Category: writing

Posted on

On Google books…

Checking my university e-mail is always an adventure, in part because of the RSS feed that gmail automatically puts at the top of my e-mail list (Oakland University’s e-mail is powered by gmail).  Today, I hit a link about the continuing controversy over Google Books and the negotiations, concerns, and the like brought up by its existence.  That link led me to this one, which just begged to be shared.

The author of the article, working on a book right now about green technology, is a visiting scholar at the University of California.  And he makes some good points.  Library catalogue software as it stands these days is limited, though it’s come light years since card catalogs (yes, I remember those, and moreover I remember how to use them–I worked in my high school’s library for the equivelant of two years).  Keywords don’t tell you what’s in a footnote, or an index–and the index doesn’t always tell you what’s in a book, if the book has an index at all.

That’s where things like Google Books come in.  A completely searchable engine for books, especially those out of copyright?  I’ve become in the past year an avid user of the Internet Archive, which has been all but invaluable to my research.  Google Books, in its limited capacity, has become equally useful to me when dealing with older tomes and even primary documents such as the Rolls Series and collections of Welsh poetry–even works by William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth are to be found between the two.  This sort of thing is invaluable to a researcher.

Publishers and authors are concerned about the fate of the publishing industry and having enough funds to keep it going–and I can understand and sympathize with this.  Traditional libraries are concerned because they may become very quickly obsolete (I pray this never happens–there’s something about actually having the book in your hands).  But at some point, the cost-benefit analysis has to match up with the reality of the situation as well as examining who’s using the service–and for what.  I imagine that a lot of the people who have been using Google Books are in fact researchers, writers, and scholars working on their next project using a combination of all the resources available to them–databases like JSTOR and FirstSearch, the Internet Archives, their local and university libraries, and Google Scholar and Google Books.  It’d be  a very sad thing if Google Books was shut down for good, and would set back the ability for researchers to do their work by miles.

Posted on

Reconnecting with my research

It’s no secret to a lot of people who know me–in the wake of not getting one last little bit of feedback from my late advisor at the end of the Winter 2009 semester, I took a long break from my thesis work.  It was something I probably shouldn’t have done, but I kept expecting to get somethingfrom him after I sent one last update to him this past April.  But nothing.  We corresponded via e-mail about some housekeeping things regarding my thesis and he said he would get to the submission, but he never got back to me.  In some morbid way, I wonder if it’s sitting there on his hard drive with a mess of fantastic comments just waiting to never be sent.  But I suppose I’ll never know.

For the past week since I heard about his death, I’ve been avoiding really trying to work on my thesis, instead focusing on a paper I need to submit for the Great Lakes History Conference, deadlined in mid-October.  But the research overlaps a bit when I start reading about Edward I, and that’s tripped synapses in my brain that have pointed me back toward my thesis.  This is dangerous, considering that I don’t even know that I’ll even have this be my thesis come next week, or come the end of the OUAAUP strike, whichever happens first (personally, I’m hoping it’s settled after negotiations today so I won’t actually miss any of my classes this semester).  It’s in part hinging on a conversation I need to have with Karen Miller, the head of the history department here at Oakland University.  But in the end, I don’t know what’s going to happen other than I have a pile of research and information floating around in my brain that may turn into a book someday, regardless of whether or not it becomes my master’s thesis.  I’m sure if I have to change gears and start another project, I can find something.  I’m just not sure at this point what.

When I went to Dr. Finucane a couple years ago to talk about potential thesis ideas, I brought with me a short list of potential topics.  I’d originally wanted to do something with the Crusades, but I don’t speak French or Arabic (to be honest, even my Latin is shaky at best, though I’m working on that) so it would be very difficult for me to do that sort of research.  So changing gears, I brought the following list: 

–          Impact of the War of the Roses on English society

o       Potentially limited to women, church, or the aristocracy?

