False spring is what we call it. At least I think so. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard anyone say “false spring.” But if that’s not what they call it, they ought to. I’ll take full credit. Registered trademark.
Anyway, the sun shone, and the temperature got into the upper 40s (farenheit, for our European readers). The snow is more than half gone from my neighbors’ lawn to the east. It seems barely diminished on my neighbor’s lawn to the west. And I’m kind of in the middle. I supposed the inequity has to do with the angle of the sun. Or systemic sexism – but in that case, it favors the woman.
Anyway, it was so nice out I decided to go on the back porch this afternoon and work on the new Erling book. I’d been stalled in my revision; a timeline problem that overwhelmed me one evening a month ago. Since then I’ve been spooked about it, sure it was beyond my powers to solve. I decided I was in a rut and needed to change my writing environment, so I sat on the porch, rolled my pants up to get some sunlight, and gave it another look.
I think I solved the problem – which means there’s probably a couple loose threads I’ll still need to fix in a later revision. But anyway, I’m on the job again.
James Lileks complained (sort of) about this warm spell a few days back. He noted that it won’t last, that we’ll get more snow and all this warmth and sunlight will have been but a cruel tease.
I sympathize keenly with that sentiment. If there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s looking at the dark (and cold) side. But you know, the knowledge that more snow is coming doesn’t make today less sweet. The air was no less mild. The photons my legs absorbed were no less Vitamin D-incentive.
It’s not just about false spring, either. You’ve got to think that way every day, when you get to my age.
Photo credit: Thom Milkovic @ thommilkovic, via Unsplash
I’m deep in translation work right now, but not the paying kind. I’m translating another article for the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit. (Sverdrup, in case you don’t want to bother with the Wikipedia link, was a founding father of Augsburg Seminary and College in Minneapolis, and of The Lutheran Free Church, which no longer exists. Its principles are carried on by The Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, to which I belong.) Sverdrup isn’t the easiest writer to translate, though I’ve translated far worse (see below). But this article is harder than usual, Sverdrup wrote it early in his career, before he immigrated to the US, and he hadn’t figured out yet that paragraphs shouldn’t run a whole page in length.
Hans Nielsen Hauge was far worse, though. I’ve written about him before, both here and in The American Spectator. He was the peasant preacher who sparked a revival in Norway around the turn of the 19th Century. Hauge was a man full of Christian zeal, but with little education. I’ve translated some of his books – all this is unpublished to date – and a couple of them feature long, long sections with no paragraph breaks at all. The man was not cerebral; he was an enthusiast. He sat down with pen and paper and just wrote whatever his spirit put into his mind. Thank the Lord for Post-It Notes (which got their inspiration, by the way, in church); without them it would be almost impossible to keep your place as you work your way through books like that. (Oddly enough, Art Fry, who got the Post-It idea in church, worked for Augsburg College, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph. This fact seems like it should be significant, but is not, so it doesn’t rate a paragraph of its own.)
It all comes down to something C. S. Lewis wrote… somewhere. Might have been a letter to a kid. He said that when you write badly, you’re asking the reader to do your work for you. It’s your job to a) think out what you want to say, and b) say it as clearly and comprehensibly as possible, without putting roadblocks in the reader’s way.
In case you’re unclear on how this is done, you basically change paragraphs whenever you move on to a new idea. It’s like a subheading in an outline. If your paragraphs vary in length, that’s perfectly fine. Some paragraphs can even be one sentence. In extreme situations, one word will do.
In the old days, when reading material was rare and relatively expensive, people with the reading bug would read pretty much anything they could get their hands on. If you rode into a town in the early American west, any reading material you brought with you would be eagerly borrowed – old newspapers were especially prized, and it didn’t matter how out of date they were.
But those days are past. Today you need to fight for your readership. Keeping your paragraphs short – and congruent with your narrative purpose – is a way of working with your reader.
Like all rules, there are exceptions. But exceptions to this rule are pretty darn rare.
We talked about the word egregious and its change in usage last week. It comes from the Latin ex grege, meaning “rising above the flock,” so its use as a word for excellent or extraordinary, which are not the same thing, makes sense. This word grex or gregis is Latin for “a flock” or “gathered into a flock” and has given us a, uh, small herd of words.
Gregarious derives from this word alone, no stir-ins, no additional flavors. We use it to describe someone who loves to be around other people. He enjoys running with the flock.
Segregate means to separate from the flock.
Aggregate means “to collect or unite as a mass or sum,” similar to congregate, which also means “to bring together.” Coleridge said, “cold congregates all bodies,” making them appear united when they are spiritually indifferent.
