I looked around the internet a bit yesterday, trying to pinpoint these costumes, but couldn't quite do it. Gorals, eh? I'll look them up. Whoever they are, the live in a mountainous place that seems to get cold, as those are pretty seriously warm cape things they're wearing, and there seems to be a church with a cross on top in the back of the picture. And the woman is blonde. I think the costumes are gorgeous. I suspect these aren't everyday clothes, but probably the dress-up ones they wear for special occasions. Oh, wow ...here is some cool stuff. Definitely check this out. And read the article which was written, I believe around 1901. It's incredibly detailed about everyday life, and it'll give you ideas. http://www.digitalhistoryproject.com/2012/05/polish-mountain-village-life-tatra.html This is a book I've had some fun with, and the photos are amazing. Not necessarily totally targetted to the area you're looking at, but certainly filled with ideas. If you're looking for something supernatural and scary to create, anyway. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IMJRA3A/?tag=writingfor07a-20 And here are a few photos of the interior of houses where the people like you've pictured would have lived. They are very fond of decoration, apparently. And also very religious.
I dont like to sit at a blank page, trying to figure out what to write, or facing a chapter and having a problem with a character, or a plot etc.. I come and go from my writing, at one stage i did not sit down at my novel for six months.. Life happens.. but i find if you hit wall, step away from it. You be surprised when inspiration hits, I find going for a walk, or go watch the news, TV, or a DVD.. take your mind of what the problem is. All of a sudden something you watch will get the cogs working in your brain, and you get a eureka moment.. Just make sure you have a note book handy, I allways got one with me, you never know when you suddenly going to need one..
I may have some very distant family who are Gorals. Gora means mountain, so they're literally mountain men, and although there are a bunch of subdivisions of them, to the naked eye, they quite alike. To this day, they a have a distinct dialect, apparently almost a different language in some cases. I think, these days they wear the typical western clothing, but back in the day, those sexy gorgeously partterned side-poncho thingys were the standard. They have a fetish for everything ornamental. Furnaces, cheeses, canes, capes. All Slavic countries are staunchly Christian. I think, Czechia is the exception. Wait, that article you linked probably says it all. Funnily enough, book suggestions are of no use to me, because I already have a reading list to last me a couple lives, considering that I'm a slow reader like king George from Black Adder.
Never mind the book. I know what you mean! You should see MY collection! (My husband is a very understanding man!) I'll just show you the cover of the book, which has to do with folklore from the mountains of central and eastern Europe ...the picture alone might be enough to get your villagers' teeth rattling at night. Do check out the other website, though. It doesn't take long to read, but I think it'll have answers to some of the questions you were bringing up, earlier in the thread, about exactly what life might be like in that kind of place for those kind of people. I found it really interesting. It was written by somebody who traveled there, back around 1901, so it's had a technology bypass. http://www.digitalhistoryproject.com/2012/05/polish-mountain-village-life-tatra.html
Don't worry. I read the article, but had only a quick look at the cover of that book. A good encyclopaedia covering Slavic mythology and folklore I WILL prioritise. I've been vaguely looking for one ever since I discovered Bilibin. There is plenty on the subject of Viking and Greek lore. Not much about Slavic, especially pre-Christianised.
That's what's fun about doing research. You unearth stuff you would never have thought of on your own. And if you're writing fiction or fantasy based on a type or a location, you can really go to town on it! Have fun. I'm kinda jealous, actually. As you might have guessed, I'm a big fan of folklore AND central and eastern Europe ...but I'm not writing about these things directly. I'd love to visit there, though. Bilibin's work is fantastic. One of the best illustrators of an era that produced pretty fantastic ones. If I had a lot of money to spend on really gorgeous books, I'd have his, for sure. By the way, I have a Russian Christmas tree every year (in my dining room) and there is a Baba Yaga on it ...the witch who travels around in a barrel, carrying a broom, eating children and etc. My little wooden version (in lower right hand corner) is kinda cheery, but Bilibin's isn't. Scary.
