NoM, EoM, MoA, and the pluperfect tense

Having read the first draft, my mother remarked that I’d overused the ‘had + past participle’ construction. 

I reminded her that she had only herself to blame by sending me to a school that required Latin. The pluperfect should be used if one event happened further in the past than a more recent one.  Straightforward. And as the narrative is already in the simple past, there will be many uses of the pluperfect tense. Just a fact. 

I know that I could use the simple past for both, but the pluperfect (pluscuamperfecto, le plusqueparfait, plusquamperfekt) is used freely in so many languages that I’ve studied that I don’t actively think about it. But this might be a time where studying so many other languages has made me sound less like a native English speaker. And I don’t want my book to sound stilted (or more stilted than it probably already does.) I will go back and change some of them to simple past, if it sounds more natural, colloquial. English is not Latin. It’s not even a Romance language. The rules are not so set in stone.

 She (herself a student of Greek, which also employs the pluperfect, or ὑπερσυντέλικος, which, like all other words for pluperfect, means ‘more than completed’) agreed to look again, but now I’m self-conscious about it. Self-conscious enough to begin my blogpost with grammar—never a good sign. 

The rewrites are nearly done (apart from the reread to specifically look for the pluperfect), and ready to pass back like a hot potato to the copyeditor. Before it is published, or at least soon after, I was thinking of another chapter for EOM, which is more than half done. But so few people are still reading, it hardly seems worth it to continue, the only reason to keep working on it would be if those readers actually bought by other stuff. A few have, but a very few. Not sure it makes all the time and effort writing EOM would require worth it, financially, emotionally, creatively.

I have so many other projects I want to be working on once I finish the Nature of Magic. The travel adventure series, my dark academia duology, a Persuasion retelling (with swords) and numerous little magical or romcom novellas. 

I met with a brand specialist yesterday. I won an hour of her time by making a fool of myself on stage. A bargain! I make a fool of myself for free all the time. So I have some steps to follow to get more satisfaction out of my writing, and more money. Sigh.

Both are important.

In a few hours, I am going to refill the well, as they say, by going to the Museum of Art. I will come back here later to report. 

~

It’s now Saturday. These were some of my favourite exhibits.

This is a ceiling. I just lay on the floor and gazed for a while.

Take care, everyone.