Since I am jobless and I'm a natural worrier, I have been venting my worry the best way I know how: by writing. So far I have started several short stories and what could quit possibly turn into a novel. Anyone who knows me knows well that I rarely continue with stories for more than a year so I have no idea how these are going to turn out. However, I have been going back and looking at all of my old stories and drawing parts of them into my new ideas. Strangely enough my school work has helped me with creating my fantasy world. Between learning about ancient Greeks, both the culture and Hellenistic history, and anthropology I have been able to create an almost perfect fantasy world. the only problem now is the names. The character names I have, or at least I have the first names, I always have problems coming up with the surnames. The city names are the hardest part though.
Unlike characters, cities don;t have obvious personalities that I can look at which is very problematic for me. When it come to characters I look at their personalities and choose a name that has a meaning that is important to that personality, or sometimes to the back story of the character. The problem with cities is their personality depends on the people who live there, the landscape surrounding the city, the founder of that city, the peoples who lived in the city previously, and possibly the ruler of the city. Even most cities in Canada are named after people who are important in society of religion, the landscape or something that was found there. For instance Kamloops means meeting of the rivers and was named by the first nations group that lived there before Europeans arrived. St. John's was named after a catholic saint, Regina was named after a noble, Moose Jaw obviously named because of a moose jaw that was found, even Canada itself was named by the first nations that lived here. The problem I'm having is that I'm writing about a fantasy world. They don't have the same religions, myths, political structures, language, or heritage that we do. So how do I name the cities? Basically I have to make up an entire civilization from politics to beliefs and their history just so I can know what name would be suitable. Thankfully I can make parallels to this world. For instance I decided to name the royal city of one of the countries Aletes which is similar to the name of a city on an island described in Egyptian myth which some believe was the island of Atlantis. Most people wouldn't make the connection right away, and even those who do wouldn't be sure that the city was going to be destroyed right away (which it very well might be, I haven't decided yet). Therefore it is the perfect name for it. After the destruction of the city (somewhere between chapters three and thirty four) some will notice the similarity and then understand all the foreshadowing and hints that had been there since the beginning. Not only is this a cool way to give the reader something to connect the fantasy world to ours, it also gives me as a writer something to base my work off of.
Now that I have gone totally off topic (did I mention that I have a fever and am exhausted?) I think this is where I should stop. I may even continue on when I wake up tomorrow. hopefully by then I'll have enough brain cells to be able to decipher this goobly gop of writing and be able to write an explanation for what I was trying to say here.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
I have that feeling
Somehow I don't think that I'll be making my 100 post goal. I'll probably be lucky to make it to 50. Anyway, I have been having a bit of a rough time lately. My knee hurts, I had to quit my job, I have a cold, and I'm about to go insane from reading too many school books.
Most f my courses require an enormous amount of reading each night and after being kept at work until midnight I found it nearly impossible to stay awake long enough to absorb any information. Of course if I had known that they were going to keep me until midnight (or later) every shift I never would have taken the job. They did warn us at orientation that our shifts had "estimated end times depending on business" but I thought that they meant that if there were a bunch of customers we might have to stay a half hour later than scheduled. What I didn't expect was to be kept more than an hour, sometimes two, after I was scheduled off. Not that this would have been a problem except that the buses stop at 11:30pm. So not only was I kept later into the night than I like I was forced to walk home in the dark. Thankfully I live in a fairly safe city, but it was still unnerving especially when the homeless people started to try and talk to me. I don't have anything against the homeless but I'd rather not meet them alone at night on a dark street. And how could I ever forget the time the manager called me into the office just to discuss that a coworker, possible coworkers, had reported that there was "an offensive odor" coming from me. Like that wasn't embarrassing at all. All in all it was a case of bad management and I really should have taken the hint when I heard that almost all of the old staff had quit.
There is an up side to this though. Every time I think that things can't possible get worse things suddenly change for the better. I was down to $3 to my name and I got a job at McDonalds, I needed money to pay rent after school started and I got a job at the theaters, and just when I thought I wouldn't have enough money for rent and food I remember that I still have money left on my vise gift card. Of course all of that will only last me the next couple of weeks, but I guess that God just likes to keep me guessing. If there's one thing that He has taught me over the last year is that everything goes by His time not mine and it always works out better that way. And hey, now I can go to the archaeology society meet and greets and mixers. Who knows, maybe there's a professor there that needs someone to organize some papers. Here's praying.
Most f my courses require an enormous amount of reading each night and after being kept at work until midnight I found it nearly impossible to stay awake long enough to absorb any information. Of course if I had known that they were going to keep me until midnight (or later) every shift I never would have taken the job. They did warn us at orientation that our shifts had "estimated end times depending on business" but I thought that they meant that if there were a bunch of customers we might have to stay a half hour later than scheduled. What I didn't expect was to be kept more than an hour, sometimes two, after I was scheduled off. Not that this would have been a problem except that the buses stop at 11:30pm. So not only was I kept later into the night than I like I was forced to walk home in the dark. Thankfully I live in a fairly safe city, but it was still unnerving especially when the homeless people started to try and talk to me. I don't have anything against the homeless but I'd rather not meet them alone at night on a dark street. And how could I ever forget the time the manager called me into the office just to discuss that a coworker, possible coworkers, had reported that there was "an offensive odor" coming from me. Like that wasn't embarrassing at all. All in all it was a case of bad management and I really should have taken the hint when I heard that almost all of the old staff had quit.
There is an up side to this though. Every time I think that things can't possible get worse things suddenly change for the better. I was down to $3 to my name and I got a job at McDonalds, I needed money to pay rent after school started and I got a job at the theaters, and just when I thought I wouldn't have enough money for rent and food I remember that I still have money left on my vise gift card. Of course all of that will only last me the next couple of weeks, but I guess that God just likes to keep me guessing. If there's one thing that He has taught me over the last year is that everything goes by His time not mine and it always works out better that way. And hey, now I can go to the archaeology society meet and greets and mixers. Who knows, maybe there's a professor there that needs someone to organize some papers. Here's praying.
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