scribblemyname | Thief of Literature

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Thief of Literature

I find an interesting thing about the languages I choose to use in my stories. Not unreasonably, I often prefer to use languages I’ve already started, but for some reason, it still surprises me when I do it. I used to create a language at the drop of a hat, and sometimes I still see one starting to sketch itself out, but at the same time, I find myself more and more reaching for old bones and stretching them into new shapes.

In Splintered Gates, I pulled two sigil names straight from ancient (in my personal real time, that is) Senetari Shuril, a very old version of Vas’hehr, the secondary language of Vardin (I think they have four or five main languages they tend to use). Well, almost straight.

Ditraka is pulled straight from Senetari Shuril and means essentially, speaker of truth, caller out of truth, doer of truth, etc. The verb can vary as it’s a partial construction, something common to the language but not to any other language of mine. “Di” is often rendered “out of” in the sense given above, e.g. caller out of truth. “Traka” is literally “truth.”

Cyvahdo is a mixture. “Ahdo” I made up as “rider” on the spot, but “cyv” means “sky” and was one of the first vocabulary words I had.

Why do I find this so particularly interesting? Besides the fact that I’m overly self-analytical, I mean. Because the more I write, the more the bones of my worlds are starting to bleed. I can see why some authors have a hard time not repeating themselves.

I’m not too worried yet, but it is something I have to keep an eye on. Oddly enough, this also only really became an issue when Kingdoms and Thorn cropped up. There was no way to stop the bleed with Vardin because they were born from literally the same bones, the same story, the same premise, the same characters. I just played it out several different ways and picked Vardin to write. Then K&T happened and there was the second major branch. Then Splintered Gates happened and I can keep it separate, more easily than the rest actually, but I hit the third major branch. It’s only safe to write because I split out the other reusable part of the branch into the Alliance storyworld instead. It reduces the room for bleed. A bit.

I find all this very interesting from this perspective: five years ago, I wouldn’t have tolerated it.

When we were kids, I made a fine art of hiding the origins of my characters and stories in bending certain key details, burying others, and mixing and matching far disparate fandoms. I rarely fanfic crossovers, but if you could see inside my mind, you’d see that most of my original fiction is incredibly crossed over. There’s a fine tradition for this in literature.

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”

― Stephen Wright

I steal from many, even myself. My stories and poems reference other literary pieces, sometimes rather obliquely. I homage and recreate and interrogate and adapt and decry and protest in the form of another piece of fiction, and then to top it all off, I do my level best to hide most of it so thoroughly that no one will ever figure out my layered upon layered secrets.

In short, I find this strange but interesting. It’s a habit of childhood, and only now am I beginning to be okay with bleed and small revelations. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad or indifferent, but it’s interesting.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

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When I am optimistic, I say there is no such thing as an original idea, just a unique twist on an established idea.

When I am not, I think everything I've ever done is repetition and theft.

I want my stuff to be original. It just... isn't.

I continue to believe that depends on how you define original. Everything involves the accumulation of your own experience, but what makes it original is the "you" factor. And how disparate are the ideas you bring together, etc.

Mine are all the same.

Sometimes, I think I almost accept this.

And then I feel like burning stuff. Ah, the joys of writing.

No, they're not all the same. Siblings, detective, procedural, arranged marriages, superpowers, etc. are not the same to each other.

When I say bring together disparate elements, I'm talking about bringing together amnesia, romance, government agency, dubious good/bad guy, superpowers, and native vs. colonizer social structures. Those are disparate. Those ideas are not the same to each other and are not often found in combination at that level. Make sense?

The elements in ONE story are disparate. It's the combination that makes it original. And the style which is you, which per Dean Wesley Smith, you probably won't ever feel is original because you're quite familiar with yourself thank you.

Favorite quote from

trovia in the comment below:

Each of them is a different story, as if your writing is your own little genre with its own quirks.

I'm still in the state where that bonfire is a comforting image, and I don't think that any logical argument is going to convince me that I'm not repeating myself constantly.

In the past three years, I wrote and completed somewhere close to forty novel length stories. When I try sort them out, though, they're not all that dissimilar and I think I just rehashed the same thing over and over without getting much from it, which is why my performance of late has been very lackluster. I've squeezed everything I can out of the concepts I use, and there's nothing left to do with any sort of originality or interest.

That would be why my readers stopped having any interest in my stuff and why I have been unable to create and stick with a side project. Or finish any of my incomplete works.

*sigh*

Or maybe you're just feeling burned out?

I wish I knew how to help. When I hit that, I always end up reading, writing music instead, doing graphic design, until my well's refilled.

I don't know. I don't think so. I want to be writing. It just doesn't work.

I don't have a lot of alternatives to writing. It has gotten to where even writers I trusted write things that make me uncomfortable reading their books, and I just don't feel like I can do that anymore. I have no interest in rereading the books I've got that I know are safe. I've never been talented at playing music or drawing or any other artistic outlet, so I have buried myself in video games a bit, which helps when I am in one of those shut down phases, but it is not creative and feels like a waste of time.

I don't know. Maybe after everyone leaves I will attempt another fabric project.

I know we don't know each other, but if I can just add my two cents? I was hospitalized for a while last year for burn-out. (which we treat as an actual diagnosis here, though it's basically just work-related depression) Your description of how you're feeling is pretty much textbook, what I was told by every single patient I met for six weeks. Right down to "I don't know what else to do with myself."

