One of the things that has been going through my brain recently is that people want to know where ideas come from. Why did an author write a particular story? This is one of the reasons why people comb through archives.
And because nothing is new in the world, except the way things are combined, what things influenced the writer. Is it possible to follow logic backwards and read the influences? As I have been reading lots of Icelandic sagas and have seen how close some of it is to Tolkien and Wagner, I can understand the appeal.
I have touched on this before. If you go back to July 2007, you can see my influences for The Roman's Virgin Mistress for example. To briefly recap: they range from the Anna Nicole Smith trial to Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer (a firm favourite of both mine and my then editor btw -- read it, if you haven't) to a scene from the movie Howl's Moving Castle to Catullus to Ovid to Julius Cesar's experiences in Baiae etc. I should have perhaps included movies from the 1930s/1940s and 1950s. I have great fondness for Western movies with gambling scenes for example.
I did a blog on Sold & Seduced but can't find it. The one major seed was Kate Walker's Antonakos Marriage (or rather hearing Kate talk about it and mishearing certain aspects) and Beauty and the Beast, plus Roman marriage plus piracy in the Roman world. Actually all of my Roman books deal with various aspects of piracy in the Roman world.
Anyway, I think the best way to approach this is to be totally open and to do an individual post for each book etc. If I then put a link on my website. This may prove how magpie my mind is. Anyway, it should prove a benefit to any researcher who ever makes the mistake of studying me.
My blog and website are now being archived by the British Library, hence my obsession with at least trying to get where I think my influences came from, rather than having someone guess.
Showing posts with label archiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archiving. Show all posts
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Archiving
There is an article in the RWR this month about the importance of archiving. Of saving things. Apparently some day, someone might want to study an author's work and how they develop ideas.
Jennifer Blake contributed to the article and also pointed out that it can be helpful for the author. For example, she thought her method had changed but then she went back to her old ms and discovered that she did as much rewriting as ever.
My problem is lack of storage space. I can not keep all the physical copies. I do keep my black moleskines which have my early thoughts. (Currently with my room having been changed around, my latest notebook has gone AWOL -- most disconcerting. ) And I do keep my electronic copies. But I do not tend to keep my revised scribbled on copies. I suppose it would be useful to see how ideas develop...but I guess I am only a demi-pack rat. After awhile, I do like a good clear out.
The article was interesting as it did point out that even though the author may save to disk, diskette or what have you, the nature of technology has changed and there is much that can no longer be easily accessed. The article recommends -- opening up all your files when you get a new computer and making sure...
Other things to think about saving include -- reader letters, correspondence from your editor, newspaper articles and the like. Badges from conferences. Some of these things get saved and some are just clutter.
But when does clutter become important to researchers?
I still remember the conversation with one author who used to look after the Byron archives, they had even saved his slippers.
I do not think that I will ever rise to that height. And most of the time, I am not even aware of my own thought processes. If I thought about why I changed a word to another one, I would not be able to write.
It was Browning who once said --God and Browning once knew the true meaning of that poem, and now God knows.
But I suspect that I should get more methodical about saving things. Now if I could just find that moleskine, I would know how the next part of the story should go...
Jennifer Blake contributed to the article and also pointed out that it can be helpful for the author. For example, she thought her method had changed but then she went back to her old ms and discovered that she did as much rewriting as ever.
My problem is lack of storage space. I can not keep all the physical copies. I do keep my black moleskines which have my early thoughts. (Currently with my room having been changed around, my latest notebook has gone AWOL -- most disconcerting. ) And I do keep my electronic copies. But I do not tend to keep my revised scribbled on copies. I suppose it would be useful to see how ideas develop...but I guess I am only a demi-pack rat. After awhile, I do like a good clear out.
The article was interesting as it did point out that even though the author may save to disk, diskette or what have you, the nature of technology has changed and there is much that can no longer be easily accessed. The article recommends -- opening up all your files when you get a new computer and making sure...
Other things to think about saving include -- reader letters, correspondence from your editor, newspaper articles and the like. Badges from conferences. Some of these things get saved and some are just clutter.
But when does clutter become important to researchers?
I still remember the conversation with one author who used to look after the Byron archives, they had even saved his slippers.
I do not think that I will ever rise to that height. And most of the time, I am not even aware of my own thought processes. If I thought about why I changed a word to another one, I would not be able to write.
It was Browning who once said --God and Browning once knew the true meaning of that poem, and now God knows.
But I suspect that I should get more methodical about saving things. Now if I could just find that moleskine, I would know how the next part of the story should go...
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