–          Hundred Years War

o       Religion and politics

–          Folk beliefs and spirituality in late medieval England

o       Mysticism in England?

o       English Saints?  Shifting views of what was seen as evidence of the divine working through a person or related to a person? (ties into witchcraft, ect)

–          Kingship and royalty in England, late medieval

o       Touches on the political and diplomatic; alliances through marriage, blood claims to “foreign” territory – importance of women in this context?

o       Political legitimacy and the tools used to convince people of such

–          The Black Death

o       Impact on cultural norms and religion

–          Mystics and miracles in late medieval England

–          Pilgrims and saints

–          Left field: Arthurian mythos and its impact on English culture orthe historical evolution of the Arthurian mythos

o       Use of the Arthurian mythos by English royalty

o       Folklore and stories of medieval England

 

 

I had hesitated to even bring to him that last topic–about the Arthurian mythos.  But I’ve been fascinated with it for easily ten years, so I put it on there, never dreaming that he would look at that and say “Hm.  That’s interesting.  Why didn’t you think you could do that, again?”  Necessary cutting brought the project down to a manageable size and focus, bringing me to where I am now, looking at the uses of the Arthurian legend under (and mainly by) Edward I and Edward III (and consequently the failure to use it by Edward II).  Looking back, I think I’d write on any of those subjects, except for perhaps the Black Death–which is fine, since the Plague has been done to death (no pun intended).  But if I have to change my thesis topic, would I be able to do any of those?  The Hundred Years War, perhaps, since my second reader is a specialist in French history.  But this having been said, I don’t read or speak French (though I have to learn).  It would be a difficult project to gather primary source material for.

The medieval period is something I’m fascinated by and would rather write about than the Renaissance, which I have a feeling would be the period I would end up having to write about, simply based on the makeup of the department.  But we’ll have to see.  I was blessed to work under one of the most preeminent medieval historians of the past thirty years, but cursed to lose that mentorship before my thesis was complete.  Only time will tell what’s going to become of the work I began under his tutelage.

Posted on

Musings on NaNoWriMo

So I’ve kept saying over and over again since last year (actually, since before last year) that I wasn’t going to try to do NaNoWriMo again since graduate school inevitably prevents me from actually getting it done.  The ideas tend not to be my strongest or my best (When All’s Said and Done, my first NaNo, is a huge exception to that; I really need to go back and do a second draft on it to add in some more stuff regarding miss Allyson and suchnot) or my longest stewed over, which hurts whatever I write to begin with.

Of course, I keep saying that I’m not going to put myself through the stress of it again, especially with so many half-started (half-finished, mostly finished) writing projects already, plus my thesis, plus two classes, plus everything else.  Shiawase, among others, talked me into doing it last year.  I got about 26,000 words in and had to call it there.  I’ve kept the project, still untitled, and poke it every so often (it’s a prequel to a post-apocalyptic Arthurian reimagining that I want to write someday–another one of those half-started projects–that’s based in part on a short story I wrote in college), though not often at all.  Epsilon more often captures me (that’s trying to become three books from two, with one focusing on the resistance movement in the Borderworlds.  We’ll see what happens).  But I digress, as I often do.

An idea has been tugging in the back of my brain for the past several days, a confluence of some things that happened at work and some random musings.  I work in retail clothing sales, so I meet all kinds of people and help people find clothes for all kinds of occassions.  An incident this past weekend got me to thinking about one of the strangest customers I’ve had in the thirty-some odd months I’ve worked there, and that in part triggered the idea for what may or may not end up being my NaNoWriMo project for this year.  The other part that’s inspired me was thinking philosophically about World of Warcraft, the internet, and how we meet and come to know people through cyberspace without actually knowing much about their “real lives,” their “real” circumstances.  These things coming together have given me a starting point for a potential NaNoWriMo project for this year.  I’ll probably do some scribblings about it today before work, maybe, while I’m grabbing my dinner (otherwise, I’ll be reading in the cafe at Macy’s like I usually end up doing–one or the other).  I suppose in part the idea is also inspired by .hack//sign though only in a vague sense–some of the elements of my idea are similar, but only on the surface.

