I’ve been doing this “BLOG” for over a year now.  Last Friday, as I saved after making a couple of changes to a recent post, my entire corpus disappeared.  That’s right, all 90 plus posts ceased to be. 

I have to say that I wasn’t overly concerned at first.  I thought that Word Press might just have gone down and when the server returned from maintenance or whatever all would be well.  That did not occur.  My concern/disquiet/fear rose a bit.  I was confronted with the possibility that everything that I’d written would be lost and I started to scramble to see if I had copies of some of the articles.  The answer was mostly no.

I have to confess to other emotions too.  One that might surprise you was a certain amount of relief.  Really Steve?  Relief?  Yes, because I have to say that some of this stuff is just not up to what I hope I can do. 

But there is SO much work to do.  Work on the writing, work on the layout, work on myself.  The last is incredibly daunting.  And really, what is the point?  I haven’t exactly caught on.  I think I know why that is too.  I’m not that good.

Still, if not particularly good, I am writing.  Though I’ve not captured an enormous following that just means that fewer people know what a horrible speller and grammarian I am.  Then too, having had few visitors and fewer commenters guarantees that there are a vast host of people who have not come across my scratchings, evaluated me, and then discarded my work as not worth the time it takes to read.

It was freeing to think I might have to start again.

OH!  There it all is.  Thanks Jeff

Well, everything is back.  I’ve lost nothing.  But I have realized impermanence.  I’ve experienced it.  I am curious to see how it affects me. 

LSO

PS. I did take the time today to go though and make a personal copy of all that has gone before.  I am still thinking about what starting over would have meant and what it might mean.

I’m finding it hard to find the time to write.  I believe I mentioned before that my hours have changed from the optimal late night schedule with easy access to the Internet to this less helpful one.  Worse, while once I was left alone at the end of the night recently I’ve had company.  I believe when I mentioned this, I suggested that I might need to figure out how to work at home.  I regret to inform you, dear reader, that to this point I havehad no success in that endeavor.

Then too, I’m running up against the realization that I should put some effort into taking the raw ideas I have put out on these pages and posts and refine some of them.  I’ve spent time on organization here at L. Stephen O’Neill dot com, but I haven’t begun to polish.  I’m sure there are many other projects I could work on too, many that I haven’t even thought of, though there are many that I have and then realized that, though valuable, they were not top priorities.

So, what to do?  I believe that I am going to put my effort into two main areas that will lead to a third.  First, I am doing research that I hope will lead to more “Celtic Fiction.”  That is my original and most treasured goal.  Priority-wise, that is what I most want to present.  A reason that it hasn’t been most of what I have presented is really that it IS what I value the most and I don’t want to screw it up. 

So, to address the glaring lack of things Celtic in my fictional offerings, I began a novel that is going to present a group of people I want to resemble Irish Monastics with a little fictional leavening and of course their setting in the world of Tir na Nua.  I think the Abbott and the Djinn project will continue.  I need to put more effort into that project making it the first of the two priorities.

Truth to tell, its ponderous pace led me to realize that I need to present something good.  I mean, you can look at the Abbott and the Djinn, but with the exception of a few passages that I’m proud of I don’t think it is very good.  (not yet anyway)

I have promised Free Celtic Fiction.  It’s what I want to do.  So I think that the second thing leading to the third is to come up with more that can be directly called Celtic in outlook, presentation, topic, and flavor.  Along with continuing the Abbott and the Djinn I see this as a top priority.  That would make it the second priority which I hope will lead to the third.

When I’m able to produce some of this “Celtic Fiction” (in outlook, presentation, topic, and flavor) I will need to begin to polish.  Hopefully it won’t take a long long time.  Perhaps Child of Moss will serve, it certainly needs polishing.  Let me know if you have some ideas.  Producing more polished work, stories I can stop claiming I’ve put out raw and unedited, will be that third key priority.

But the problem still remains.  I have little to no time, so I very much need to prioritize and capitalize on the little that I have.

At least that’s how it seems from here.

LSO

Note: I’ve been sitting in a common area at work where I’ve had two co-workers jabber away about their weekends making it impossible for me to get anything done.  One of them is so irritating I am imagining a horror genre story involving the offender at least at the beginning of the story all in livid detail.<sigh> Such is life.