I have some knowledge about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from fashion to politics, and I can read Polish. You can hit me up, if you need any related information. Edit: I forgot to add: interestingly, I bought a Bilibin picture book, because I was so impressed with the Baba Yaga illustration. It's a decent book, but it's missing the god damn Baba Yaga! :<
I've got a cheapo paperback edition of Russian Fairy Tales (with some Bilbin illustrations in black and white.) There are a couple of stories in it that contain Baba Yagas. One is The Frog-Tzarevna, and another one is Little Bear's Son. And Wassilissa the Beautiful. However, I think Baba Yaga appears in quite a few tales. I'm sure I've read some others as well. I'm saving up my pennies to afford a really great edition of the Russian stories. You read Polish? Are you of Polish descent? I grew up in a town in Michigan where there were enough Polish people to have a radio programme on the local station (WATZ) on Saturday mornings that was entirely in Polish. It was called The Polish Hour when I was growing up (back in the 1950s) and I remember listening to it and wishing I could follow what was being said. And they played dance tunes. It was fun, but I never learned to speak it or understand it. I do love Polish food, though, and have a freezer-full of Kielbasa, a jar of Krakus dill pickles and a packet of potato and onion pierogis in my fridge at the moment. I'm not Polish in the slightest, but I often wished I was. They seemed to have so much fun, and their homes were always colourful and their weddings were anything but staid and solemn. When I think "Polish," I always think of hearty, good, hardworking people with lots of humour that made them very attractive. (VERY attractive.) I had several Polish boyfriends before I finally married a Scot. Go figure!
I was born in Poland and lived there till early teenagehood, then Britain became my new home. The closest connection to Poland I have are my parents. I still visit my other family there, once in a couple of years. Nothing out of the ordinary. I find the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fascinating, but in my view, it and modern Poland are distinct entities. I'm not keen on the general modern Polish mentality. I'm not British and I will never be, but I am British before anything else. Also what you're talking about are pierogi ruskie, meaning Rusyn or Ruthenian pierogi. They're good indeed. Especially when fried on pieces of smoked fatback.
I've never done anything but boil pierogis. (Or simmer them.) They're flabby, but tasty. I usually eat them with yogurt. But I might try frying them. Do you boil them first and then fry them? So you're an incomer to the UK, same as me! I live in Scotland and love being here. It will be my forever home, and I'm now a UK citizen. However, I guess I can't forget the first half of my life, and much of it is still important to me. I miss my friends, my family and the countryside and climate—and the Great Lakes. I don't miss the politics at all! Mind you, politics is getting pretty weird over here as well. I didn't know there was a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I'll look it up. ........... Holy Mud! It was huge. So is the article in Wikipedia, which I'm going to go away and read. But this commonwealth encompassed so much of so many modern countries. Presumably lots of languages were involved as well. So much of Eastern Europe's boundaries changed over time. I'm just now reading a book about Hungarian wines, and it started with a history of the place. I've been reading about Hungary for a while, so I knew there was a lot of change in that country. But it must have had a huge impact on people when cultures as diverse as the Turks and the Saxons and the Magyars all laid claim to the place at one time or another. And of course the Austrian Hapsburgs in the fairly recent past. All this upheaval had quite an impact on their wine industry ...none more so than WW1 and WW2 and the Russian era. See this is something I love about living in the UK. I'm finally learning about the rest of the world. As an American, I felt quite isolated from learning that sort of thing, and when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, Eastern Europe was a total no-go area, usually depicted in black on maps, etc. What a shame! I've taken up the study of geography on my own, because I felt so ignorant on the subject. (I'm now reasonably good with it.) I have to say, I absolutely HATE the outcome of the EU referendum. I really enjoyed being part of Europe ...never mind the political and economic reasons for staying. I feel quite sad that we're going to lose it, unless Scotland finally votes for independence.
I did my thesis on the 1956 Hungarian uprising, which is to say that I knew A LOT about Hungary once upon a time. Now I barely remember any of it.
