(no subject)

I went to bed for five minutes, many hours ago. I woke up to find I had told you stuff you knew, left all my lights on and had somehow, 3/4 asleep, marinated a pound of minute mushrooms. I had meant to make them French-style, with half a dozen spices, but instead they're Italian style, with much oregano. I also unpacked my suitcase and got through 2/3 of my emails.

I'll be going back to bed in a few minutes. I'm posting now because the computer was on and there were urgent emails to answer and because I've taken my tablets (why I got up again in the first place) and because it was really bugging me that I keep telling you about the photograph without doing anything about it. I tried to reduce the images in size so a couple can be webbed and I ended up with a very nice square of sky: I both need a better program for dealing with such things and I need better skills in using the rather minimalistic program I have. So, after all of that, no pictures until I get a bit of help.

My redeeming good news is that there *will* be a Canberra 'worldbuiling using history' course, that it starts next week and that there are still spaces in it. I want to say "mwa ha ha" and announce that I'm taking over the world, but really, I'm just teaching a similar course in Canberra that I taught in Sydney last weekend. Except the Canberra course has a bunch more hours teaching and so is going to have more cool stuff. Also, I tailor the teaching to the needs of the students in front of me on the day (not much use in giving spec fic tropes and their use alongside epic legends to writers of historical fiction who want to write about life in a southern English town in 1141), so there may well be quite different material covered. We'll use the course outline as a strong guide, however, and add and subtract and modify according to student needs.

I received excellent evaluations from the Sydney course and covered everything from how to assess the worth of web-based materials to how to use telling detail to illuminate the character for the reader. Plus, of course, lots of strange and useful historical detail. Anyhow, the information is here if you want to use it (and it's still in the same place if you don't, I suspect): http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/literature/Worldbuilding.pdf

Time to sleep again! Obviously I returned from Sydney a lot more tired than I realised.

(no subject)

Today turns out to be one of those Gillian-as-epic-heroine-fighting-pain days. Nothing seriously wrong, just a lot of background pain and no way to take time off. Some of the pain is self-induced through carrying luggage and living at the pace of a normal person while I was in Sydney. I get to whinge a bit about it, but that's all. Life's too busy to let the pain take over, this week.

I have a big list of things and I'm halfway through the "Do today or else" part of it. This means I get time off for good behaviour tomorrow and have coffee with a friend before I go to uni and get trained and copy my course notes for next week. Of course *this* means I have to do those course notes, but that's not the most urgent task this afternoon.

I have two most urgent tasks for this afternoon. One is to decipher my edits from Sydney and enter them on the master documents before I forget how to read my own handwriting. The other is to translate my thoughts on writing modern English using Old French models into literate prose. I don't know if the latter will be useful, but if I don't process the notes, I'll not process the language and I won't end up with anything handy from a slow reading of that really dull Miracle play.

Actually, that's not true. I have some handy exclamations from it, which I shall insert into my speech when necessary.

A good exclamation of astonishment that will annoy my mother, for instance: Bon Jhesus, doulx amoureux Diex. I see that exclamation and think of the story of the Seven Foolish Virgins.

Or, if it's a bad day and my body and mind and soul are all in woe (today it's only the body - the mind and soul are just fine) I can say: Plain de courrouz suiz et d'annuy.

I think I need to go back to some of my favourite (less boring!) Old French works of literature and extract language that will improve my everyday life and annoy my mother. Of course I shall report on it here. And of course I shall choose works that I can count as work towards my doctorate. I do need to re-read the William epics, after all. The town I'm using is the town William died in, after all.

Seriously, what I got from the Miracle was the start of a very useful set of tools for indicating relative hierarchy using simple modern language. In a perfect world, I can now create a set of conversations that shows the participants' hierarchy and their view of the hierarchy unambiguously. Using a tried and true model from a period where these things count. It will help with teaching as well as writing. I can forgive the dullness of the text for this.

I knew this stuff, to be honest. It's stock knowledge for Medievalists, I think - read texts closely and the understanding will appear in the mind, like magic. I've just never thought of codifying it before. Or that there are really straightforward ways of writing systems of relative hierarchy into English conversation. Every time I've talked with other writers about it, I've taken the hard way and explained things laboriously.

I'm now thinking it would be a really good idea to pursue this a bit further. In other words, as I read I shall take notes and at the end of the notes will be a chart and that chart will represent all things good. Unless someone else has done the chart, in which case I can be lazy.