, loving them. A couple made me laugh aloud (you kknow who you are), and all are so well done. i can already tell this month is going to be tough!
 
I still voted for you TJ, despite the fact that I knew you had stretched the nomenclature in the title to fit the anagram :rolleyes:.
 
The Judge said:
except it isn't pronounced Sam-hain, as I understand it, but Sow-ain, just to make life complicated.
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This has been bugging me for ages, and hopefully someone will have a concise explanation so it doesn't drag the thread off topic.

Irish Gaelic was originally written down only in Ogham characters, which bear no relation (far as I know) to the Roman alphabet. At some stage Gaelic spelling had to be Romanised. So why wasn't it done anything like phonetically? Why did some monk or other, thinking of the word pronounced "shee" decide that the best Roman alphabet version of it was "sidhe"?

Oh, and so far, only SF has commented on the idea of more varied genre being used. Anyone else for or against?
 
HB: no expert but I suspect it has to do with the phonetics of the time.

If you read Chaucer's original, I doubt you'd recognise many of the /words/sounds from the text therein.

For that matter some of the English words around today hardly match their pronunciation.

Take

Bomb and bomber
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A sure fire way of telling a native English speaker from a foreigner.
 
Thank you, PC. And having devised the title, I then had to stretch the story to try and fit it...

Can't help with the Gaelic spelling issue, either, HareBrain, sorry.

As to different genres -- I'm all for it. Let's enliven things with a Western! (Just as long as Mouse doesn't choose "Erotic Fantasy" or somesuch...)
 
As far as themes stepping away from SFF goes, and that possibly having an impact on participation - who's to say you can't incorporate SFF into westerns (not Stephen King) or detective stories (not Jim BUtcher) or whatever? OF course, that can work in reverse, and already has, I'm sure (I had detectives in my very first entry), but it'd be interesting to see where everyone went after taking that set into a new genre. Bring them on, I say...
 
Re "Westerns": In one of the essays in his collection of short stories, Dreamsongs, GRRM mentions his "furniture rule".

I'll quote Werthead (from his review of Dreamsongs in http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/985301-post7.html) on this:
The final section is called 'The Heart in Conflict', based on Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner's statement that, "the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about." This appears to be GRRM's philosophy and lends itself to his 'furniture rule', that a story is just a story and is an SF tale or a Fantasy or a Western purely due to the 'furniture': a guy riding into a frontier town to settle a score or anothe man riding into a castle to challenge the wizard who wronged him or another person flying his spaceship in pursuit of an alien who has a grudge against him.
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So with a little research, I reckon we could write our entries in the Western genre (amongst many). It's not as if 75 words (80 for Mouse ;)) allows us to mention that much "furniture" in the first place.

.
 
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Well, I need a hundred. At least ninety-nine. I can't talk short, can't write short.

But I'm not going to get them, so hey ho…


But there is a difference of style between the genres; you can write a convincingly Fantasy robot (perhaps whirling a lariat from horseback) or an SF vampire; I hate to think how many aliens on paper or film are elves, goblins or demigods with a thin coating of greasepaint. (all of Star Wars, for a start). Still, the genuine single genres geeks (which status I can no longer pretend to) will immediately see through the methadone coating and demand the genuine hit – even if the story told is exactly the same. When you're massaged by the medium (or even, in some literary examples, quite large and noticeably overweight) cosmetic details do count.
 
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Ah'm root-tootin' dosh-garn-dang-damn in fer a Western yaaaaaaa'll <- my attempt at a Western (which mutated into Ned Flanders). Choose Western at your own peril.

Seriously though, I'm all about other genres. Bring it on!
 
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