06-23-2013, 12:17 PM
Let me give you some good advice, markedly different from the above, but time tested and proven.
Its so unlikely to get published you can't put it in decimal places, I'm not sure of a kind way to say this over the internet, but yes. That certainly does not mean you stop writing. I think splitting the original idea into three smaller ones is the best thing you could do. Keep working on these on the side, eventually you want to be able to split these three into smaller ones. E.g take idea number 3. I recently did something on dating some Orphic stuff. The original idea was about genealogical tropes in Orphic poetry, it got split down into comparative mythology, something on metrics, relative chronology and dating via morphological changes and put back together in a different shape. It took about a year and was defended and attacked at three conferences to improve it before it was finished.
Your major aim ought to be the languages: You need to thoroughly work over them in anticipation for working on textual and palaeographical problems since these are the pre-requisite for developing a basic toolkit. So read, read, read and in particular make sure you're using composition textbooks. I'm sure our Latin teacher would be happy to help. When I have time I'd be happy to check your output.
Also the most important thing you can do for your Latin is learn Greek. Well technically its to learn related Italic languages, but stylistically much is dependent on Greek writers until later times.
Finally, translation is different from reading and in the earlier stages used readers with built in commentaries and lexica rather than waste time with dictionaries. Find vocabulary frequency lists and then try to set yourself stylistic problems, e.g Juvenal's use of Ovidian phrases etc to train the mind to catch "problems". Latin writers, annoyingly, think blatant intertext is the way to go.
Its so unlikely to get published you can't put it in decimal places, I'm not sure of a kind way to say this over the internet, but yes. That certainly does not mean you stop writing. I think splitting the original idea into three smaller ones is the best thing you could do. Keep working on these on the side, eventually you want to be able to split these three into smaller ones. E.g take idea number 3. I recently did something on dating some Orphic stuff. The original idea was about genealogical tropes in Orphic poetry, it got split down into comparative mythology, something on metrics, relative chronology and dating via morphological changes and put back together in a different shape. It took about a year and was defended and attacked at three conferences to improve it before it was finished.
Your major aim ought to be the languages: You need to thoroughly work over them in anticipation for working on textual and palaeographical problems since these are the pre-requisite for developing a basic toolkit. So read, read, read and in particular make sure you're using composition textbooks. I'm sure our Latin teacher would be happy to help. When I have time I'd be happy to check your output.
Also the most important thing you can do for your Latin is learn Greek. Well technically its to learn related Italic languages, but stylistically much is dependent on Greek writers until later times.
Finally, translation is different from reading and in the earlier stages used readers with built in commentaries and lexica rather than waste time with dictionaries. Find vocabulary frequency lists and then try to set yourself stylistic problems, e.g Juvenal's use of Ovidian phrases etc to train the mind to catch "problems". Latin writers, annoyingly, think blatant intertext is the way to go.
Jass
