Category: blogging

Toasting – The pagan origins

~ Meg ~ 54 Comments

Week 33 in The Year of Drinking Adventurously. Supposed to be Blueberry Wine. Fail!

This week’s adventure was supposed to take us to the great state of Maine, USA. They grow lots of blueberries in Maine which results in the production of all sorts of blueberry related items,  including blueberry wine. Now I have to be honest. That is really not my kind of thing. So I didn’t try very hard to acquire said product. But not one to shirk my responsibility to talk about something booze related, and since I’m also kind of on a history kick I decided to share with you the origins of “toasting” since Lula has named this event Toast Tuesday.

Raising a glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage is a common and age-old practice. While details may vary from culture to culture, the idea is to wish good luck or good health to someone or several someones. Sometimes the glasses are touched together and the person offering the toast may make a short speech bestowing wishes for long life, good health, wealth and happiness on the person being toasted. Usually those sharing in the toast will raise their glasses and voice their agreement, after which everyone drinks.

What, though, is the background of the custom of toasting?  According to National Geographic:  “The now-respectable custom of the toast was once an exercise in aggressively competitive drinking. Historians guess that the toast most likely originated with the Greek libation, the custom of pouring out a portion of one’s drink in honor of the gods. From there, it was an easy step to offering a drink in honor of one’s companions.”

Additionally, the 1995 International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture says: “[Toasting] is probably a secular vestige of ancient sacrificial libations in which a sacred liquid was offered to the gods: blood or wine in exchange for a wish, a prayer summarized in the words ‘long life!’ or ‘to your health!’”

But why “toast” you might ask? Back to National Geographic: “The term “toast”—as in drinking to someone’s health—comes from a literal piece of spiced or charred toast, a tidbit once routinely dropped in a cup or bowl of wine, either as form of h’or d’oeuvre or to make the wine taste better. Shakespeare mentions this in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Falstaff calls for a quart of spiced wine, then adds “Put a toast in it.” By the 18th century, the term  “toast” had been transferred from the floating bread to the person honored by the toast-hence the particularly popular could become the “toast of the town.”’

It’s quite fascinating to examine how something we take for granted has its origins in the pagan world. The wedding ring, for example, is another tradition based on superstition. But that doesn’t have anything to do with alcohol so that must wait for another day! And just a heads up, the next several weeks of my drinking adventures are going to be a deviation from the book. Our guide introduces some very obscure alcohols that I’ll never be able to find locally. Instead, I’ll share some of my personal drinking adventures of which there are many!

Organize Your Writing

~ Meg ~ 28 Comments

One of the things that can get out of hand quick when you’re writing a novel is keeping track of the details. As the story pours out beneath your fingers tapping away on the keyboard, you don’t want to have to stop and page back through the previous 10,000 words to find an important detail that’s relevant to a scene you’re currently developing. It might be things like who said what to whom, how many days have passed, does it makes sense with the way the plot is unfolding, and so forth.

I use several tools to organize my writing so as to avoid rereading the whole manuscript to find one detail. Here are a few of them:

  • Timeline spread sheet: this is essential for keeping track of the order of events. The way I do it is to decide on a date for the opening of the story, and since my books are set in present day, I usually pick a day and the date of the current year. Then for each day on which action happens, I make a brief note of the significant event. For days where nothing happens I may make an entry that reads: August 4-6 Jen waits for news from the police, or something like that.
  • Character biography database: this can be as simple as writing your character’s physical description, age, career and hobbies on an inex card. I keep mine filed on another spreadsheet. Other details that are helpful to include are personality traits. List things like he is intelligent, short tempered, bossy, meek, shy, funny, easy going, intense, artistic, serious or grumpy. You may also include events that have shaped their life so far. For example they were raised in a wealth and comfort or they were abused as a child. They lived in the city or grew up on a farm. They might have been happily married and widowed or divorced with a nasty custody battle. All this helps shape the way your characters will act and react in certain situations.
  • Pinterest boards: this is something that won’t appeal to everyone, but I like doing it. I create Pinterest boards for each of my novels and “cast actors” to “play the roles” of each character. This helps me to “see” the character perform the action in the story.
  • Mapping the location: I physically draw the layout of my locations: the town, the character’s house or apartment layouts, and so forth, again to help me visualize the scenes. And you don’t need to be an artist to make this work for you. A crude map is fine. No one else has to see it!

Keeping track of the details means you won’t be making as many mistakes along the way. This will save you a lot of time and aggravation when you begin proofreading and editing. And being able to visualize your characters and the setting of your story will help make it more real to you and that will translate into your work. As always, I hope this was helpful.