"He turned."

I seemed to be typing this sentence a lot. Or variations on it. People seem to be doing a lot of turning in my story. I don't know if this is some weird tick in my writing that needs to be hunted down and eliminated, or some motif of some sort, something going on that I am not yet aware of. I do seem to be focusing very heavily on vistas and views, and the turning seems to be about people taking in some new tableau that comments on the last one. And the way I seem to be heading in this opening section is to relate the beginning of the story in a bunch of short sections told from various characters perspectives. So maybe it means something. I am feeling, kind of, after some of my attempts on M ended up feeling as if all the life had been sucked out of them, to to not worry to much about editing at this point. If I edit to much I might just draw all the vitality out in my urge to streamline it. Better to let the quirks lie for now, until I figure out what they all mean. Any changes should concern themselves with getting stuff that is plainly shit out of there, providing I can find something better to replace them with. Oh, and typos and awkward sentences, of course.

Creative Devolution

I have been trying to get some fiction writing done on SK today, but it has been going nowhere. I have been continuously falling down rabbit holes of online pseudohistory, looking for just enough information to come up with a description of some event that has taken place as background for my story, but isn't even a necessary part of the story itself, just some historical flavor to get the ball rolling, but doing that has become a kind of insurmountable task as I try to sort through all the various historical sources to find the one "correct" image of the past that should be pithily described, and the whole time I am kicking myself for not having finished Gibbon already, since that might actually supply me something of an outline to all these various quandaries. As such, my writing quickly became little more than editing that rapidly devolved into research, and I got less than nothing done. Literally: My work so far today has soncisted of removing a paragraph that I realized was historically inaccurate, but I don't know yet what to put in it's place.

I just wanted to get some writing done, to work with words and such, but it seems that that is nearly impossible to do as I am working on the bloody opening of this book.

Finished!

Le Morte D'Arthur is done. Or at least I am at reading it. Suck it, Malory!

7 Words

George Carlin died yesterday. God damn it.

Almost...there...

I am nearing the end of Le Morte d'Arthur, am in fact on the last section, the title section. Like I said, I find the work boring and repetitive, and completely removed from the kind of characterization expected in modern works. Thought a prose work, it follows the monoglossic conventions that Bahktin depicted as the product of the Epic. And on top of that, the monoglossic viewpoint is one of supreme dickitude, but with a rancid patina of Christian piety. As usual, I find myself rooting for Morgan Le Fay, and in this work she really is supposed to be evil.

Still, the work has been useful as a rough guide to the outlines of Arthurian legend, making it easier to put together how all the different strands of Arthuriana fit together. Its really interesting to see for example, that the Wasteland is likely really Yorkshire. Which makes sense, because it was actually in that region, roughly speaking, when the Arthurian period saw major attacks from Saxons, creating the Kingdom of Bernicia within the kingdoms of Ebrauc (York) and Brineich (Southeastern Scotland, Northeastern England). Relatedly, I enjoy seeing a more concrete example of the lineage of Percival/Peredur, since Goodrich had completely confused me on that matter, presenting a variety of contradictory genealogies without comment. Still, I should probably read an earlier tale to get a more "accurate" depiction of his parentage, but the one that exists in my mind at present is pretty good, as it seems to confirm to the historical record of the figure of Peredur. Lancelot, on the other hand, and Lot as well, are getting hazier as I go along. Lot should clean up rather quickly, either settling back into place or getting a few brushstrokes to satisfactorily change him, but Lancelot is shaping up to be a very complex conundrum, probably requiring a significant amount of research to puzzle out. I am probably going to have to read the Knight of the Cart now. Sigh. Of well. Chrétien de Troyes is a lot more fun to read than Malory.