Wotmania lurker

[Mulk]

Never really posted here before because I never really had much to add to the discussion. I sure enjoy reading it though. :)

 

I first picked up Wheel of Time when Shadow Rising was first into hardcover. I don't have enough money to just pick up and read everything I want to read, so I tend to wait for a vote of confidence from someone I know and trust before I do. So...I was hooked pretty much instantly. Well, maybe 150 pages in.

 

Through the years I've been alternately exhilarated and frustrated out of my mind with Mr. Jordan. I was immensely saddened when he passed, and I put most of the series onto a shelf i never look at after his death, just blithely assuming it would never be complete. I quit following Wotmania at that time, along with my infrequent jaunts over here. The same friend who apprised me of the goodness of Wotness back in 1992 (I think it was then) acquainted me with Elantris and Mr. Sanderson by way of letting me know that WoT was back on and in Mr. Sanderson's capable hands.

 

I've read the whole series through (minus book 12, which I think I've only read 5 times) at least 20 times over. Hoping for the good payoff, as it were. I'm currently in yet another re-read in prep for ToM.

 

Aside from that, I'm a married father of two (one of which is due to be born right around release date!), a volunteer youth minister, somewhat of a musician, computer game player (WoW, LOTRO, Myst and others) and cat-lover who desperately wishes he lived in the mountains instead of in Texas. Born, bred Texan, but I have mountain fever like few others I've ever met.

 

Howdy, ya'll. :)

[Elend]

Welcome to Dragonmount, QuietAiel.

 

I hope you enjoy your stay here; you will find a number of WoTmania exiles here as well.

[Mystica]

Welcome to the open, QuietAiel. I know what you mean with the alternating happy and grrr @ RJ throughout the books lol, though admittedly I haven't had to wait quite as long as most, since I joined in on the series when it was going into book 8 I think.

 

What is it about mountains that you love so much?

 

I'm a bit greedy myself and my idea of perfection is a big mountain lake in a wide valley surrounded by a lush forrest (without bugs or predators, im very peculiar about my wants). Basically, I want it all. The water, the green and the mountain view *grins*

 

IRL I have none of it, since I live in Belgium in a city and the only water I see is a river you can't swim in, the view is a horizon dotted with apartment buildings or ancient church towers and for green I have to gaze at pathetic patches of bushes or a potted plant here and there. *grins*

 

Congrats on the second baby to come!

[Elend]

Muahahahah, I live in a kinda mountainous region.

 

Okay, not truly mountains, more like big hills, but they're everywhere.

 

Plenty of green, though.

 

My view looks kinda like this.

 

None of this is really relevant, but, eh, I felt like posting anyway.

[Mulk]

What do I like so much? There's several parts to that answer and the answer is likely to get verbose. In no particular order:

 

I love the solitude. I like people, too, but I need quiet and alone time to keep sane.

I love the scent of the air. You can read that to mean lack of city smells, freshness, or whatever. It is clean, way cleaner than what I am used to having lived in a city since I was small.

I love the darkness at night. Instead of an oversaturated orange/yellow glow, you have actual night in which stars beyond the most brilliant ones on our horizon are visible.

I love the sound, scent and sight of animals in the wild. I've been within a Loial toss (meaning my ability to toss an Ogier. :D) of deer, elk, moose, coyotes and many other animals

 

Up to this point, it's obvious that what I'm describing fits just about any non-city place on earth, from empty beaches to desert dunes to the high Sierra to the corn fields of Iowa and beyond, and it's true I do find these things in more places than just the mountains. HOWEVER.

 

I love rippling waters and roaring cataracts that shimmer in the crisp, cool mountain breeze.

I love hiking up the Rockies and watching as vista upon vista march into and back out of view.

I love the scent of mountain pine on the wind after a storm breaks on the high peaks.

I love sitting alone or with family on a rock and staring across the canyons and breaks to the peaks beyond and day-dreaming of when I could venture there.

