I should be asleep. I should be asleep because I’m still sick and I’ve been up since 5 am. Most of that time was spent in a car between Fernandina Beach, FL and Washington, DC. I didn’t spend any of that time writing, which is, ostensibly, why I’m still awake. But really, I’m still awake because I can’t sleep. Because my body sucks. The writing is a side effect, not a symptom, sadly. So I’m awake in a big hotel room bed researching Victorians and their penchant for tattoos, like you do. In my research there are phrases and whole paragraphs that I seem to be reading over and over again, specifically about the Prince of Wales and his cross tattoo of 1862.
In my job at Ye Olde Publishing House I spend a good amount of time researching the origins of certain pieces of text, because we sometimes need to know dates and publishers that are a little hard to find. Some works are unique, while some have been copied and copied and adapted and sloppily pasted over another template so many times that it becomes impossible to divine who the actual attributing author is. That is, in my limited scope of research at this time, what appears to have happened to this paragraph.
I find this amusing, because the preface to one of the authentic 19th century articles I read on BME Zine made a point of stating that before there were ‘such draconian copyright laws’ that newspapers used to lift each other’s work all the time, so it’s impossible to tell if the Washington Post really did pick up the article from that New York paper like it claims it did, or if it actually came from a Bostonian publication. The internet makes copyright law, or trying to adhere to it, a trying and fascinating study and practice.
Does the proliferation of that specific set of words in that specific order make us find them more or less true?
Just an errant thought I had while doing some laundry. People refer to Paris in the twenties. When they do you know, sometimes even if you don’t really know, that they’re referring to a collective of people and places that were creative and talented and full of more potential and purpose than most generations can recognize within themselves. Given that we now live in an even more global society, and that writing groups and artists colonies now exist via the internet, do you think that one day someone will refer to LiveJournal in the 2020s or DeviantArt in the 2030s (not with those specific sites, really, but more as a collective of people) in the same way that they refer to Paris in the 20s?
Experts predicted that in future wars, zeppelins would accommodate battleships to sea. Aeronautics engineers proposed installing mooring rigids to the masts of converted cruisers, which would act as the dirigibles’ depot ships. The front of the ship would house a small hangar and launching pad for fighting planes. Guide ropes projecting from the sides of the ship would hold the dirigible in place while ship crews fastened its nose cone to the mooring device. (via Archive Gallery: The Golden Age of Zeppelins | Popular Science)
The coexistence of two varieties of the same language throughout a speech community. Often, one form is the literary or prestige dialect, and the other is a common dialect spoken by most of the population. Such a situation exists in many speech communities throughout the world—e.g., in Greece, where Katharevusa, heavily influenced by Classical Greek, is the prestige dialect and Demotic is the popular spoken language, and in the Arab world, where classical Arabic (as used in the Qurʾān) exists alongside the colloquial Arabic of Egypt, Morocco, and other countries. Sociolinguists may also use the term diglossia to denote bilingualism, the speaking of two or more languages by the members of the same community, as, for example, in New York City, where many members of the Hispanic community speak both Spanish and English, switching from one to the other according to the social situation or the needs of the moment.
Prinses Christina singing “My Sweetheart’s The Man In The Moon”. The song was written by James Thornton and originally published in 1892. I think if I go this route this could very well work.
You look for publishers who publish “that kind of thing”, whatever it is. You send them what you’ve done (a letter asking if they’d like to see a whole manuscript or a few chapters and an outline will always be welcome. And stamped self-addressed envelopes help keep the wheels turning.)
Sooner or later, if you don’t give up and you have some measurable amount of ability or talent or luck, you get published. But for people who don’t know where to begin, let me offer a few suggestions:
