Tonight I find myself distracted precisely in the way in which I shouldn't, but I am unable to help myself. I am currently 390 words away from finishing the sub-chapter (not sure how I'm going to define these but I'll go with that now), one of the six 2,000 word sections that make up a chapter (or stanza... again, not sure how I'm going to define things here)... the first such sub-chapter (or "line" since it represents one line in a regular Sestina) of Stanza (Chapter) 5, the chapter in which things go weird, but not hellish yet.
The reason for this distraction are two Senate races on the other side of the country but me, being a junkie for such, could not take my eyes from the numbers. Before I go to sleep though, this small remaining section will be complete. I had trouble in the middle of this sub-chapter with an awkward placement of one of my End Words which required some backing up and tightening of what I had so far in this sub-C (that might be it!...?). I am glad I did 'cause I was able today to find the fit and the tightening up corrected a lazy voice that had started to appear.
I am aware that the phrasing I use is often archaic or different. I am told this all the time by those I work with and my customers when I speak. It is me and I know strongly why. For one, ever since a child, I have had my nose in books. When I read something, I pick up a little of it. It joins that which is me and for a little while, when the influence of the drug (book) is still strong, that which escapes be it by pen or tongue is often without awareness. It's like when my mother goes visits her siblings on the Outer Banks and comes home to Arizona speaking some barely recognizable dialect which woke from her youth. As for me, uh, you don't want to hear me talk after reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" following "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Saw There".
The personalities, the dialects, the quips and habits that endear characters to us influence us. Be the work fiction or non, what we read we react to. I can trace my philosophical growth through such written media as well as music and the words penned by philosopher poets. I can trace intellectual growth through the exposure I allowed. One of those philosophers, those poets for whom I owe a deep debt in many ways is the good Rev. Dodgson, Lewis Carroll. Not only did his Alice stories save me from Ayn Rand, but they opened an entire realm of possibilities conceptually. One work of his though that I must recommend for all who want to play in the world of Verse is "Poeta Fit Non Nascitur". There is one stanza in that poem specifically which echoes through my thoughts daily:
"For first you take a sentence
and then you chop it small
Mix it up and sort it out
just where they chance to fall
The order of the phrases
makes no difference at all"
Pulling from memory there so it might be slightly off in words but the thought is the same. The other advice in that work is as well to be taken and I've learned it is all good advice for fiction as well as verse. This though has taken root with me on a deeper level, one which has helped with the very tight constraints which I've given myself on this work, specifically ensuring that one of six words always works every 333 words.
Mark Twain's use of the vernacular, Poe's lessons, the passionate force of Howard... and the influences of authors the list of which would be ever too long to tackle, from Tolkien to Turtledove (I know that's alphabetically not far, but I love alliteration) to L'Amour, Cornwell, Brin, Heinlein, S. Robinson (and the perversion of my mind to the horror of puns)... this list is long and I am grateful for every word given me in such a sweet gift. It is kind of one of the reasons I am pretending at this dreamland now, to add to this world something that might bring a brief bit of joy to someone somewhere someday.
Mostly though it's 'cause I opened that damn box and all these imaginary dead people keep crawling out of it, sitting at my bedside and telling me their tales and as long as they keep coming, I'll keep listening. And yes, it is best to think of it like this 'cause they need to be real for me to know them for it is my job to make them real so that others may know them. Thus, with full awareness, I speak of my imaginary dead friends often as if I just got off the phone with them or had drinks the night before. I truly hope this box never closes... It really weirds out the right folk.
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