An Itinerant Mind

Histories is History

Finally I have read all of Herodotus' 'Histories'. It has taken me many many years to get around to this, and two false starts. I feel very happy about it. A lot of it was frankly a slog to read. Some of it was very interesting, and my overall impression is that I'm glad I don't live in those times any more, they were extremely barbaric.

Ah yes, I wondered if you'd catch that one.

Histories was just one of a ten volume list of books that I made on 6th July 2022. I hope to get to finish all of them. Oh well, one down and nine to go.

I may choose one of the easier ones to try next. Perhaps Brain Story, by Susan Greenfield.

Overall though, my reading is very much back on course. Kindle informs me that I have read every day for 367 days, and every week for 104 weeks. I have picked off a lot of the books that were bought on a whim and then not read. It was bugging me.

Overall I feel personally a lot better than I sometimes do. Getting things done tends to do that.

Today I looked at a story I began years ago. I have over twenty chapters written. Not sure how good any of them are - they aren't posted in WDC by the way, so this isn't a covert plea for reviews. The chapter I read was fun, I'd completely forgotten writing it.

Writing has been on my mind a lot recently. I'm wrestling with how to write better characters. That is - how to make them seem more realistic? Although randomly assigning them personality traits is a possibility, I see this as generally unhelpful. I have been thinking that everyone in a story really needs to have a point to being there. That is - they need to support the plot.

Or do they? Can someone just be in a story so that it isn't 'flat'? I have considered taking each character and imagining how would the story read if they were the protagonist? What makes them tick? What do they think and or feel about each of the other people in the story? What do they care about - what do they do - both as work and as a hobby or as an obsession. It seems an enormous task to think about it all, especially as generally speaking I like to write and see where it takes me, and look up details as I go along for verisimilitude.

I haven't reached any conclusions, but I do know that I have at least three part developed works that I have written several thousand words of apiece. It would be very satisfying to take any one of them up again and move them forwards to a conclusion. I've even considered going through the October Prep steps again for one of them.

I can finish things - and I can work consistently on things - i have done so successfully more than once. Now I want to work (more) onpicking up where I left off, and finishing a longer work.