Allegory does not come to us from grex, but it does comes from the related Greek word agora.Agora means “assembly” or “place of assembly.” “To speak in an assembly” or “to speak publicly” is the Greek word agoreuein. If you add allos or “other” to that, you get “to speak other in an assembly.” Tell the truth but tell it slant. This is the root of the Greek word allegoria, “the description of one thing under the image of another.”
Yes, I see that hand! How did we get from grex to flock? That’s a thoughtful question. Thank you.
As words are wont to do, our word flock comes from completely different root words. On the one hand, flock (from Middle English flokke and earlier from Old French and Latin) means “a lock of wool or hair.” It can describe cotton or woolen rejects used to stuff a bed. You can use it as a verb to mean “to stuff a bed with flock” or “to give something a fibrous appearance.” If you didn’t know, and I didn’t, you can flock almost anything and could have been doing this for a good long time, allowing for a now obsolete meaning of this verb, “to treat contemptuously.” Considering today’s high levels of vulgarity, I don’t recommend attempting to fit this into daily conversation.
On the other hand, flock (from Anglo-Saxon flocc, related to Old Norse flokkr) means “a group of people.” If you say flocks, you’re going to indicate a large number of people from several sizable groups. Etymonline appears to say this word sprang from the ground of its own will, because it isn’t found in other Germanic languages beyond the Middle Low German vlocke, meaning “crowd, flock (of sheep).”
If you come across the word egregious this week, it is likely in a story about the New York governor’s exemplary leadership during the pandemic in which he scuttled seniors by sending the coronavirus into their nursing homes while reportedly making the medical officials in charge of them immune to liability charges. He has reportedly threatened state congressmen of his own party in order to silence their calls for accountability. By all accounts, this is excellent gubernatorial work.
But you see the irony I’m using here. I’ve said egregious as if it means excellent, because that’s exactly the usage the word once had. Egregious comes from Latin, originally meaning “distinguished or extraordinary.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says it came into English in the 1530s.
An old educational journal gives some examples of its use in this meaning. From Samuel Johnson’s The Life of Pope: “This Essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence.” Here Johnson is saying Pope has outdone himself in this essay on man. “The reader feels his mind full, though he learns nothing; and when he meets it in its new array no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse.”
One, to Empire Born, Egregious Prince, whose Manly Childhood shew’d His mingled Parents, and portended Joy Unspeakable;
Johnson’s use leans into the extraordinary side of the original meaning of egregious, not so much the excellent side. Perhaps it shows the path for the change of meaning, which the dictionary has occurring in the late 16th century.
First, we used it ironically: Should’ve seen the street preacher I just passed, an egregious communicator that, preaching the gospel of sausages in buns.
Then, we pushed the meaning into outrageous or extremely bad, like only a governor can do.
Isn’t it interesting that words can flip meaning like this?
No review tonight. Instead, a little writing update. I’m sort of at a milestone, having sort of finished the first draft of the next Erling novel, whose name – I think – will be King of Rogaland. I didn’t really want to call it that, having used the word “king” in my last title, but it seems to be what the book wants to be called.
I say the first draft is “sort of” finished because I’ve already identified a major revision I need to make, which will involve ripping up a fair amount of the work I’ve done.
Which is, I keep telling people, precisely the way it’s supposed to be. The first piece of advice I give to young writers is, “Don’t worry about making the first draft perfect. Your first draft is supposed to suck. That’s its function. The first draft is raw material – unshaped clay, unchiseled stone. It’s what you make a real story out of.”
What amazes me is that I don’t follow my own advice. I sit here thinking what a failure the book is, because the first draft is flawed.
It’s like I don’t even listen to myself. Considering all the time and money I’ve spent maintaining this font of wisdom in my life, I don’t even use it.
No wonder I never made the bestseller lists.
Now, to take your mind off my miseries, here’s a short film – about a half hour. It’s an adaptation of a Terry Pratchett story (or at least based on his characters; I’ve never read Pratchett). But it impressed me in many ways.
From our You Have Heard It Said But I Tell You desk, is only 7 percent of effective communication verbal?
Many people will note the importance of body language to being trusted or persuasive, and they may say spoken words are only 7 percent of communication, the rest being 38 percent tone of voice and 55 percent body language. Where did this idea come from?
