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January posting meme: water metaphors
Jan. 5th, 2014 03:17 pmFrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penwiper26: Talk about water metaphors, and how they came to fascinate you.
WELL FIRST OF ALL this is a terribly appropriate day to discuss this, since it's raining little frigid pinpricks of dismay and despair out there (which may start freezing on things any time now. We don't get the single-digit temps until tomorrow night). Water is an element (in the old sense) and ingrained in our human consciousness and unconsciousness as something that needs paying attention to; it's more noticeable than air and earth and more common than fire, and we all need it, so expressing ourselves using its language is probably instinctual. I wish I could trace my use of water in writing to one source or time and place, but it isn't likely to exist.
However, I do use water imagery (and actual water) perhaps more than the average writer, which I suppose is because a) it's useful, and b) it comes easily to me. (Flows easily. Bubbles up.) I will confess here that despite having written four books full of water metaphors that are in some cases thematically central (time seen as rivers and streams and trickles of possibility, etc.), I hadn't thought about taking any advantage of that until, while putting together my website this fall, I realized that it would be handy to name my series, and then after wittering about that awhile had the head-slap moment when I recognized that "Waters of Time" was the perfect title. So it is possible now that people will go looking for water in the books, and it's there, both literally (the English Channel, the canals of Amsterdam, Boston Harbor, etc.) and in many other ways, including my protagonists' names. I believe that when I named Olivia Lake and George Merrill I was thinking about the contrasts between lakes and seas and how they represent personalities (George's surname could also be derived from merle, French for blackbird, and when I do this meme again in a couple of years someone really needs to ask about birds happening to me all over the place, because it was seriously weird in a deliciously satisfying way). And it's also there in the weather, in dream imagery, in the stories characters remember and tell, in jokes and puns, and in the words I choose to express thought and emotion.
What does water do, after all? It flows and drips and babbles and roars, and feels much the same as when we're being teased and battered and caressed by feelings. It just seems very natural to use water-words to say someone is floating serenely or being tossed on waves of sensation; it's near-universal, and understandable at a gut level. I use plant imagery sometimes too, and enjoy doing so, but I know that not everyone thinks about plants and how they work on a daily basis; we really can't help thinking about water. And it's got some fundamental cultural associations: pretty much the first thing I do in the series is plunge George into cold water, which may not be a literal baptism but expresses something much older about change and development and perhaps the way in which we all emerge from water (or at least liquid) to evolve, to be born. Olivia gets a similar moment later in TFT (since she has more sense, I don't need to do it to her quite so often, though. George gets dunked over and over). And water's both life-giving and life-taking; the dangers of water are implicit throughout the books too. You can drown in love, or in anger, and you can actually drown; you can also die from lack of water, and deserts show up here and there too.
I find tracking imagery in writers' works tremendous fun (I once made a list of all the animal-related expressions in the Vorkosigan series) and I'm amused at how many places I put water stuff in my books, frequently not on purpose. Once I start noticing, it's everywhere: Olivia's father's joke about Minnesota having had ten thousand lakes but now it only has three; a bit in the fourth book about hermits in dry climates and the fear of female sexuality (it makes more sense in context); the number of coasts and beaches my characters frequent; tales of fishermen and sailors; Twelfth Night, which starts with a shipwreck. (And is today; I didn't do that on purpose either.) I'm sure I do it in my other fiction, too, if to a lesser extent. And I'm not likely to stop anytime soon; the river will keep on flowing, one might say - come on in and join me, the water's fine.
penwiper26: Talk about water metaphors, and how they came to fascinate you.WELL FIRST OF ALL this is a terribly appropriate day to discuss this, since it's raining little frigid pinpricks of dismay and despair out there (which may start freezing on things any time now. We don't get the single-digit temps until tomorrow night). Water is an element (in the old sense) and ingrained in our human consciousness and unconsciousness as something that needs paying attention to; it's more noticeable than air and earth and more common than fire, and we all need it, so expressing ourselves using its language is probably instinctual. I wish I could trace my use of water in writing to one source or time and place, but it isn't likely to exist.
However, I do use water imagery (and actual water) perhaps more than the average writer, which I suppose is because a) it's useful, and b) it comes easily to me. (Flows easily. Bubbles up.) I will confess here that despite having written four books full of water metaphors that are in some cases thematically central (time seen as rivers and streams and trickles of possibility, etc.), I hadn't thought about taking any advantage of that until, while putting together my website this fall, I realized that it would be handy to name my series, and then after wittering about that awhile had the head-slap moment when I recognized that "Waters of Time" was the perfect title. So it is possible now that people will go looking for water in the books, and it's there, both literally (the English Channel, the canals of Amsterdam, Boston Harbor, etc.) and in many other ways, including my protagonists' names. I believe that when I named Olivia Lake and George Merrill I was thinking about the contrasts between lakes and seas and how they represent personalities (George's surname could also be derived from merle, French for blackbird, and when I do this meme again in a couple of years someone really needs to ask about birds happening to me all over the place, because it was seriously weird in a deliciously satisfying way). And it's also there in the weather, in dream imagery, in the stories characters remember and tell, in jokes and puns, and in the words I choose to express thought and emotion.
What does water do, after all? It flows and drips and babbles and roars, and feels much the same as when we're being teased and battered and caressed by feelings. It just seems very natural to use water-words to say someone is floating serenely or being tossed on waves of sensation; it's near-universal, and understandable at a gut level. I use plant imagery sometimes too, and enjoy doing so, but I know that not everyone thinks about plants and how they work on a daily basis; we really can't help thinking about water. And it's got some fundamental cultural associations: pretty much the first thing I do in the series is plunge George into cold water, which may not be a literal baptism but expresses something much older about change and development and perhaps the way in which we all emerge from water (or at least liquid) to evolve, to be born. Olivia gets a similar moment later in TFT (since she has more sense, I don't need to do it to her quite so often, though. George gets dunked over and over). And water's both life-giving and life-taking; the dangers of water are implicit throughout the books too. You can drown in love, or in anger, and you can actually drown; you can also die from lack of water, and deserts show up here and there too.
I find tracking imagery in writers' works tremendous fun (I once made a list of all the animal-related expressions in the Vorkosigan series) and I'm amused at how many places I put water stuff in my books, frequently not on purpose. Once I start noticing, it's everywhere: Olivia's father's joke about Minnesota having had ten thousand lakes but now it only has three; a bit in the fourth book about hermits in dry climates and the fear of female sexuality (it makes more sense in context); the number of coasts and beaches my characters frequent; tales of fishermen and sailors; Twelfth Night, which starts with a shipwreck. (And is today; I didn't do that on purpose either.) I'm sure I do it in my other fiction, too, if to a lesser extent. And I'm not likely to stop anytime soon; the river will keep on flowing, one might say - come on in and join me, the water's fine.