A Story that Grows in the Telling

Everything that happens, if it involves more than one person, will have two or more opinions about what actually happened.  The truth, if there is such a thing, will be somewhere among the opinions.  I think a legend at its base is a story that grows in the telling, resonating more and more with the audience, while it grows less and less true to its origin. 

A legend, to a storyteller, is too good to pass up.  In fact it is opportunity after opportunity to tell it plain, but instead, the bard, or skald, or elder decides to tell it so they see eyes grow wide, eyes that are rivetted on the storyteller. 

Fables provide lessons (and often talking animals), Myths explain gods and their interactions with people, Epics follow a series of critical events.  Epic Fable?  Mythological Epic?  Lore applies to the collected stories of a people, perhaps it is their stories that make them a people.  All these names for stories are words to describe stories of different flavors, but all of them, in someway, provide cultural cohesion.  Don’t you think?

J. R. R. Tolkien set out to provide what he felt his people lacked, a mythos for the British people.  It was Epic, it was Mythical, it spoke to me and continues to, as a reader, I hated to see it end.  Really, I hated the end, it seemed to me that Grey Havens was one of the sadest personal tragedies that I’ve endured.  Fine for Frodo and Bilbo, I’m sure Merry and Pippin and of course Sam all got on fine, but for me that world just ended.  There is a hole.

The nearest thing to the feeling of exploration and discovery that I got with LOTR is the discovery of Irish Mythology.  It is not in a neat package like LOTR.  It doesn’t have just one imaginer.  But it is an exciting and involving subject.  The hole is partly filled.

But I want more.  Sometimes you have to supply your own needs, like almost all the time you do so, I am in the process of writing several novels, but on the way to that I offer these thoughts, insights, resources, and diversions of interest to me and, I hope, to you.  Here I hope to gather legends and lore, notes on antiquity, and present day reality.

For now, welcome and please tell me what you like or you don’t.  I value your insights; I value your eyes, riveted, grown wide.

A Story Told (and told and told)

I’m a man with a story.  Even my name, O’Neill, has tales attached to it (like this one of the Hand Gules that is prominent in our heraldry,) but don’t we all?  I love old tales, tales of heroes, tales of real people in strange times and strange people in real times.  I have wanted to write such tales and, prodded by my friend, Jeffery, I have. 

I’ve just completed the first draft of a short story.  In the end Concerning The Deer Riders wandered a bit farther than I had anticipated.  Legendary wanderings?  You can read Concerning the Deer Riders yourself and see what you think.

I’ve begun a novel.  I am offering my unedited first draft as I write it.  When Jeffery first convinced me to try this format I realized that the first job was to get some content up and quick.  As such, my first use has been something of an artist’s sketchbook, an author’s notepad.  I do believe there is value in this.  Eventually it may be of use to other struggling writers to see the story of my struggle and see process as positive or negative example or even to provide encouragement by comparison.

Dear reader, I am a new novelist and at present I believe that my best chance of developing is getting something out there.  If you disagree please tell me, perhaps I will progress on several tracks. putting out raw very rough drafts and going back through past stories to sharpen and polish them.  Here is the novel beginnings: Intro to and  Beginning of The Abbot and the Djinn. Follow my progress HERE.

Of late I feel that I’ve put quite a bit of ore on these pages.  It is probably time to refine, to polish, to hammer some of these tales into something better than they were.  So now, we begin the  “. . . and told and told and told” part of the writers craft.  Find my polished stones here.

Tir na Nua

I have imagined a world apart.  A land out of time.  Now, on Earth, there is little doubt about some things which have happened, have passed into history.  These things are written.  Before and between the stone of what is written are legends of things not written, but perhaps true none-the-less. 

Tir na Nua is neither and both.  Have you wished that there was a land where the Celtic world did not fall beneath the Roman?  Have you wondered what that world might have been?  Such things have happened in the new land and we have word of it, remembered by bards, lineage by rote, History in mind and on their lips.  I bring these stories.

At one time folk we identify now as Celtic dominated much of Europe. Except for ruins, and votive offerings, and the words of enemies, and a very few scratchings on stones we have nothing left of these people.  To imagine a Celtic world like insular Ireland one must imagine the real, because there is little enough to instruct us as to what that real, Earthly world was like.  Enter the legend maker, the storyteller, the bard. 