It comes from reports on the communication research of Albert Mehrabian of UCLA during the 1960s. Philip Yaffe describes the two studies for Ubiquity. In one study, Mehrabian had his test subjects judge the emotion of a woman saying “maybe” in one of three different ways and then seeing a photo of her expressing these emotions. They guessed correctly more often after seeing the photo than by tone of voice alone.
In the other study, Mehrabian gave nine words, spoken in three different ways, and asked subjects to judge the emotion expressed. He concluded tone of voice carries a lot of weight in communication.
You can think it through yourself. Imagine the words “maybe” and “thanks” said in three different ways that would clue you in to what the person was saying. The excited maybe that hopes it works out, the uncommitted maybe, and the maybe that doesn’t want to say no to your face, at least in the moment. Nobody needed research to work this out. Was this Mehrabian’s actual conclusion?
Yaffe writes, “Professor Mehrabian’s conclusion was that for inconsistent or contradictory communications, body language and tonality may be more accurate indicators of meaning and emotions than the words themselves. However, he never intended the results to apply to normal conversation. And certainly not to speeches, which should never be inconsistent or contradictory!”
I am told Jonathan Edwards read his sermons with little emotion, addressing the back wall, yet his “The Excellency of Christ” is marvelous reading and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” had people withering in the pews. Should we attribute this to the Holy Spirit’s use of the words? Sure, but how much human spirit is any of our words? Probably far more than 7 percent.
Once again tonight, I have nothing to review for you. This book I’m reading, which I mentioned yesterday, continues a slow read. I’ve figured out the reason – it’s longer than a federal regulation. I bought it assuming it was an ordinary World War II thriller, but it turns out to be more than 500 pages long – an epic. And although I remain interested in the events, I don’t think there’s enough story here to support that much expository weight.
It’s also a reproach to me as a writer. Because as I continue working on the new Erling book (still haven’t come up with a title), my word count is lower than I think it should be – like butter spread over not enough bread, as Bilbo would say. People expect epic fantasy books to run at least 80,000 words or so nowadays, and I’m not sure I can make it that long. I don’t want to just pad the story, but I’d rather not disappoint the reader either.
I have the idea my prose used to take up more space. Maybe I’m a victim of my own efficiency.
Tonight, insight into the creative process. Or rather, my creative process.
Because other novelists work very differently from me. They amaze me. Some author friends on Facebook will say, “Well, I only got 1,000 words down tonight. Had the flu and my mother died, but that’s no excuse. Got to punch those numbers up tomorrow.”
Me, at this point I get in about one scene a night. Often only a few paragraphs. After that I haven’t got a clue what comes next, and I won’t know until the next day – maybe. It may take a couple days or a week before I figure out how to coax my characters into going where I need them to go.
It should get better as I get deeper into the plot. Then things will move by themselves. I’m setting up my shots at this point.
Anyway, this is what I’ve been working through recently:
There’s a story (only one) about Erling Skjalgsson that’s not included in Heimskringla. You find it in Flatey Book. I’ve mentioned it here before. It’s the Tale of Erling and Eindridi.
Eindridi was the son of the famous chieftain Einar Tambarskjelve, a very important man. I won’t outline the story tonight, but basically it’s about how young Eindridi gets into a compromising situation with Erling’s daughter Sigrid. Erling is furious, and Eindridi has to undergo the Iron Ordeal (you may recall that ceremony from The Year of the Warrior) to prove that he hasn’t dishonored her. Then old Einar, Eindridi’s father, nearly goes to war against Erling over the insult to his son. But the business is resolved through the two young people getting married.
It’s been my intention from the beginning to include that story in my current Erling book. But there were points I wondered about.
For one thing, another story mentions Eindridi’s wife, and she’s not Sigrid Erlingsdatter. I forget her name, but she’s somebody else.
Now that doesn’t invalidate the story by itself. Wives were a tragically perishable commodity in those days. Childbirth often carried them off. Rich men frequently went through several wives. Still, I found it odd that the connection wasn’t mentioned anywhere else (as far as I know; might have missed something).
Also, I saw Erling and Einar as fairly friendly. Just an assumption on my part, but call it an artist’s instinct.
On the other hand, there is a well-attested marriage alliance that I thought required more explanation. We know that Erling had a daughter named Ragnhild who married Thorberg Arnesson of Giske, son of the powerful Arne Arnmodsson, and one of a group of brothers who swung a lot of weight in the time of King (St.) Olaf Haradsson and his successors.
The Arnesssons were a family divided in Olaf’s time. Some of them supported the king, others opposed him. At the Battle of Stiklestad, where Olaf died, there were Arnesson on both sides.
