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Jun. 25th, 2006 08:16 pmI slept most of yesterday (and thanks for the kind wishes, folks -they ameliorated the being-queasy-all-day depression considerably). Today I didn't eat anything till after class, and got through class in style using travel-sickness tablets.
While I was preparing for class I suddenly realised *why* my current fiction feels flat. It's nothing to do with the paper I am writing on. It is everything to do with the fact that I haven't connected the calendars and seasons with the real world. My task tonight: to create one year of Jewish and Christian and farm-cycle calendar for the book. I'm starting with Palm Sunday because I have an attested procession I can use and I will work backwards and forwards from there.
I was going to just keep it in my head (not as hard as it sounds) but I just realised that if I write it all down I will have another gorgeous teaching tool. My Winchester map brings so much into instant perspective for students. Combine it with calendars that includes zodiac and land cycles and maybe major fair dates and *so* much of the background for a novel is there, on a mere two pages. Just walking down a street becomes much more real if I know if dark comes early or the sun shines long into the night, if a major Church procession comes out of the Cathedral or a little one comes out of a minor church as a plea to some saint to please stop the crypt flooding.
So much of Medieval life is connected to calendars and seasons - even Lag b'Omer makes a different kind of sense with the seasons spread forth in front of me. And in front of my students. Of whom there are none, since today I taught my last Medieval background workshop for a while. Someone will one day want another, though and I will bring out my glorious seasonal compilation document. In the meantime, I can use the document as more framework for that novel I am supposed to be writing.
All this is why I have the word deadline for this week. It will take an evening to do the diagram with my home resources, but would be much tougher away from my nice library. If I had discovered this *after* I had left I would be in a mess.
I have a date with dates. Bring on the travel sickness tablets!
While I was preparing for class I suddenly realised *why* my current fiction feels flat. It's nothing to do with the paper I am writing on. It is everything to do with the fact that I haven't connected the calendars and seasons with the real world. My task tonight: to create one year of Jewish and Christian and farm-cycle calendar for the book. I'm starting with Palm Sunday because I have an attested procession I can use and I will work backwards and forwards from there.
I was going to just keep it in my head (not as hard as it sounds) but I just realised that if I write it all down I will have another gorgeous teaching tool. My Winchester map brings so much into instant perspective for students. Combine it with calendars that includes zodiac and land cycles and maybe major fair dates and *so* much of the background for a novel is there, on a mere two pages. Just walking down a street becomes much more real if I know if dark comes early or the sun shines long into the night, if a major Church procession comes out of the Cathedral or a little one comes out of a minor church as a plea to some saint to please stop the crypt flooding.
So much of Medieval life is connected to calendars and seasons - even Lag b'Omer makes a different kind of sense with the seasons spread forth in front of me. And in front of my students. Of whom there are none, since today I taught my last Medieval background workshop for a while. Someone will one day want another, though and I will bring out my glorious seasonal compilation document. In the meantime, I can use the document as more framework for that novel I am supposed to be writing.
All this is why I have the word deadline for this week. It will take an evening to do the diagram with my home resources, but would be much tougher away from my nice library. If I had discovered this *after* I had left I would be in a mess.
I have a date with dates. Bring on the travel sickness tablets!