“Byron” is a very sick young man, probably in his early twenties or so, with little hope of survival.  He retreats into “Universe,” a VR-equipped (though not required) MMORPG that’s become popular in the past several years.  He’s played since launch and is somewhat popular and powerful as a result.  “Iryn” or “Ryn” is a more recent comer to the game and isn’t a big fan of Byron’s at first, until she gets to know him thanks to a mutual friend (maybe the mutual friend gave her the account?  I have to brainstorm more).  Byron and Ryn form a tight bond and after a while, Byron opens up to Ryn, telling her about his out-of-game circumstances.  Out of the blue, after this, she receives a VR rig for the game.  Not too long after this, she realizes that he’s stopped logging out of the game and starts to worry.  She ends up tracking him down thanks to some other friends and meets his terrified parents.  Byron, having suffered some painful, difficult setbacks, has completely retreated into the game through virtual reality and cannot be pulled out–he has to make the choice to log out, which he will not do.  Ryn convinces him to log out for the sake of his parents, at least for a little while.  I don’t have much more than this figured out (it’s a very new idea, after all), but it’s a start, at least.  Maybe I’ll be attempting NaNoWriMo this year after all.

Posted on

Maintenance day update

So, I got some news the other day that is exciting and daunting all at once.  My paper that I proposed for the Great Lakes History Conference was accepted.  Now I just have to put together 20-30 pages for my session and make hotel reservations for that weekend in November.  Professionally, this is about as huge as my winning the assistantship at OU.  Personally, it’s a little scary.  The last time I did a presentation like this I was a junior (was I a junior?  I think that was the summer between sophomore and junior year) at Grand Valley State presenting on our work at 20KT275 and 20KT276 at Student Scholarship Day–a completely different animal.  I wasn’t flying solo on that one, for starters–I was presenting with two other people.  This is all me, and while the work on the subjugation of Wales under Edward I dovetails with my thesis research, it’s different enough that it’s going to take a bit of additional research to really get this together to my satisfaction.

On another note, officers and I announced that we’re shaking the RoA tree.  Some people are enthused, I’m not sure how others feel.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed, since I’d definately hate for this to fail.  I’m glad that we’re no longer working in the dark, though.  Folks know that we’re doing something, which is good.  Very good.  I have to get myself working on the charter documents based on what we have so far, since the whole IC angle of the mess seems to be my strength (well, no, is my strength).  And think of what the next set of things on deadline are going to be, since we have a deadline on some things coming up…gee….tomorrow.  And then roll from there.  I want everything in place before I start my assistantship in September.

Still haven’t told my boss at the mall about the assistantship.  I’m putting off the inevitable panic she’s going to have.  I’ll tell her in a few weeks.

Posted on

Post-vacation update #1

Back from Wisconsin, and what a glorious trip without worrying about work calling me it was.  I got a bit of writing done, both WoWFic–including starting a new story, “Family Ties“–and work on Epsilon (Jen mentioned last night after her perusal that there was a marked shift between Sam Cooper’s attitude toward Aaron in one scene and her reaction to him the next morning.  I promised her it’d make sense later).

I’m still working in part on the revitalization efforts for Sentinels (US) — the RP community has suffered since the opening of Wyrmrest Accord and everyone has seen a sharp decline in numbers.  But at the same time as it’s brought out the lazy in some folks, it’s brought out the best in others.  One of the new blogs on the blogroll is one of those “bests” — Ravine of Lichbane has started a new blog with fiction and discussion of RP issues that I plan to be following closely myself.

Other recent addition to the blogroll is Erik’s blog.  I’ve known Erik and gamed with him for a long time (back since the days when I was almost exclusively doing things ISRP).  Lately, he’s been getting his campaign setting ready to hopefully query more gaming companies with.  I’ve seen bits and fragments of it, and while 4E is Greek to me, the flavor bits and pieces (which I think he really wanted me to pay attention to) are looking pretty good.

Also poked at Aurora Force with a stick, got set up for Michael Bullian’s tragic death at the Battle of Ithor.  I probably need to start drafting how that’s going to happen so I have it together and ready to go when we get that far.  If we ever get that far.

All in all, considering I spent several hours by a pool every day I was away, it was a pretty productive trip!  I’ll have to post pictures up here soon.

Posted on

Musings about Christie Golden and WoW

So, I’ve been reading one of the more recent World of Warcraft novels, Arthas, by Christie Golden, and I happened to skim over her biography at the back of the book (while I was looking at the notes on further reading–I love lore, and I need to learn more and more of it as I keep playing WoW) to see that she is an “avid player” of WoW.

