Synnagain’s Weblog

Lately, I have been watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie.  I’ve discussed them with my brother who, like me, was a fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books both when he was a kid and as an adult.  We get back to the subject of how closely the series followed the books, and how the characters on TV seem to speak in seventies vernacular.

This ongoing discussion has led me to researching the author online and I have gleaned a few interesting facts.  One is that the books didn’t follow Real Life as closely as one might think and are more fictionalized autobiography than memoir.  The TV series goes even further astray.

Laura Ingalls Wilder achieved financial security late in life through her writing.  Prior to that, her daughter Rose supported Laura and her husband Almanzo for a time on the earnings from her own writings.  What impressed me was that Rose achieved this during a time of economic depression.

Now the news analysts et al are talking recession and depression.  I didn’t know there was one until I read about it in the news.  And sure enough, my internet business has dropped off to almost nothing.  Maybe this type of news feeds upon itself.  Maybe I will spend more time on my writing, and keep my fingers crossed.  Hard times ahead?  Makes a person wonder……

Many, many years ago I did independent study in ancient Scandinavian literature at the local university, under the direction of a professor of English who had grown up in Cavalier, North Dakota.  I visited that area once and found it to be true, that quite a few of the residents were of Norwegian or Icelandic descent.  This professor whose name was Ruth has long passed on, but I have a book she loaned me and which I sadly did not return.  The title is Skaldic Poetry, and now and then I thumb through its pages.  The time has come for me to delve into the intricacies of Old Norse poetry, which has been made less daunting by the presence of Wikipedia on the web.

My first observation is that Old Norse poetry can be viewed  as consisting of two broad types, eddaic and skaldic.  The eddaic is straightforward, informal, anonymous.  Authorship of skaldic poetry is assigned to known poets, some of whom may have been kings, is fairly complex and employees fixed literary devices.  Some skaldic poetry is so obscure that allusions may be lost on the modern reader without extensive footnotes.  And I will get back to this topic when I sort out the relevancies.

I deleted my first post because it was so lame.

As I have admitted to myself, from time to time and with dismay, I do my best work when it appears to other people that I am doing nothing at all. That is to say, during quiet meditation, just sitting there, I come up with very good ideas.

Implementing them is another matter.
Today I was sitting in church, where my mind wanders anyway, and I conceived of the idea of writing a romance novel, hot or sweet, set in a metaverse. Would it work?

More about this later…..