Imagine that...

...you are an archeologist, swinging on whips about crevaces willy-nilly, digging up lost treasures and arguing with your father about everything. Got it? Good.

One day, you're visiting an old ruin, castle of King somesuch from somewhere. On a hunch, you dig in a certain spot and lo and behold, you find a chest. You open it, and in it you find an old manuscript. "Well strike me hard and call me Magda", you might think (to you history buffs, do you do that?). This piece of writing actually seems to fill huge gap in the timeline of middle europe around the middle-ages. It'll make you famous. Well, at least it will make you what passes for famous in the history community.

All sarcasm aside; there are a few things to consider. First of all: is your document really that old? And how can you determine? Your first clue might be a date given in the writings themselves. Further, you should look at the materials used. Every age has their respective range of typically used materials. Think of how we've come to asociate papyrus scrolls with old egypt, or stone plates with the mesopoatamians.

The best solution though might be dating it using the radio-carbon method. It works something like this: Everything that grows incoporates isotopes into their tissue or structure. These isotopes can be dated by physics. So if paper is made from trees, and the youngest isotope ist from ca. 1500, your document can't be younger than that. But what if the trees kind wasn't indigenous at the place of the writing in the time of writing? You should do that for the ink, too. Forging documents by writing with new ink on old paper is not unheard of.

Even when all that checks out, you have to be wary of the content itselve. Just imagine someone finding a splatbook for  AD&D a hundred years from now. Try to square that with what you know about the past, Mr. Future Archeologist.

There...There were dragons?

Your find may have been a novel, or an attempt at fudging the history in the writer's favor or the favor of his leader. Once again, it may simply be wrong. News travelled a lot slower in these days, and word of mouth is prone to mistakes. It also may be just a copy of something else. All that opens a new can of worms: How far can you trust it? Does ist cross reference something, maybe other documents from that time?

That's where will continue next time. As for thewriting, I gave that article some snark on purpose. Tell me how you liked it.

...in which not all that glitters is gold

• Year 72 (c. AD 516) The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victors.

• Year 93 (c. 537) The Strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Mordred fell and there was death in Britain and in Ireland

That's it. That the historical basis the scholastic community can agree upon concerning the matter of a living, breathing (not anymore so, though) person, that might have some semblance to the what we know as King Arthur.

Why is that disclaimer so important?

If you know your way around history you know that our picture of the past is informed by what is known as sources. Sources run the whole spectrum from written texts to stuff our ancestors through away. Imagine that, your carbage can might tell someone very interesting things about you in centuries to come (maybe even right now, if your garbage man is a bit strange. Maybe lock those things away). It's important to consider that those sources alomost always are biased. Or simply wrong. Or worst of all, forgeries. This heavily conflicts with one of our goals to become a writer: Know your stuff. We will see what that means in practical terms as we delve deeper into the mysteries surrounding Arthur.

What this means ist that you not only have to hunt down sources, you then have to evaluate them. The case of Arthur is perfect for that. The first thing we need to come to terms with: That probably wasn't his real name. What you see above is a translated version of the so called easter annals. His actual name there is Afderydd. This goes for all of the names we will encounter. 

Why that is is a topic for anttoher blog, since I want to keep entries from dragging on to long. It's easy to get exhausted by all of this.

What's this about, then?

This is a blog about writing. More precisely it's about starting to write. I once heard someone say that to become a writer is rather easy, just start writing. It's not like you have to go to the university, where you have to learn to learn all sorts of complicated stuff, and at the end you get a degree that says 'writer'. So breaking into the field is in a way more easy than starting a career in molecular physics.

On the other hand, there are precious few ways to actually learn it. Everyone has heard of the J.K. Rowlings and other people, that come seemingly out of nowhere and write huge blockblusters. That's seldomely true, though. Look at Rowling's Wikipedia article, and you will find out that she's a learned woman, and that the first Potter book was actually her third attempt at a novel. There's also the little nugget about her writing in cafes because her flat was unheated. A rumour she took the time to debunk herself. And even then she was 45 when she struck gold. This is important because it emans she has had a lot of life experince, from which she could draw her stories. You won't get too far by reading how-to books.

Write what you know is another gem I've heard. It ties in with what I said above. You do not need to be a well rounded person, leading the life of a veritable James Bond Stand-in. But you should have something interesting to say, that makes people listen to you.You have to provide insights, things that makes your reader's time worth it.

So, it's easy to become a writer. I should clarify: It's hard to become a good writer, though. The first step is to start writing. Done.

The second step is to practice, to not stop writing. And it's important to have feedback, because that's the only way to see if you make progress. To get feedback is pretty easy this day and age.

But more to the point, it's what I'm doing here. I will give regular reports about my progress, but more interesting I will write about things here, and you get to see me improve and develope. That's the plan, at least.

I will concentrate on pop culture mostly, but I can see myself talking about politics, too.

This blog will in the beginning concern itself with the arthurian tales. All of them.

No, I'm joking. There are sources I won't be able to obtain, others I won't be even able to read. But I will try to get my hands on everything that doesn't fall in those two categories. I will read them, compare them and maybe one day write one myself. I find that body of works fascinating, it's a constant reimaging of a core story, through the ages by different artists. There is much to be leand about arcahelogy, and the world of our ancestoprs., which we tend to look down upon often.

And what a story it is...there is violence, there is love, betrayal...the whole gamut of human experiences, all of them forced upon the central character of those tales, Arthur. There is a certain melancholy, because the stories all end pretty much the same way...which I won't spoil now for those still new to them.

I don't know if anyone else has attempted this, but this is the internet, which means I guess so.
I also know that most certainly someone somewhere will have come to similar conclusion as me. But the fun we'll be in seeing those develope, thereby gaining an insight into the writing process.

So to be a good writer, you need to write. You need to practice to become good. There is also an interesting topic at hand, so I've got that down, too.

Here it goes...