What made you choose that as a topic? Oh, and by the way. Hungary has a LONG history of important winemaking, and an excellent climate, bedrock and terrain for it, apparently, as well. In fact, up to the WW1 era, they were a noted winemaking region. However, after WW1 and 2 their winemaking ability was severely disrupted, and the Russian era made it even worse, for various reasons. (Including the size of Russian-made tractors, which were designed for open prairie work and so large that they required every other row of hillside grapevines to be destroyed in order to make way for them! ) Their winemaking industry has only been getting back to itself over the past 30 years or so, but it's gaining its reputation back as a producer of very fine wines—and their producers win quite a number of awards. It's just not able to supply the ordinary wine-drinking market as efficiently as the larger regions do. And now that New World wines have such a share of the market, it's even more difficult. But hey. I don't want to turn this into the wine thread!
The topics course was violence in 20th Century Europe so it had to full under that purview. And I (as any smart historian does) went with the available primary sources. I found an archive of interviews conducted by Columbia University in the early 1960s where they surveyed a few hundred Hungarian emigres to the US. It was nearly a thousand pages long and well indexed, so all I had to do was frame the thesis around a handful of questions and then check to see what hundreds of Hungarians who lived through the uprising had to say about it. When you find a mother load or primary sources you roll with it. Secondary sources have little use in historiography. Basically my project was centered around the role of Radio Free Europe in the uprising. RFE was a CIA mouthpiece run by Allen Dulles designed to "overload the Russian switchboard" by telling the Hungarians that if they resisted and held out long enough the US would swoop in and help them. This was of course bullshit, but a majority of Hungarians believed it and were "influenced" to resist, if not actually stage directed. Fascinating thing was that the Suez crisis was taking place over the same 13 days. Russia did not interfere with NATO efforts to contain Egypt and Kruschev took that as a wink/nod that the US would similarly stand by while Russia tanks motored into Budapest. He was right. From a US perspective, NATO action in Hungary or anywhere else in the Eastern Bloc was never a serious strategic consideration amidst nuclear proliferation. For Russia, Kruschev had no choice but to use force after he allowed Gomulka to come to power and liberalize (a little) Poland in 1953. To relax on Hungary would have been political and strategic suicide from a Russian perspective. For the Hungarians, they had very weak, lukewarm leaders that failed to seize the early momentum of the uprising and strike while the iron was hot. The people went one way but the leadership attempted a more tepid approach. It did not work.
This thread has gone off the tails and on to a different track, it seems. Regarding Brexit, I don't believe it's possible to predict how the economic landscape will turn out in the end. Britain was autonomous to begin with, so it's not going to affect any day to day lives. Mending falling outs is a British national talent, and whether Britain is part of the EU or isn't, it's not really stopping you from "enjoying" Europe. The history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a tragic one. A tragic train wreck involving a long chain of wagons, all filled to the brim with good intentions sprinkled with conceit on top, where the passengers were bleeding out for a century, long after the wreckage was looted away along with the rail tracks. Yes... It's a fascinating story! The fact that you haven't heard about it is anything but strange. It's partly because Poles would rather keeping spinning their wheels on the second World War. Read the following, it's my favourite description of the old Poland, written from the perspective of the king of Poland who... has escaped the country in the night, with only a shirt on his back, heading for the nearest border: "Farewell Poland! Farewell deserted plains/Eternally covered with snow and ice . . ./Oh Savage people, arrogant and thieving./Boastful, verbose and full of words,/Who, wrapped night and day in shaggy furs takes its only pleasure by playing with a wineglass./By snoring at the table and falling asleep on the floor/and who then, like Mars, wishes to be famous./It is not your great, grooved lances,/Your wolf's clothing, your misleading coats-of-arms/Spread all over with wings and feathers,/Your muscular limbs, nor your redoubtable deeds, Dull-witted Poles, that have saved you from defeat:/Your miserable condition alone protects you . . ." Of course, it's missing all the deliciously meaty context .
That's actually quite sad. Another alliance of nations that met a sorry end. And just in the short bit I read in Wikipedia, they apparently had a written constitution as well, the first in Europe. I don't know about this king, or whether he was right or wrong. His disillusionment with his erstwhile subjects doesn't describe Polish people as I know them, but the ones I've known have not been descended from nobility either. They worked hard to get along, but they knew how to enjoy life as well. They were anything but dull-witted. Maybe another case of the nobility seeing the peasantry as inferior? Seems to come with the territory. You're right about the thread being derailed. Probably my fault. But I've enjoyed the derailment a lot!
