Thief of Literature

[scribblemyname]

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.

Comments

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

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*

[scribblemyname]

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.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

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.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

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.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

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.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

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