But Thorberg was one of the pro-Olaf Arnessons. He even went into exile in Russia with Olaf. So why would he marry the daughter of Olaf’s greatest domestic enemy, Erling Skjalgsson?
And I had the brilliant idea – audacious by my mousy standards – of replacing Eindridi with Thorberg in the anecdote. It would achieve narrative economy while solving a problem of motivation.
So I’m doing that. And nobody can stop me.
There was one further problem, though. Last night I had a worrying thought – “Wait! For this to work, old Arne Arnmodsson (Thorberg’s father, if you lost your score card) has to be alive in 1022. But I always had the idea he must have died young.”
This was because there was another brother named Arne Arnesson. And the usual custom in the Viking Age was not to name a baby after a living relative. The old Norse believed that the soul followed the name, you see. So if you named the baby Arne after his father, Papa Arne would likely drop dead. Only one member of the nuclear family at a time was permitted the same name.
But I did some more research and learned that old Arne is believed to have lived until around 1024. So it’s cool. They must have adopted Christian naming practices in the family by the time Arne Jr. was born.
Tevildo however, himself a great and skilled liar, was so deeply versed in the lies and subtleties of all the beasts and creatures that he seldom knew whether to believe what was said to him or not, and was wont to disbelieve all things save those he wished to believe true, and so was he often deceived by the most honest.
I’ve long cherished a great fondness for Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Luthien, which impressed me long ago when I read the Silmarillion. And of course, it’s referenced often in The Lord of the Rings. So before I moved on from The Hobbit to the Trilogy, I thought I’d read the (fairly) recent book devoted to that story.
It wasn’t entirely what I expected. It’s sort of a scholarly exercise. In it, the late Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son and literary executor, traces the development of the story through various stages in the collected manuscripts, where it is altered in numerous ways. There are surprises. For instance, an early version of the story has as one of its major villains a great cat called Tevildo (see quotation above), who lives in a castle and serves the evil Melkor. In later versions, Tevildo would be replaced by a great magician who would in time become the Sauron of the Trilogy.
I think we may deduce that Prof. Tolkien was not very fond of cats.
Those who find Tolkien’s work lacking in female heroes need to read Beren and Luthien. Although Beren is a doughty hero, he also seems to be headstrong to point of stupidity. And the two great crises in the story both involve Luthien rescuing him.
I was, frankly, looking for something more like a straight narrative when I bought this book. I’m not enough of a Tolkien scholar to linger happily forever over details of composition and myth-building.
On the other hand, I’d never encountered the words “inexaggerable” and “quook” (past tense of quake) before, so the reading was not without surprises.
The tale of Beren and Luthien was a central matter in Tolkien’s life’s work. If I understand the story correctly, it went back to his attempt to immortalize the day when Edith Bratt danced for him in the woods and he fell in love forever. In a sense, he built all Middle Earth as a kind of ornate setting for the jewel of that memory.
Beren and Luthien is recommended for those who can never get enough Tolkien. If you’re looking for a less strenuous approach to the story, you might just read The Silmarillion.
Oh yes, it has Alan Lee illustrations, so it’s got that going for it.
Another day, another failure to finish a book to review. So you’re condemned to a personal update. Unless you choose to just surf on. Which might be the way of wisdom.
Today was another example of what I call “temporal stacking.” (Did I invent that term? Or did I borrow it in a moment of absentmindedness, which is what most of my moments are these days?) Today is one of those earmarked for specified chores – on Thursdays I pay my bills. And I take the garbage out.
But I also had to go to the doctor today. (Warning: old fart’s repulsive health talk ahead.) I noticed a spot on my nose that I thought my dermatologist (never thought I’d have a personal dermatologist, but all the cool kids are getting them nowadays) should look at. He, of course, was not available at the office that’s located a mere fifteen minutes away. He was at the office that’s a half hour away. So I drove out to Excelsior (we have a town called Excelsior. So there) and showed it to him. He said no, it was nothing. However, that other spot on my cheek over there looked sketchy. I then received the Deadly Touch of the Frost Giant, and was sent home clothed and in my right mind.
All this was capped (and pleasantly so) by a new batch of paying translation work. It won’t pay my mortgage off, but it’s work and I’m grateful. I’ve put in 2.5 hours on it so far; more is to come.
Meanwhile, I’ve been making slow progress on the new Erling novel. The work is like punching my way through a room full of oatmeal – I can move ahead, but it’s an effort. I’m on the cusp of what ought to be a pretty nifty supernatural scene, but it will probably have to wait for realization.
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