I get writer's block all the time. Not because I have nothing to write or am not motivated, but my job involves a lot of thinking and writing, and sometimes I come home and write two sentences and I'm just done. My brain is kaput on any new ideas, especially on the days I work 12 hours or more. I have an outline, but then as I'm writing my story, something in my mind will go, "Oh wait, this would make it so much better or more sense" so I just go with the flow and change things when I feel the need to. Right now, my writer's block is that I know where I want to go, but my ideas are not matching up with the story that I want it to. I have rewritten the same scene over and over for the past week, so I'm taking a day's break to clear my head and figure out where I want to make this work.
As a relatively recent writer with little-to-no experience, I'm not the most confident in regards to my writing. I have difficulties stumbling upon ideas I truly find inspiring to write about. So when I do write stories and such, I have a couple, seemingly irrational, fears. I know in my head that it's probably totally dumb to worry about, but I worry anyway. #1. is the fear of using up good ideas too soon. As mentioned above, I don't feel like I have reached my full writing potential, I know there is so much more for me to learn, and, as I writer, I don't want to waste great ideas now. For example. I'm interested in entering some short story contests, but I have struggled to land on something good enough to write about, but not too good that my newbie-skills would squander what could be something incredible if I had waited until I was more experienced. If that makes sense. #2. My other, even more irrational fear, is of people taking my ideas. I know this sounds totally ridiculous and unprofessional, but I'm afraid to share my work on more back-alley platforms in fear that someone may take key ideas, plotlines, etc. I don't know how copyrighting works, (once again, not much experience!) but I do know it involves money, which may not be worth it in my case. I guess, what I'm wondering is. Is it safe to publish short stories or scenes on various sites and expect everyone to fairly treat my writing as mine? Or should I be cautious in case of those who may take ideas freely? I'm not saying I'm a great writer, or come up with incredible ideas, I just worry that the writing I do create and love, might end up in the wrong hands of somebody who can write a lot better than me. #3. This isn't a fear, I was just going to ask that if anyone has advice, tips, or knowledge about writing short-stories, please comment what you know! I've tried my hand at writing a few, but still need some pointers. Thank you to anyone who has made it this far. I tend to ramble and over-explain things, so thanks for sticking around and listening to my crazy fears. Obviously, you don't have to answer every question, feel free to pick whatever you want to reply about! Thanks again. -Andrew
#1 What do you think is stopping you rewriting these stories in the future, when your skill has grown? I'm doing that right now. I wrote a short story for a contest here when I was a newbie writer and now that I'm slightly less of a newbie I'm updating it. #2 The fear of having your ideas stolen comes up on writing forums all the time. The thing is, ideas are a dime a dozen - most writers have more ideas than they have time to write. It sounds like you might be an exception (as am I - I rarely get ideas) but we really are very rare. For the vast majority of writers there's no incentive at all to steal someone else's idea; it'd just be yet another one on a very long list of premises they don't have time to explore. Even if they did steal your idea, the execution would be so different that it wouldn't matter. The Worst Witch and Harry Potter have fundamentally the same idea behind them, but are very different books. Here on the forum we have short story contests where around 10 authors write stories based on the same prompt, idea, or picture. As far as I know there has never been an occasion where two stories have shared more than a passing resemblance to each other. In fact, if you read all the entries to a contest without knowing the prompt, I doubt you'd be able to put your finger on it most months. If the very very unlikely happened and somebody stole your idea, their story wouldn't impact yours. Stories with similar ideas are published all the time. The vast majority of plagiarism happens to published books. Unpublished writers have nothing to worry about. So, in a nutshell - nobody wants your ideas and even if they did, it wouldn't impact you at all. #3 This is impossible to cover in one forum post. Your best bet is to post one of your stories or drafts in our workshop and get personalised feedback.