 

It was a cool August day in 1979 when I first set foot into Colorado and I spent most of that day chucking rocks into a river and wandering up and down its length with innumerable cousins. Each pebble I tossed, each rock I shifted, somehow got into my skin and spoke of purple mountain majesty that without which I could not feel at home. I've not been the same since.

 

So, it's a lot of things. I think the mountains are among the grandest bits of the non-living Creation to be found, with an immense reach that is nonetheless, for me, intensely personal. When the winds rise as the storms fall and crash and boom upon the rocky shores, the hair on my neck rises not in fear, but in awe and wonder and appreciation that for a moment, I was there to witness it. For many, the beach or the forest or the city are the summit of life. For me, it's the high peaks and the valleys they shelter. One day I'll live there; if not in this life, than in the next.

[Mystica]

you have quite a way with words, im literally seeing it as I read your description. You wouldn't be a writer yourself, would you? That outline is enough to seduce the coldest heart lol.

[Mulk]

you have quite a way with words, im literally seeing it as I read your description. You wouldn't be a writer yourself, would you? That outline is enough to seduce the coldest heart lol.

 

aw, shucks. Twern't nuthin'. ;)

 

As to whether I am or no, I dabble sometimes is the best short answer I can give. Long answer? I was at best a middling student of literature and writing, save for one class that lasted one semester of my senior year: Creative Writing. I was actually a math major and I love science and history as well. I was captured by Tolkien as a boy, though, you might say. I longed to move people in the way he moved me when I first read the ride of the Rohirrim.

 

What I have is vivid imagination that occasionally summons me to do it justice. I invented a world in 1992 or thereabouts along with a sparse history. I have written a few things for it. I've played Warcraft since 2005, and I've written a few things for that as well. In those essays I found in myself something of the ability to communicate what I saw, but it comes haltingly if at all, like a cool breeze in a Texas summer - faint and unusual, and rarely lasting. So the muse grips me until I can think of naught else till I write it and then it leaves and I'm left almost exhausted. It's very strange. Not until very recently have I had much success in directing it when I don't feel called, as it were, and then only when I'm trying to communicate something in life about which I feel most in earnest.

[Elend]

If you're interested in writing and would like some knowledgeable critiques about anything you may write, feel free to join our Writer's Guild.

 

Click the banner in my signature for the sign up post.

[Mulk]

Thank you, Elend. I will certainly think on it.

[Mystica]

I understand how that feels like, though I lack the necessay wealth of knowledge in vocabulary to do justice to the stuff that keeps hovering around between my ears. That's why I love NaNoWriMo, because it lets me write without any need for structure, rules, quality controle or what not. Just write whatever comes to mind, nevermind whether it's logical or gramatically correct or literary sound. Just. Write. What a breath of fresh air that was in 2008 when I first tried it out.

 

Myself, weirdly perhaps, I'm more of a visual person. When an author manages to make me 'see' the scenes, he's got me. But the actual visual combined with musical assistance, that's where my hair really rises. In some cases the music alone is enough, so long as it is epic enough. Then my fantasy kicks in and off we go. Just like magic.

 

Sometimes I wish I were Anglosaxon from birth, perhaps my language skills would be better then, but as it is I have to make due with the scarce vocabulary I know. Makes for a bit of repetitiveness.

[Elend]

Have you tried writing in your native tongue?

 

Myself, I put all my creativity and skills into my DM posts. Yup. That's why they're so awesome. Or horrible. Whichever they are.

 

Don't look at me like that!

 

[Mystica]

I've tried writing in Dutch, but that just doesn't seem to work for me. I end up struggling with phrases and sayings and words that come to me in English (whether or not they're correct English is beside the point) and then it all sounds horribly wrong when I try to translate that back into Dutch. lol So yeah, writing for me is in English by default.

[Mulk]

I don't have the language issue (which is probably obvious. :D); however, there are plenty of times when the words I put down just don't seem to fit. Like I'm a word or two off. The best comparison I can make when that happens is that I set out to describe one incredible shade of blue and wind up with the intended audience thinking "violet". It's close, so painfully close, but wrong.

 

Conflusterating is what it is!

[Mystica]

Annoyitating too.