I have had an interest in the real Celts, Gauls, Britons, Welsh, all the diverse tribes of a people who shared a way of life and an asthetic sense and language if not blood.  I want to gather material, post what I find, and get your reactions to topics of Antiquity, Celts in general, Insular Ireland, and of course my stories.

Sometimes I wish I dwelled in Tir na Nua, but instead I live in a much less misty, more pedestrian, and I would say, far less noble world.  Some things that come to my attention must not pass without comment.  I will comment on current events. (sorry if this is a buzz kill, please feel free to ignore all political rants of the author and return to escapist literature.) 

Content

I am working to put some of my scratchings, secreted away in numerous notebooks, into a form more conducive to your perusal and consumption.  These first draft stories and bits of back story are available at blog topics.

Here is a bit of that ever expanding effort? work? uh, drekk? Hopefully fascinating fiction.

I have in mind to collect many things here, but I want to produce for you stories of places outside of your experience (or anyones) and yet true and recognizable. You are welcome to browse as it accretes (I think this may be another Steveism. I should really look for it in some authoritative Dictionary.*) I will update metatags and such to reflect the sites altered state. It will never be done…

I pray I have not taxed your resources too much. Enjoy! Comment! Dispute! Encourage! Correct! Guide! Request!

Welcome to this,

LSO

PS. * ac·crete (-krt)

2. To grow or increase gradually, as by addition.

source

Dear Reader,

Nothing stays the same.  That is true of my work situation as much as it is true of life in general.  I’m really talking about specifics though.  I am not going to have the leisure of long break periods with access to the Internet with which to further my writing on these pages.

As with everything, this could be bad, or this could be good.  I won’t be able to sit down and fict.  (fict is a new word that I just made up.  the act of writing fiction and a slapdash way  that does not deserve the keystrokes that make up “write fiction”) Sadly I wasn’t really doing that anyway.  So, I hope that I can develop a habit of writing at home. 

Stay tuned.  And if I begin to slow an encouraging word might be more effective than you’d think. 

Thanks for your kind attention

LSO

I’m not as young as I used to be.  As obvious as that is, I feel it today.  I think there are several things that have conspired to put me in this mood. 

Football: Look, as an American male I am duty bound to love this game and I do.  I used to play in the halcyon days of high-school.  It is obvious now that I don’t anymore.  Also I went “oh-for” in my fantasy leagues.  I got to watch my beloved Cowboys, who I have suffered with since Stabauch and Golden Richards, loose to the Giants.  The pain of it.  And I went OH-FOR in fantasy football.

It seemed I had a good plan for this week.  I was favored in every game.  But the fates were cruel and I suffered from under-performance by far too many of my key players.  Under-performance, oh-for, pain, loss. . .

Literature: I am reading an interesting book, The Broken Kings.  It is the pre-story of Merlin mixed in with Jason and the Argo.  I’m about halfway through and Holdstock makes a point in character about Jason.  Jason is a greedy jealous rash horrible man who is trying to make his mark.  Merlin on the other-hand is more like me, he is cautious, careful, over-thinks.  My point is (and what I got from Holdstock) is that Jason makes his mark because he is obsessed with doing so.  I think later on in the book we will see how or when or why Merlin is finally driven to the sort of obsession that makes a mark.

Life: I’ve made no marks.  I think this (doing this blog thing) is very much a desperate attempt to make a mark.  And since I desire, and am selfish, and have had a bad week of fantasy football, and realize that I can not make a mark on the field if I ever could, didn’t.  I am feeling pressure to make a mark, to do.  I have a deep desire bordering on the obsessive to HAVE DONE.  It is not the writing it is the have written.  Horrible grammar but perhaps you take my meaning.

Therefore, needing to, I will begin the desperate attempt to complete a novel here on these pages.  I fully realize that this will make me no money as I’ve heard publication on the web is death, but frankly I’m not sure I’m that good.  I need to make a mark and improve.  Why hold back?

No reason I can think of now.  Tonight then, I will think about what to do about running backs in all my leagues, I will think about who to start at receiver and in one case quarterback, and I will decide what story will give voice to my obsession to have written.

LSO