The Double-edged Sword of Nostalgia

It's okay to look back at the past. Just don't stare.
~ Benjamin Dover

Editing:
2 hours 43 minutes

Words from sprints:
Magic II – 0
Wandering Wizards – 1,189

Untimed words:
Wandering Wizards – 411

Total New words:
Magic II – 0
Wandering Wizards – 1,600

Once again my week started out strong writing-wise, and petered out by Friday. I was hoping to catch up a bit on the weekend, but . . .

Saturday I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled in for a long haul of editing and writing to make up for slacking off towards the end of the week. In the course of procrastinating before I actually got started, I decided to check out the files on a couple of USB sticks that were sitting on my desk. I may have been looking for something specific, like an idea for this year’s NaNo, but more likely I was just procrastinating.

At any rate, I stumbled across a few files that were encrypted – e-journals I kept in the early 90s. The problem is, they were written in WordPerfect (one of the early versions at that) and password protected. I haven’t used WordPerfect in…well, probably not since those files were created.

Apparently two of the files weren’t encrypted because at some point I was able to convert them to MS Word. And there went the rest of my Saturday – rereading those two files. One was from 1991/92 and the other was 1994.

It was pretty trippy, walking down memory lane. And interesting to see what’s changed and what hasn’t. Surprising in places too. While I’d like to say I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for the “good ole days” I really wasn’t. As Henry Wadsword Longfellow once said, “Let the dead Past bury its dead!”

So, I’ll leave the mystery of those encrypted files for another day – that nebulous day in the future when I have lots of time to spare for things like that. Instead I’ll turn my focus to the job ahead, mainly getting as much progress made on Wandering Wizards as possible.

And just to add a little extra spice to my writing life, I’ve signed up for the Speculative Fiction course again – all new workshops.

Last time I posted my in-class work on Fridays, but I think I’ll wait and see the results before I suspend my current 30 Weeks series. Like I said, these are all new workshops and a couple of them are going to be . . . challenging, to say the least.

So no more time for nostalgia, time to look forward.

It's Baaaack...

As part of the new and improved writing me, I figured it was time to get back to my passion for poetry on Wednesdays. Until I'm really back in the writing groove these posts will probably be a little random - sometimes old poetry, sometimes new, sometimes a form, sometimes a favourite written by someone else - but at least it's a start. Today I'm feeling a little nostalgic . . .

As you know, I’ve been writing poetry for a long time – some good, some bad. I didn’t really get going with poetry until Grade 8, when our Language Arts teacher gave us a prompt each Friday to inspire us to write creatively. Today I thought I’d share a few of the poems I wrote from those prompts.

In response to a slide show of underwater shots:

Dreamy Sea

The sea in all its splendour stood
Before me in my dream;
Beneath the emerald blue salt waves
Lies the earth of sandy cream.

Like silver flashes fishes swim
Among the rocks of purple hue,
And plants that look like octopi
Stretch their long grey arms to you.

The shells with striking beauty lie
In patterns where this splendour reigns,
The starfish and the shark they guard
The tomb where King Neptune’s lain.

Yet, as all dreams, this one must end.
The tomb, the shells, the fish must fade.
The peaceful sea, its life below
Are now just part of one dream made.


I don’t know whether I did this on my own or we were prompted by a form, but this poem illustrates the Acrostic verse form:

Frost upon the window pane
Eerie winds along the streets
Blue-grey skies across the lane
Rosey red ‘most frozen cheeks
Underneath the snowy skies
And as thermometers go down
Returning once again, surprise!
Yes you’re right, it’s Jack Frost’s frown.


This one was prompted by a short film about the Nahanni River:

The Spirit of Nahanni

The spirit of Nahanni
Haunts its every bend,
The roaring, crashing of the waves
Seem to have no end.

The evil taunting of the walls
Tell many tales of gold;
Beckoning men every day
To search its every hold.

The men that had once tried and failed
Had lost not only gold,
The skeletons without the heads,
Tell tales of men so bold.

What took their lives, and heads as well
No one seems to know;
But the spirit of Nahanni
Knows what laid them low.

The spirit of Nahanni
Haunts its every bend,
The roaring, crashing of the waves
Seem to have no end.

Trip Down Nostalgia Lane

So here we are again on a Friday. And it’s an in between Friday - not the first one where I post a picture prompt, nor the last one where I post my results, but one of the ones in between where I’m in a kind of limbo.

Originally I was supposed to post an excerpt from what I’ve been working on lately. Unfortunately, other than blog posts I haven’t been working on much besides poetry lately.

While I’m hoping to change that in the days to come, that doesn’t help me today. So after thinking about it for a while, I decided to give you an excerpt from one of my earlier works. And by early I mean one of my very first (if not the first) novel-length ideas I ever had. So early it was typed on a manual typewriter, which means I had to retype it on the computer.

It was a convoluted mix of fantasy and science fiction. Science fiction because it was set on Saturn and there were aliens and some technology involved, fantasy because of the magic and magical creatures. Most of what I have is notes on characters and creatures and cities, there’s a crude map, a brief history, and the beginning of a crude outline.

It seems to be part quest, part coming of age, part a hero’s tale. There’s not a lot to go on other than back ground information. All I really remember is that most of the action took place on Saturn, and Stonehenge was a link between Earth and Saturn. And the rings of Saturn are what keeps Earth from realizing there’s a whole civilization below. Yes, seriously!

There seemed to be two beginnings to this tale. One was in first person, the main character being a woman, and the other was in third person with the main character being a male. Since that’s the one that bore the title “Original Plot” that’s the one I’m posting here.


Untitled Novel

Tazrak stood and gazed at the distant hills as the sun turned the clouds from white to blood red. The sun sank below the horizon, yet still he stood watching. His hard, yet handsome features gave little indication of his thoughts. His sun-bronzed shoulders were tight with tension, and his brow was creased with lines of concentration.

It was the fifth day, of the fifth month, of the fifth year of waiting. It was the night that could bring despair - or hope. It was the first time in almost five thousand years that the ceremony of summoning was to be performed at the Circle of Stones.

“Tazrak,” called one of the guards, not daring to approach. “It is almost time.”

Tazrak nodded and turned from the darkness. He strode with long sure strides towards a large, green and gold tent. Lifting the flap he peered inside and saw that the Wizard Priests were ready for him. The priests had been sent all the way from the Great Temple. It was a great honour, and they had borne with them the ceremonial robe of the High Priest.

The moons started to rise as Tazrak donned the flowing white robe and placed the emerald pendant around his neck. A char howled in the distance - neither a hunting call nor a call to a kill but an eerie lament to the gods. A sudden wind arose as Tazrak, flanked by the two Wizard Priests, moved towards the Circle of Stones.

Tarzak turned and addressed the crowd below. “My people, tonight is the night we have awaited for five long years. We have awaited in fear and in hope. It is the night decreed by Zor that we may bury the past and for this night only once again perform the Ceremony of Summoning. Our need is great, my people. Let us hope that the gods are merciful on t his night.”


After that it skips to Earth where a young man gets lost in a cave system that opens up to a large chamber with a replica of Stonehenge in it. He finds a similar robe and pendant and on impulse puts them both on and steps to the middle of the circle. The date is May 5 and the time is 5 p.m.

Some day I may revisit this story - as cheesy as it seems, I think it has potential. All I have to figure out is the end game for the hero. ;-)