I don't know if you depend on your writing financially, but if you can afford it, maybe set yourself a time frame of a couple of months - something that seems just a tad too ridiculously long - and just don't write, even if you want to. And make a point of finding alternative things to do, things that are just relaxing and fun. I mean forty novel length stories, wtf. ;) Take a writing vacation. You've earned it. Everybody would need it.

I appreciate the advice, but I couldn't do it.

Mercifully, I am not financially dependent in my writing as I am neither good enough or willing to market myself, but I am dependent on writing as a coping mechanism. I count the official age I began writing as eleven, but I know I dabbled in it earlier and was using plot lines aka stories to fall asleep before then. The last time I tried to give up writing, I lasted two miserable days. I am compulsive about enough to be insane, and I know this, but I have used writing to battle my depression for over twelve years now, and to contemplate facing my family situation or my day job without it for even two months... I think it would be better to put the bullet through my head and let my faith condemn me. I wrote those fifty thousand word novels not just out of want but of need and the need won't go away even if I could rid myself of the want.

...okay, let's continue by private message I guess. I'll write you one.

Thievery is a time-honored tradition in the arts, you know that.

I stand in awe of anyone with the gumption to create their own languages. Tolkien did it, but he was a linguist to start with.

Who knows? Maybe all your worlds will intersect on paper eventually, then it won't matter if you take a bit from here and a bit from there.

Which is why more and more, I don't mind myself doing it.

I love building languages. It's so freeing. When I would look for just the right word as a kid and find it didn't exist in English, it really spurred me toward conlanging!

I don't want that really, the worlds to intersect. I reuse characters at a prodigious rate, which is why Splintered Gates is a fairly safe world: it's mostly a different set than the ones I've deployed elsewhere. And they are such different worlds physics/premise-wise.

I've had very similar experiences, but as I've grown older and seen my own writing evolve (I'm thirty and I've constantly written since I was eight, so that's 22 years of writing to compare, no matter the first ten years or so weren't exactly shining examples of art), I've also come to accept that bleed is okay. Reusing old stuff in new contexts is okay; it's new because the context is new. (I remember reading this fantasy novelist as a kid, name of David Gemmel I think? - no idea if he's any famous - who had massive bleed between stories, really massive. I used to try and figure out the chronology of his novels until I realized there was none, everything was a reinvention of an old thing, the protagonist of an old story would appear as a supportive character in another story, set twenty years later, having the same age but a slightly different name. It calms me to know that while this distracted me a little as a reader, it also never stopped me from being utterly absorbed by his stories) On a more abstract level, story interests tend to stay the same for a long time but your understanding of them grows, you learn different aspects and new facets, your POV on them changes, you learn what works and doesn't work from writing them on a technical level. So you might want to do it again but differently and that's also fine.

I'm personally such a sucker for war veterans - characters who've done that shit before but have to do it again, despite bad memories. I remember having written my first seventeen years ago and am now working on my most recent. It's such a specific thing that things will necessary reappear, no matter if the protagonist of the hour is a wizard or a robot or a Cold War spy. Or Spartacus. I've attempted Spartacus. :p But it's my feel good trope, so I'm gonna keep doing it. It's not just themes but also specific things, McGuffins, plot twists, little moments or idioms or weaponry that I'm familiar with and that's all okay. Each of them is a different story, as if your writing is your own little genre with its own quirks.

(finally I'm getting to use my Wolverine icon where it makes sense :p)

Btw, I don't know if you saw this little announcement that I made on my LJ, but I did think of you as somebody who might be interested when I made it, so give me a shout if you want a link to those articles. I know lesbian fiction is totally not your genre, so I'd totally understand if you want to give them a wide birth, but most of the intel as such is gonna be pretty general.

On a more abstract level, story interests tend to stay the same for a long time but your understanding of them grows, you learn different aspects and new facets, your POV on them changes, you learn what works and doesn't work from writing them on a technical level.

Definitely, yes. I get very interested in certain themes and ideas and stay interested for a very long time, though the list gets longer.

Each of them is a different story, as if your writing is your own little genre with its own quirks.

I love that and so right!

I love your icons.

I've thought about going and looking, but I didn't ask primarily because I'm just so not interested in marketing right now. I will be, but I'm not just yet. That whole get-something-written first bit?

So what are some of the themes and ideas that hold your interest? :) I'm realizing I don't have a good idea of the big picture of your writing.

because I'm just so not interested in marketing right now.

Heh, yeah, I get that.

I could go dig up my post on it, but I'll wing it off the top of my head:

• relationships of all kinds, but mostly family and true love romantic relationships
• sacrifice
• power and restraint of power
• identity in relation to culture, responsibility, and family (also in relation to power and sacrifice and the choices we make, go figure)
• mastery of self
• impossible hard choices
• brokenness and healing
• irrevocable bonds (tie that into impossible hard choices)

I know there are more, but they escape my mind just now. These lead to blood and fire and glass/mirrors showing up as symbols in a lot of my work, especially the poetry.

So I did go fish it up, unedited:

I said it once before: I write fascinated. I have found that I am interested in the same things that differentiate literature I love from that which I fangirl. I am interested in cost and sacrifice, power and strength, and mastery of oneself. I prefer the twists of complexity, characters who make hard decisions and pay high prices but accomplish their goal. I love order and making logic of chaos and impossibility. Fiction puts my world into perspective: it enables me to see the underlying patterns and constraints grant the freedom to make those hard choices. Selflessness, love, resolve, endurance, the ability to stand persecuted and not defend oneself—these things are power and a power I wish I had.

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Thief of Literature

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