Long Break

With grand plans made in May, I have left this blog off somewhat since July.  Life does have a habit of happening, in such a way as to distract you.  But here I am again, with my ponderous literary thoughts.

I have found a plot, I believe, and a new desire to see it through.  My concern now is what era should it be placed in?  Should it be shoe-horned into a certain time, or should it be set in it's original time?  I am following a true literary tradition and am going to steal a classical story, as the greats have done before me.  And why indeed should I not?

But can a nymph be placed in an office?  Can a god be a financier? I think so, if I am writing a bog standard love story, which I think I am.  It is a starting point and I am entirely untrained.  Not to say that romantic fiction is a lower genre - I do not believe that it is.  I feel that everything has its own place, and if a book is enjoyed, then it is as relevant and important as anything else.  It just perhaps does not have the polish of Middlemarch.

And does a good story have to be a shining example of word craft?  Agatha Christie's work is not high literature - nor indeed are the plots particularly great - but they are so readable.  I have been devouring a number of hers recently, and the best by far was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  I finished At Bertram's Hotel last night, and quite frankly it left me a little non-plussed. But I did enjoy reading it.

I believe that I shall set aside my aspirations for a work that will set me to immortality, and just write something that can be published, read and enjoyed.