Firstly, I'm going to echo and agree with everything @Tenderiser said here. Now for some of my own thoughts: #1 I am also rewriting a story I wrote for a story for a short story contest here on the forum a few years ago. The original story was very, very rushed (as I'm a slow writer, and the contest was only open for 2 weeks at that time) -- I liked the premise, but the execution was terrible. Now it has turned into the largest story/project I have ever worked on. So don't be afraid to "use up" your ideas -- you can always return to them later to revise them or completely rewrite them. #2 On the topic of copyright: You automatically own the copyright for everything you write. If someone would steal your story from e.g. this forum (which is rather unlikely, no matter how good the story and writing is) and publish it elsewhere, you have the right to claim copyright on it and force them to take it down (note: you must be able to prove that the story is yours). IIRC there is also the option of registering a copyright, which costs money. I do not know exactly what effect this does, but I would assume that it makes your copyright stronger, gives you formal evidence that you own the copyright, and helps out should a copyright claim ever go as far as to court (also unlikely, considering the costs). #3 This topic is extremely large (so putting it as a single, broad question will make it difficult to answer). The best option is to follow Tenderiser's advice and post a story in the Workshop, and ask people to comment on if it works as a short story and what can be improved. You could also ask more specific questions in the sub-forums in the Creative Writing section of the forum.
Don't wait to be inspired. Some of my best ideas for stories happen while I write random thoughts. I'm a plotter, meaning I outline stories before I write, but ideas come to me while I'm writing. So just start writing about what you did, or saw, or heard - embellish, exaggerate, make stuff up. Write one or two page stories if you're short on time. Sometimes I write two short shorts in one evening. As for the fear of getting cheated, keep ideas to yourself until you have finished the book. You don't have to share what you're working on at the moment.
Arachnophobia for me, especially late in September. Very distracting. Late night wall shadows. A flicker on the carpet. Corner of the eye stuff mainly. If you can think of one good idea @Andrew Rosemel, you can probably think of a million. As you refine your writing ability so you refine your ability to identify & cultivate ideas. Ideas you once may have overlooked become significant. Soon you'll have too many to finish.
Whether you put ideas on a forum or not is your personal choice. Doesn't matter much either way. Your ideas being stolen is extemely unlikely, but it's not impossible if you post whole short stories and they're really good. Again, you'd have to post completed work. Nobody cares about taking ideas as ideas are cheap. You don't want to ever hold back your good ideas, because ideas are like seeds. Unless they'e nurtured and developed, they're just distant potential, nothing more.
Re: your fear #1. This is me, too. As some of the posters above me have pointed out, I think the key is to realize that you don't have a finite stock of "good ideas" and that once that runs out you won't have anything else to say. Even if that were true, many people have made careers out of "writing the same book over and over again" (an uncharitable way to put it, but it does happen), so it's not like you can't get more than one thing out of each idea. And I've found that the more writing and reading I do, the more ideas I keep coming up with--I think you just have to start looking at the world in a certain way, start keeping an open mind about where/how to draw inspiration from things. Getting new ideas is a habit you can learn, once you get into it it'll become easier. I think a bit of this is also driven by the desire to put your best foot forward, so to speak--for example, if you're going to post something publicly or submit it to a contest it suddenly becomes "more real", in a sense, and you want it to be based on an idea that you find very compelling. But I don't think that's the proper way to look at it either--for example, the things I've posted on this site (my only publicly-available finished work, for the moment) are all based on ideas that I thought were cool but that I consciously chose to expend, so to speak, instead of saving and working on them for some more rigorous process, like submission to a publisher--I mean I might go back to them later, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if I didn't. Again, that's only possible if you have confidence that you'll come up with more good ideas tomorrow or whenever.
I guess I'd be afraid to come back to what I've written, only to feel constrained by my past's version of things. Ideas sometimes tend to stick into my mind like glue, and I have a hard time imagining an alternate path. I also feel like I may use up all the inspiration for that idea just that once, I'm afraid that I would feel like "Oh I've already written that idea while ago and it didn't turn out good, so there's no point in going further with it." Once again this all appears really irrational. I should just write what I want to write right now and not worry about anything else. Also, thank you for everything else you talked about! I appreciate your well-thought out response!
