h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought "mummy" would be about a walking corpse wrapped in bandages.

In Canada, "mummy" for mother is spelled as "mommy".



What you wrote is parallel to a situation in my story.

Well, ViveAnn remains unmarried and childless for a different reason:
(1) Her social position does not allow her to.

But once out of that barring situation, ViveAnn does not immediately marry and have children. Instead, she is given a baby girl by a desperate young mother during a disaster. ViveAnn tries to find the young woman again to give the girl back. However, she can't find her.

ViveAnn then tries to give the baby girl to someone else (to someone she could only guess to be trustworthy). However, the baby girl doesn't want to leave ViveAnn's care. When the baby was with ViveAnn, she didn't cry -- but when ViveAnn tried to give the baby away, the baby cried. So ViveAnn decided that the baby knew best, and that she would have to figure out how to be a good mother for the girl.

Your story, "The Mummy" was an interesting good read.

Thanks ViveAnn - I am glad you liked the story. The title "The Mummy" was meant to make people think of Eygyptian dead!. But here in England we call Mommy Mummy.

CaroleH

Oh, I know that a "mummy" is the embalmed and bandaged-wrapped body of an Egyptian. But what I didn't guess was that the title of your story implied a "resurrection" or "an afterlife" of the main character who was FIRST barren in her old life, but then was blessed to adopt her fiance's young daughter in her New Life.

I actually, when I first looked at the title of your story, thought that your story would be *literal* in its title and would talk about an Egyptian corpse.

I like your writing. But when I write, I abstain from current references or Colloquialism because of the following reason...

I have read Chauncer and many period English literature. In all these works, there are dated references that no longer make sense to the modern reader. So, this is the problem that I have with references to people, places, and things "political, current and witty" since posterity WILL no longer *completely* understand these dated references unless they are an historian or they researched to know the meaning of the "terms".

However, I do use colloquialism sometimes in what I write because of the "opposite side of the coin" , or because I know that the opposite side to my argument against the usage of colloquialism makes sense :

By making references and jokes to things, people, and places *political, current and witty*, a piece of writing could highlight or show the Time and Situation in which the author lived. So, the environment (or situation) in which the author lived and talked about is the reason why the author wrote -- even the science fiction writers talk from the position of their Own Experience in the Time and Place they live in. So, I use colloquialism or reference to current politics (whatever ) because my form of speech, and my form of perspective could be indicative of the time and place I lived in. Language describes history aside from recorded events -- history can be revealed through the use of the writer's language. Also, the imagination of the author could show posterity a real mind at work trying to deal with, trying to address, social situations that were difficult.

Well, keep writing. I find your stories to be interesting.

Dear Leiann,

Yes I know what you mean - if you read Dickens some of the references are lost on us because they refer to things that were commonplace in Victorian times. But on the other hand they are a great source of social history.

I find that I can only write that way - I have done lots of Creative Writing courses and have always been told "Write what you know" and I do find that is the only way I can write.

When is the next installment of Viveann's life com ing out?

CaroleH

***this is a long post***

I have been writing the next installment. But I have been discouraged because of one reason:

(1) The story begins with a heavy melancholy tone. I want to season the beginning installments with humour, so that people won't immediately be turned off and think "what a depressing brutal story". Sincerely, and you know this is true, like the first 45 seconds of the song, the first 45 pages of the story is what keeps people engaged or turns people off. My problem is that I have a LONG story (I write like J.R.R Tolkien) and in its beginning episodes, the theme is heavy and brutal. People die in the beginning installments, there is animosity between two feuding societies, women soldiers are blown apart and burned to nothingness, ViveAnn's dog "Sparky" is killed before she is captured by troops from the enemy society.
You can get the idea that the reality described in ViveAnn's world, in which the story first begins, is angry, melancholy and brutal. I hope to season these first episodes with enough humour (not exactly dark humour, but a laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation is called for) to keep people wondering and reading to see if the mood and ViveAnn's situation improves.

I am trying to fit in the humour early on, but mixing in the ingredients of humour into the profound mood of brutal reality is proving to be difficult. Actually, I am having difficulty because I am staring at this damned concoction that I have, and I wonder if the story will turn out "half-baked" once I present it.

I cook, and I know what experimental cooking is like: Either you get something interesting. Or you are rewarded with something that needs more work on it, or another try is called for.

I have many characters in this particular favoured story of mine. All their names are "set in stone" and won't change, but ViveAnn's name has changed several times. What do you think of the name "Zosime"? This name is the feminine of the name Zosimus, and it means "Likely To Survive". I have been thinking how to get a unique name for my MAIN CHARACTER (like my own name), which would describe her and what is expected of her.

Well, listen to this:

I am going to change ViveAnn's name to Zosime.

Her mother's name is AnnMarie. And her mother is the reason why "Zosime" survives. A mother's love really saves and ensures the survival of her children. Well, in "Zosime's" case, she literally survives because of her mother's iron will. Zosime (ViveAnn) grows up and becomes a young woman, and the phone conversation between them is the first Episode of my story. From there, I would like to show her dog Sparky, flashbacks as to why her mother cares for her so much, and I would (of course) like to show progress of the story.

Well, here is a brief series of events of the story:

In my story about (ViveAnn's) "Zosime's" life, there are key characters such as her mother named AnnMarie, her dog Sparky, a maniacial (very bad) Scientist named Creighton, a MECH (a 20-foot war machine robot) named BOB who achieves AI and "chooses" to be nice, and then...

Zosime goes into space, through a "wormhole" -- a tunnel through space, connects to another universe, ends up on a planet like her own but the societies there are dated 300 years in the past to that of her own society. Zosime roughly ends up in 18th century England, in a place and a time much different than where she came from. The story continues from there and tells about her coping problems and eventual fitting in.
She gets to be on a sailing ship (a merchant ship), she fights pirates as a privilege, she is given a baby girl to adopt, she gets a new dog and names him "Sparky 2, The Legend Continues" but his is best known as "Chief ThunderCloud" (she also gets him a mate, and names her "Pumpkin"), and she goes through other adventures.
In the 18th century world, she gets to be on a merchant ship because she makes good friends with Kenith Anderson (you can guess he is Scottish) whom she calls "Kennedy". She marries him (but her coping problems in the new world is what prevents her at first). His sister Jane reminds ViveAnn (Zosime) of her mother. Zosime's MECH friend, named BOB, is accepted in the world and he chooses to play chess (and does work) with a shipwright named John Browne.

Well, the above is a brief layout of my story, and I wish that people would really read it.

I hope some of the description that I gave you proves to be interesting.