So that got me musing (and I really shouldn’t muse before I check WoWInsider for the information, but I digress).  If I was the author of World of Warcraft novels (amongst others–Golden writes Star Wars and Star Trek novels; I may have to pick up Omen (Fate of the Jedi — she’s working on the series with Aaron Allston and another author whose name escapes me at this time) at some point…..what sort of gameplay aspect would I be focusing on?  Good question, right?

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, WoW has about three main foci for gameplay: Roleplaying (my personal favorite), raiding (the pennultimate goal of PvE, largely), and PvP (in all its varied forms).  Personally, I’m discounting PvP entirely–most people just don’t play WoW for the PvP, most have moved on to Warhammer because of the “superior system” of PvP to be had there.  That leaves Raiding and RP.  As much as I love RP…I’m thinking that she may well be a raider.  And here’s why.

Both of these aspects of gameplay are total–and I do mean total–time sucks, but one can be less all-consuming than the other, and that’s raiding.  Raiding is scheduled, rigid.  You set a timetable because you have to get 10-25 people in the same place at the same time and get them all working toward the same goal–all at once.  This definately requires a certain degree of scheduling and organization.  This makes it less of a time dump than the more organic time-sucking of roleplaying.

I call roleplaying organic because it is.  I’m guild lead for one of the oldest (and larger) RP guilds on the Sentinels (US) server–a roleplaying server, not as old as most, but still older than the two most recently opened (and personally hated by me) RP servers (these would be Moonguard (US) and Wyrmrest Accord (US) — I’ve lost too many people to these so-called “meccas” of RP to have much respect for them or much love.  Quality over quantity has been my mantra for a long time, and from what I understand, there may be RP everywhere on these servers…but it’s not the quality that I’ve been accustomed to).  I know how random RP is, and how rarely scheduled events seem to do well (though I’m hoping that the most recently scheduled events on the server — Miko’s For the Herd! event and RoA’s own Round Table of Azeroth tournament will have good turn-outs) and that’s because people do it at random.  It’s just what happens.  And when RP starts…unless you put a hard-stop time on it (which most people don’t) it goes on for hours.  And hours.  And hours.  That’s just how it is.  It’s what happens.  It’s a bigger time sink than raiding ever is and ever can be because it’s not scheduled.

Don’t let anyone tell you that a successful writer’s life isn’t scheduled, because most successful writers have a strict schedule of when they work and when they do everything else (which is probably why I’m not very successful, largely because I fail very hard at doing this at this time).  Therefore, raiding is more conducive to a writer’s life.

Of course, maybe WoWInsider will tell me I’m wrong.  I have to check up on that.  Until I do, though…this is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Posted on

Never say never

Never let it be said that when you write your thesis or your dissertation that no one will read it in the future, since that’s simply not the case.  I have yet to e-mail the advisor on this particular thesis, but I’ll let the cat out of the bag right now:  I’m fascinated by a Ph.D thesis out of the University of Minnesota from 2004.  The thesis in question is on St. George of England and English national identity–a subject I’ll at the very least touch on in my own thesis on the uses of the Arthurian legend during the reigns of Edward I (r. 1272-1307), Edward II (r. 1307-1327), and Edward III (r. 1327-1377), since the sense of identity and “Englishness” plays a role in why the image of King Arthur was used during these reigns.

Amusingly (as almost a side note) the thesis cites my advisor’s work on pilgrimages and miracles in the first chapter.  Go figure (then again, totally not surprised, since it is a saint’s cult and the image of the patron saint of England that’s being discussed in the thesis, after all).

In any case, it’s bloody hard to borrow anyone’s thesis–really, really hard, since most universities don’t lend them.  I have to shoot an e-mail to the history department at the University of Minnesota to thank them so much for letting me borrow this text.  I’ve already found quite a few references that I’ve ordered or will be pulling from Kresge Library at OU so I can take a peek at them based on what he’s gleaned out of them for his work–things that it seems to me may well be important for my work.

So, wherever you are, Dr. Jonathan Good — thank you.  You wrote a monster of a dissertation, and I’m very pleased to have had the chance to read it.