Rachel Alexander's Blog, page 216
April 30, 2019
April 29, 2019
have you studied ancient greek?? i just started Destroyer of Light and i’m so impressed by your use of ancient greek, i’ve studied it for two years now and i’ve found it so difficult to translate english to attic greek!!
That is a huge high compliment. Thank you!!
I didn’t study Ancient Greek until I started writing Receiver of Many.
I am far from proficient, and I got a big assist from @denerim who I thanked in both books for her invaluable help, especially with the pronouns, and @teashoesandhair for some of the finer differences between Modern and Ancient Greek.
In Destroyer of Light, in the throne room scene, you’ll also see a little Ancient Thracian, which I had to blend with modern Bulgarian to form complete sentences since we only have a smattering or translated words.
I’ve always love languages. Every book I’ve written has some addition in it whether it’s existing or “frog DNAed” together.
If I was given three wishes, one of them would be the ability to read understand and correctly pronounce Minoan
therkalexander:
mollyringle:
I couldn’t be the only writer who really *doesn’t* like the famed...
I couldn’t be the only writer who really *doesn’t* like the famed quote attributed to Hemingway:
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Which apparently was originally by sportswriter Red Smith, but that’s not the point.
The point is: sure, writing is HARD, in the sense that anything worth doing is hard, but I’m sorry, I’m not going so far as to say that it’s PAIN AND SUFFERING and you are being some courageous wounded soldier by persisting in putting words on paper.
Because for me, NOT writing hurts a lot more than writing. Without writing, adventures and emotions are trapped inside me, where they fester. I become crazy if I don’t give them an outlet.
So, okay, in that sense, I’m lancing my psyche and “bleeding” these ideas onto the page? Is that the idea? I still don’t like the metaphor. It’s not like draining a freaking wound. It’s like planting a seed that would otherwise rot, but with your care and diligent work it grows instead into a magnificent tree.
Besides. There are harder jobs out there that do in fact require blood. So let’s just not take ourselves quite so seriously, eh, authors?
I 100% agree with this. Are there difficult things to write? Sure. Of course. Does that make all writing an intense emotional labor?
Nope.
Now, If I’m being unflinchingly honest, writing doesn’t feel at all like suffering to me. When I go on a tear and bang out 10k words in three days that’s not suffering. That’s a high.
It’s a high more exquisite and vibrant than the best drug I ever took in my younger years. I have done 100% of my writing sober, but being in the zone and just siphoning words from my brain to the page? A perfect drug.
I’m not even talking about getting the climax and denouement of a story written, or the satisfaction when you type “the end”. I’m talking about the minutiae, the build up, and even the really fucking tragic parts. Still the same high.
NOT writing hurts. It feels like sickness, or worse, an ever present ever deepening numbness. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back into the grove.
But the act of writing itself? Ecstasy.
The typewriter and bleed quote? Doesn’t resonate with me at all. I’ve never felt like the act of writing was akin to martyrdom.
I know it won’t happen but John Mulaney as Hermes
Hades: You’re not going to tell anyone on Olympus that you walked in on my wife and me, right?
Hermes:
artofelaineho:
Figured I should repost the fanart I did for...
Figured I should repost the fanart I did for Receiver of Many, since I switched tumblr handles over the years. I did these in 2015-2016 (wow, time flies), so here’s part 1. A bunch of Persephone and Aidoneus illustrations and facial concepts!
Receiver of Many is a retelling of the Persephone/Hades greek myth. It’s one of my favorite books. @therkalexander is now working on the sequel, The Good Counselor, so head over there if you’re interested!
How many chapters will there be of TGC in total?
Twenty four, according to my current synopsis. I’m going to cut the fat in the final edit by about 10%, but at current rate it looks like it’s going to clock in at around 160K words.
