Wandering Adventure Party

#WritersCoffeeClub – 22nd Mar. How do you organise your notes? (No notes?)Mostly via 50+ Trello boards, although I maintain one document for errata and another one for research I haven't yet integrated into the text.

@Urbanhedgelady Unfortunately, I have to admit that wolpertingers were likely invented by creative taxidermists who wanted to sell stuff to gullible tourists.

#WritersCoffeeClub 3.19 — Do you need to finish a work before starting another?Nope. I do not generally translate German folk tales in the order I want to publish them in books, although relevant tales sometimes get priority.But I have translated many tales which I will only publish in books that are a dozen volumes or more down the line.https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Main_Page

#WritersCoffeeClub Mar. 12: How do you "stress test" your work?Alpha and Beta readers. I promise them that they'll get a print copy of the finished book, and this is sufficient for me to get enough people willing to read the book and give me feedback.

#WritersCoffeeClub 3 March: On what are you unwilling to compromise?I refuse to use #LLM for my translations of German folk tales (or any other kind of AI-based translation system). Everything you see on this wiki was translated the hard way.https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Main_Page

#WritersCoffeeClub What is the fundamental goal you seek to achieve with your current WIP?A representative sampling of German folk tales about the Devil with commentary that is of interest to scholars and lay enthusiasts alike.

#WritersCoffeeClub 2/28. How well did this (_short!_) month go for you, in terms of writing?Well, I _did_ manage to make some progress on "Old Goatfoot", my book on Devil-tales from German folklore. Not nearly as much as I wanted, but "some progress" is better than "none".

#WritersCoffeeClub 26/2: Does your current WIP have an antagonist? Why or why not?My WIP is all about THE most iconic antagonist of all time - the Devil himself, and how he is presented in German folk tales.

@emag If you missed books after number 7, blame Penguin Random House (they did a ludicrously-bad stack-ranking exercise, looked at the wrong figures, concluded the USA Today bestselling series *wasn't selling*, and shitcanned it). Tor picked it up and continued to publish them, but the break in marketing continuity in 2016 didn't help.

#WritersCoffeeClub 16/02/26: What's the most ridiculous place you've tried to sneak in some writing?Perhaps not "ridiculous", but writing outdoors within the botanical gardens of #Oldenburg is definitely an interesting experience.Besides, this was during the height of summer when the temperatures in my rooftop apartment get really uncomfortable, and in the botanical gardens there is always a chance that some curious audience will pass by.

#WritersCoffeeClub February 15: How big are your settings?Well, this is the current size of my interactive map with the locations of all the folk tales I have translated and added to the wiki.Of course, "globe-trotting" tales are rare - most German-language folk tales take place in a single village and its surrounding regions, or even in a single building.https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Main_Page

#WritersCoffeeClub Feb. 13: Do you use maps as reference materials as you write?Constantly. I translate 19th century local legends, and most of these are tied to real world locations that can (or at least could) be visited. Researching and identifying these locations takes up a significant portion of the work I put into this project.My main tools for this are #OpenStreetMap , Google Maps, and Arcanum Maps - the latter for its historical maps, as a lot of the place names used in these tales are no longer in use today.I am also creating an interactive online map showcasing the locations I have been able to identify, and you can see it on the main page of my wiki:https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Main_Page

@juergen_hubert Here's the article - I hope it's useful in your contexthttps://lithub.com/rebecca-makkai-on-the-most-underutilized-tool-in-fiction-setting/

#WritersCoffeeClub 9. Do you subscribe to 'show, don't tell?' Why, or why not?No, at least for what _I_ am writing about.Consider this: I translate old German folk tales which were written down in the 19th century. The audience for these tales were the immediate family and neighbors of the storytellers. Thus, they had the same intense awareness of the local cultural, historical, and geographic context.My readers generally do _not_ have this awareness. A lot of the stuff in these tales would be hard to understand even for modern-day Germans, so what chance does an international audience have?So while I try to translate the actual tales as faithfully as possible, I must also tell my audience about this context so that they can understand them.And as an aside, this is one of the major reasons why I do not use #LLM translations. Even if such models _could_ faithfully translate from my sources (which I doubt), they would probably make a huge mess of explaining the context of these tales. And my audience deserves better.

@adaddinsane A lot of German folk tales are messed up by modern standards, but this one stood out nevertheless.

#WritersCoffeeClub 4/2: How much detail do you use to describe your settings?The setting in question is mostly 19th century Germany and surrounding areas - which is as alien to a modern English-language audience as many fantasy worlds.Thus, I have an appendix giving some cultural context, and the tales I translate have numerous additional commentary and footnotes. This is actually a large portion of my work, in addition to the translations themselves. This is also part of the reason why I refuse to use #LLM for translation (beyond the usual ethical objections) - I want the readers to understand the context of the tales, and AI would inevitably get that wrong.

#WritersCoffeeClub 2/3. What signature marks your work as definitively and effectively yours?I translate old German folk tales into English.Please tell me of _anyone_ else who is doing that these days!

#WritersCoffeeClub 1/29 Which phrase, paragraph, or page are you most proud of writing this month?'Until quite recently, there used to be a second, smaller graveyard in Reith, the parish village of the outer valley estate in the Alpbachgrund valley through which the Alpbach stream rolls down from the Plaknerjoch. This second graveyard was barely the size of an elongated chamber. It was called “The Graveyard of the Innocent”, since only children were buried there who had not received baptism. Such graveyards also exist in many other villages. But it was very painful for the inhabitants when they lost a little child so quickly that they could not receive the holy baptism nor even the emergency baptism. Thus, usually everything possible was attempted so that even a half-dead child could receive the blessing of the holy baptism and a name. And physicians and midwives were praised and rewarded highly if they succeeded in extending the fleeting life of such a child for just long enough so that they could still be buried in the large graveyard.'

#WritersCoffeeClub 26. Do you include things you personally find repellent in your work?I am translating old German folk tales. Many of them are fun, but others absolutely include repellent elements such as:- Misogyny - Child abuse- Antisemitism, up to and including slanders that were used as excuses for pogromsAnd I refuse to pretend that these elements are not in the source material. Anything else would be dishonest.

#WritersCoffeeClub  21 JanWhen writing about unpleasant feelings, how do you avoid alienating the reader entirely?The German folk tales I translate generally don't into great depth when it comes to the interior life of the characters - it's rare when they are described in more detail than "he/she was overcome by dread".Thus, I don't worry about alienating the readers with this. However, deeply unpleasant _actions_ usually get content warnings.