please tell me more about the nymphs' spy network!!! it sounds fascinating

ahhh, i'm so glad it does!!

to preface—these are only observations from someone who reads copious myth retellings but is non-greek. i'm a classics & history enthusiast, not a historian or classicist.

nymphs sometimes have an awkward placement in greek mythology. they're beautiful immortals with diluted magic; personified extensions of nature that gods and mortals alike cannot resist the allure of. when researching for NAMESAKE, nymphs had an almost prop-like placement in many tragedies. beautiful things that men confessed their anxieties to, sought companionship, impregnated, collected as docile handmaidens, but once they provided a warm vessel, they sunk into tragic circumstance or background fodder.

i've always been enamoured by this quote in THE SECRET HISTORY: "Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?" and that's essentially the effect i wanted with my nymphs. not ethereal, dainty props hugging the treeline while demeter discovers her daughter's corpse or minthe boasts about her conquests with hades or zeus strides the marble halls of his palace. nymphs as jarring as nature itself; unpredictable in their loyalty, capable of entrapping the most vicious god and sell his secrets to the highest bidder. they see everything. they trade in rumours and riddles, a valuable currency that allows them to barter with everyone.

and by no means do nymphs only fill these aforementioned roles. nymphs have birthed gods, tricked and puppeted them, ruled their domains with more impunity than minos or lykos. i just like exploring the agency of a woman-like being who's treated as nothing more than a pretty painting, but with eyes that track your every step and hoard your every word.

Hi Betts, do you have any advice for this: Writing/Plotting is feeling easy right now, so now I think the entire thing is bad. Sigh. I don’t know why I can’t let things be easy.

a few months ago i wrote a pie metaphor about this, and then also expanded on the pie metaphor.

i notice this pattern in a lot of asks i get and in a lot of posts about writing, that we try to make creativity this miserable endeavor because we think pain holds more meaning than joy. but unless someone is handing you a stack of cash to write something for them, that means your writing is internally motivated, and the key to internal motivation is pleasure. you can't develop habits if something doesn't feel good. and things that feel good are easy; rather, challenging in a way that's fun, so it seems easy. fun is the key to creative success. when you're in the idea generation phase, you need to develop the inner voice of an excited little kid on their birthday, and that voice needs to drown out the overbearing voice of criticism. your job as a writer is to dropkick the latter into a canyon and spoil the shit out of the kid. you give them everything you always wanted and never got.

eventually that kid will tire out and need to go to sleep, and the critic, reliable to a fault, will make its way back. the second draft is when you start to listen to that voice, because you know it's got some interesting things to say, and it'll remind you to clean up after the birthday party and put all the toys away. but that voice is only valuable after you've worn out all your fun. fun must come first. always.