Weekend Update

It's been a while since I updated you on the happenings around me. So I figured I'd get back into the swing of things.

I had a pretty good weekend. Saturday saw me off to a workshop on "Starting your Own Business". Someone advised me to go there and check it out because as a freelance writer I am basically self-employed and should have the data they were offering. So I boarded the train and set off on a cross-country expedition.

I have to admit that the workshop was a bit of a bust. I can't say that I got too much from it, but it was nice getting out a bit. This writing business can be a very lonely endeavor. As a writer I seem to spend most of my time in front of the computer and don't really get out much.

When I got back home late in the afternoon I decided to just chill out in front of the TV. I'm a bit of a sports freak and spent the rest of the day watching the cricket and rugby. On Sunday it was all football (soccer to the Americans).

If you see my last post I republished the story that I submitted to a magazine for publication. It's the first piece I've ever tried to sell. And I have to admit that I'm as nervous as hell about it. I don't know how I will respond if it's rejected by the magazine.

I believe that it's a fairly decent bit of writing and that it should be published. But I guess it's a writer's lot to be forever at the mercy of the editors' likes and dislikes. If they like it and publish it I will officially be able to call myself a professional writer. If not then it's back to the drawing board.

I would really appreciate if you would have a look at the story and let me know what you think. Realistic feedback and criticism are what I need, not the usual "oh, that's nice dear" I get from friends and family. I got some very good advice on it from my "literary adviser" (a.k.a. mom) and made a few alterations to the story.

Post your comments.

Thanks.

Better Late than Never

So, we're humbly abashed for not having updated the blog yesterday. Sincere apologies all around.

Yesterday was a bit dull. I made a few job applications on the web and followed up on some leads. Nothing solid coming out of this yet. We live in hope, don't we?

As regards the book, I have to design a map of the realm that the characters can explore. It's harder to do that I first imagined. It's one thing to create characters out of nothing, but quite another to make up a whole new world - especially one that the ancients had considered to exist already. The realm that I'm talking about is Asgard and the other eight worlds of ancient Norse mythology.

You would think that something as common as this would have already been explored to the limit but this is not the case. After doing thorough searches and the like I only managed to come up with others' ideas of what Asgard looked like. And a lot of these ideas are strangely fanciful. Take a look at this map I found.

I then found this other one for the nine worlds:



It's pathetic, isn't it? This means that I have to really get creative in order to come up with a world that my characters can really explore.

The only real problem with this is that I need it to be a real representation of the actual realm imagined by the vikings and their contemporaries. In order to do this I am going to have to read every single ancient text on the subject.

To this end I have recently completed reading the Prose Edda (written in the 13th century). The next book will be its companion, the Poetic Edda. Unfortunately, in this small town where I live I have not been able to find a decent version of the translation. So, I went to the library and had to get an inter-library loan from one of the libraries in London.

Once this arrives I'm sure that I'll be able to get a better idea of what Asgard looked like, and then be able to come up with a map that will be realist and believable.

Fingers crossed. I'll let you know how it turned out. And if you have any ideas on an easier way to go about this tast, don't hesitate to drop me a line and let me know.

What's new Today?

Okay. Now to get down to updating the Big Blogger diary.

Today's been kinda interesting. As you can see I've made a few modifications to this blog-page. I added the menu on the right so that you can easily access the articles you are looking for. I'll have to add another button for photos as I've now empowered myself by learning how to upload photos. Yay! So I'll soon be adding a section for "Picures and Thoughts". It'll have random pictures I've taken and my opinions and ideas on them. Look out for that.

The "AcerJay Diary" button will give you just the diary entries on the blog. Use this if you want to catch up on what I've been up to recently. The "Poetry Selection" button will have, as it suggests, a random selection of poetry.

The "Work" button will be for more serious articles that I write. These will be things that have some actual meaning and scope - more than just my daily musings.

If you have any suggestions for me on what you would like to see on this blog just drop me a note in the CBox on the right. I'd love to hear from you.

Anyway, enough about the blog.

To the diary: Today saw me enduring the unpredictable English weather. I awoke at 9am but only got up at 9:30. I have to admit that I'm enjoying not having to follow a set schedule of when to go to bed and when to get up - especially the getting up part. Then I stepped out briefly to run some errands. The sky was gloriously clear and there wasn't even the faintest hint of chill in the air.

After ambling down the road for a few minutes I noticed a dark shaddow looming over me. After a bit of inner reflection as to whether the shaddow was just my mood, the light pitter-patter of raindrops brought me from my machinations and gently reminded me that there is nothing as fickle as English weather.

So, After completing my errands, about an hour later, I managed to get back home, completely soaked to the bone. I'd love to have a picture of the event to show you but I was in no mood to start breaking out the camera to get a shot of myself looking like a drowned rat.

A warn cup of coffee soon had my spirits back up and I sat down to work a bit on my book. It's coming along quite nicely. One day I'll put an excerpt from it on this blog - just to give you a taste of it.

The book will eventually, after copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears have flown from me, be a work of speculative fiction - Fantasy. So, if you're into that kind of stuff stay tuned.

Norse Mythology - and life...

I thought I would start off the day today by adding a few spice-ups to this blog. That shouldn't really be too difficult. Following that I was to do a bit of research and then get down to the business of writing Chapter 3 of my book.

So, I logged on and got to work. And in the end what really got done today?

To be honest, not that much.

Did I do a lot of creation on my writing? No.
Did I get a lot of research done? No.

So what did I do? Where did all those hours in the day go?

The truth of that is that I spent a large amount of time trying to get my head around the subject of Blogging. For those of you who are relative newbies in this field I think that you will be able to appreciate my frustration.
Let it never be said that I am web-wise, for I'm most certainly not. In fact only yesterday I was very proud of myself for learning how to download videos for my iPod!

Pathetic, isn't it?

Well, the one good thing that happened was that, in researching my story, I needed to look up a number of websites having to do with Norse Mythology.
While I didn't find anything that I was looking for I did find the following site.

This guy's an artist of note. Here are some samples of pictures on his site. Aren't they absolutely gorgeous?!

Site address: http://www.howarddavidjohnson.com

Anyway, there you have it. No actual work done, but I'm happy I had the chance to view these pictures.

What do you think?