Tools for Writers

Here are some software tools for writers, particularly novelists.

I have had Scrivener installed for months, but I have not used it, because my internal censor says, “Fiddling with new software is not writing.” (Blogging, however, is.)

Anyone have experience with it? Is it significantly better than Word, Open Office, or anything like that?

Dave Haxton at MacRaven, in a post titled “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work,” endorses the Pomodoro Technique for pacing your desk work.

It’s good, although you don’t need special paper and a T-shirt. I sometimes use a basic wind-up kitchen timer and set in a bookshelf on the other side of the study, where I won’t be tempted to look at it until it dings.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Seeks Pagan Writers

Bibliotheca Alexandrina publishers seek writers for a new series of anthologies dedicated to various gods. You may also read  longer versions of the calls for submission at Amanda Blake’s blog, Temple of Athena the Savior.

There is, of course, no connection other than name and some history between this publishing project and the newish building in Alexandria, Egypt. Somehow I doubt that if you went to the latter, you would find the works of Iamblichus or Plotinus on the shelves.

Oh, Let’s Just Talk about the Weather

I think my brain has slowed down this week. At one point the temperature dipped to -20° F. (about -30° C), and I was completely preoccupied with trying to keep heat and water in both my house and the guest cabin.

There was one bad moment about ten o’clock at night a week ago when, due to a series of unfortunate events, a pipe did start leaking dramatically, spraying water into my basement.

I had to wade through the spray to shut off three valves, more or less by feel, and all I could think was, “I’m in a submarine movie.”

Life imitates art, as usual. Just as “myth” (the explanation) follows “ritual” (what you do).

And it’s snowing a lot. Earlier in the winter, this part of the Colorado foothills was short of snow. New York City had more snow than we did.

But we are catching up. I think we got November’s snow on Saturday night (a foot) and more is falling now. And it is normal for it to keep falling through April, when those New Yorkers will be looking at spring flowers.

The problem is that at some point (probably around 0° F.), I stop wanting to just hole up and work at my desk, instead starting to fret about what is going to break or freeze next. No fun.

Or I go to the hardware store looking for a machine to help me deal with it all.

An Old-Fashioned Funeral

In the southern Colorado town of Crestone, a woman gets an old-fashioned funeral.

Belinda Ellis’ farewell went as she wanted. One by one, her family placed juniper boughs and logs about her body, covered in red cloth atop a rectangular steel grate inside a brick-lined hearth. With a torch, her husband lit the fire that consumed her, sending billows of smoke into the blue-gray sky of dawn.

People do still occasionally light funeral pyres. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (1997) describes one such in Texas. When I read that chapter, I suddenly understood references in Classical texts to “funeral games.”

It takes hours for the pyre to burn down, so what do you do in the meantime? Race your horses? Play volleyball?

But disregard the next-to-last paragraph in the Yahoo article—the legendary stuff.  Crestone is a quirky place—and people work to keep it that way—but overall there  is more “fakelore” generated about the San Luis Valley than about anywhere else in Colorado. People even say that I was born there.

Gallimaufry in Eden

• At the Religion in American History blog: What Puritans, Shakers, beer, and running shoes have in common.

• Is The Decembrists’ The King is Dead their most Pagan-friendly album? Laura at The Juggler thinks so.

• It is true that religion scholars go on and on about “the sacred.” So why is “the paranormal” not given equivalent attention?

• If I did not have the Interwebz available for checking, I would never have thought that these were actual book titles.

How to Convert a Witch

DC to AC? Fahrenheit to Celsius? PC to Mac?

No, silly rabbit. Change their religion. But first,

And if you bump into a witch in a bar or coffee shop, the book adds, it’s important to recognize that “Wiccans are on a genuine spiritual quest,” providing “the starting point for dialog that may lead to their conversion.”

At least that sounds better than saying they are slaves to Satan.

British Catholic blogger Damian Thompson takes the snotty road (he is shocked!) which is his speciality, as Jason Pitzl-Waters notes.

Quick Review: ‘Pagan Metal’

M. and I watched Pagan Metal: A Documentary (dir. Bill Zebub, 2009) Saturday night. It was flaccid. We gave up on it midway through. (Netflix has it.)

What we saw was primarily rambling interviews with members of three bands: Alan Averill of Primordial (Ireland), and musicians from Korpiklaani and Finntroll, both Finnish groups.

From these we gathered that what makes this latest subdivision of heavy metal music “Pagan” is that it incorporates (sometimes) folk tunes and folk instruments, although the interviewer seemed uninterested in discussing instrumentation or in discussing any folkish origins of the music in any detail.  (A menber of Korpiklaani is quoted on Wikipedia as saying that they play “old people’s music with heavy metal guitars.”)

The term “Pagan metal” was also left unexamined as to any religious or political connotations that it might carry.

A person might think that a metal band augmented with a skin drum or bagpipes and some fur on the stage costumes was therefore performing “Pagan metal.”

Nor did Pagan Metal function well as a concert film, as much of it as we saw, as it provided only brief clips of live performances without much context.

This video is only for hardcore fans who want everything about Primordial, for instance.

CFP: Religious and Literary Satanism

Contemporary Religious SatansimCall for papers:

Satanism is a subject that has always drawn a lot of media attention as well as interest from the general public. Scholarly studies of the subject, however, have more often focused on socially constructed “Satanic Panics” than on Satanism as a religious alternative in itself.

Recently, this has begun to change, and anthologies such as Contemporary Religious Satanism have started to fill the gaps in scholarly knowledge concerning Satanism.

A further attempt to remedy the situation was made when the first ever international scholarly conference on Satanism was organized in Trondheim, Norway, in 2009. The conference was a great success, and resulted in an anthology that will be published by Oxford University Press later this year.

In September 2011, we welcome you to Stockholm, Sweden for the follow-up to 2009’s gathering of specialists.

Keynote speaker: Marco Pasi

Deadline for abstracts: May 22, 2011.
Submit your abstract to per.faxneld@rel.su.se<mailto:per.faxneld@rel.su.se> and kennet.granholm@rel.su.se<mailto:kennet.granholm@rel.su.se> (remember to submit abstracts to both organisers).

Papers dealing with most aspects of Satanism are welcome (including Satanism in literature, cinema, etc). However, we discourage papers treating “the Satanic panic”, “Satanic ritual abuse”, etc, as these themes have received sufficient scholarly attention.

Conference fee will be announced later.

Two Festivals at Once!

If you are celebrating Imbolc in the next few days, be aware that Chinese New Year falls on February 3, so you may hear some extra fireworks, depending where you are.

Calculated by the Sun, Imbolc occurs at 0420 Greenwich Mean Time on February 4.

Trademarking Your Religion

At the Washington Post’s “Under God” blog, a story about how the Seventh-Day Adventist church guards its trademark—even against other Adventists.

This has got me thinking: will all religions end up trademarked? Do you need intellectual-property lawyers and copyright lawyers to be a “real religion”?

Imagine trademarking “Witch.” Someone in Salem, Mass., is probably thinking about it already.