Creative Writing Assessments and Enhancements

Want more assessments? Creative writing instruction and enhancement techniques? Read the book titled, Do you Have the Aptitude & Personality to be a Popular Author: Professional Creative Writing Assessments, ISBN: 978-1-4401-2520-1, Published March 2009. ASJA Press imprint, iUniverse, Inc. (Listed with most online booksellers). Browse and/or order the book at: http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000124541

Do You Have the Aptitude & Personality to Be A Popular Author?

Professional Creative Writing Assessments

By Anne Hart

Also available as:
Published: March, 2009
Format: Perfect Bound Softcover
Pages: 264
Size: 5x8
ISBN: 9781440125201

Are you best-suited to be a historical novelist, mystery writer, short story sprinter, digital interactive story writer on ancient civilizations, a nonfiction writer, or an author of thrillers using historical settings or universal themes? Do you think like a fiction writer, investigative journalist, or an imaginative, creative nonfiction author writing biography in the style of genre or mainstream fiction? Enhance your creativity.

How are you going to clarify and resolve the issues, problems, or situations in your plot by the way your characters behave to move the action forward? How do you get measurable results when writing fiction or creative nonfiction? Consider what steps you show to reveal how your story is resolved by the characters. This also is known as the denouement.<p> Denouement as it applies to a short story or novel is the final resolution. It’s your clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot. What category of denouement will your characters take to move the plot forward?

Take the writing style preference classifier and find out how you approach your favorite writing style using facts and acts. Which genre is for you--interactive, traditional, creative nonfiction, fiction, decisive or investigative?<p> Would you rather write for readers that need to interact with their own story endings or plot branches? Which style best fits you? What’s your writing profile?

Enjoy this ancient echoes writing genre interest, personality, and aptitude classifier and see the various ways in which way you can be more creative. There are 35 questions—seven questions for each of the five pairs. There are 10 choices, five assessments and a section on how to write a novel/story/script by developing depth of character that drives your plot.

Take the “Howling Wolf’s Scribe” Creative Writing Preference Classifier

Also see my Howling Wolf Scribe fiction writer’s creativity enhancement assessment (for entertainment purposes) in print in my paperback book titled, 30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open: How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing copyright by Anne Hart, M.A. ISBN-13: 978-0-595-42710-9. Published by ASJA Press imprint, iUniverse, inc. 2007. (http://www.iuniverse.com). Click on Bookstore. Search paperback books by title.

Are you best-suited to be an ethnographic story writer, a nonfiction writer, digital interactive author, theatrical, cinematic, or a mystery writer using historic, imaginative, fantasy, and/or ethnographic themes? How about investigative journalism based on history or fiction based on historical themes? Do you think like a fiction writer? Take the writing style preference classifier and find out how you approach your favorite writing style using Zabeyko’s facts and acts.

Which genre is for you--interactive, traditional, creative nonfiction, fiction, decisive or investigative? Would you rather write for readers that need to interact with their own story endings or plot branches? Which style best fits you? What’s your writing profile?

Take this ancient echoes writing genre interest classifier and see the various ways in which way you can be more creative. Do you prefer to write investigative, logical nonfiction or imaginative fiction—or a mixture of both? There are 35 questions—seven questions for each of the five pairs. There are 10 choices.

The Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing

Traditional Change-Driven

Writer's Creativity Style Preference Classifier

Use the clues to inspire your own creativity in writing historic or mystery fiction. You are a mystery writer working on an interactive audio book of stories with clues for the Web about a scribe and music composer prodigy, Zabeyko, who lives and works in Wolkowysk (Howling Wolf), White Russia (now Belarus) near Bialystok of 1812, in the ancient Grodno province the time Napoleon visited. Zabeyko’s father, Kutkowski, has unending adventures trying to track down the person who gifted the multi-lingual musical prodigy child, Zabeyko, with a golden scholarship to study musical performance far away in Venice.

Zabeyko, son of a Tatar prince, is the young, adopted son of the famous Baltic wolf tamer, Polotskay Kutkowski. Surrounding the area is a forest known historically for its howling wolves. In Kutkowski’s gentle hands, the wolves sing opera as they stand on the rooftops of light-reflecting gingerbread-type houses in the midst of snowy winters and, tall, fresh-scented pine trees.

It’s December, and the holidays are being celebrated among Wolkowysk’s diverse and expanding population. The nation has just fallen back again under Russian rule.

When music prodigy, Zabeyko mysteriously disappears from his music tutor, Azarello, in Vienna when he was supposed to be studying music with that tutor in Venice, you as the mystery writer and scribe are in a race against time to save Zabeyko’s teenaged fiancée, Jadwiga, from being forced into an unwilling marriage with Zabeyko’s first childhood music tutor and male nanny, Jagello of the Zamkover forest. Jagello told Zabyeko’s father that his son, probably murdered by river bandits, is buried in Vienna on lands owned by the music tutor from Venice who has fled to family in Vienna.

You are hired as the scribe and investigator, much like an early investigative journalist who must follow clues and solve the mystery for his step father, Polotskay Kutkowski. But there is another famous wolf tamer in town. Your ‘avatar’name is Efrosinia.

It is Jagello, who owns a competing traveling circus. Both Kutkowski and Jagello are wealthy land owners who compete in their circus acts, and both own equally prosperous traveling circuses.

Jagello is determined to become the greatest wolf tamer of them all in his traveling circus by marrying the wealthy Jadwiga. How will you write this interactive story, according to your writing style preferences?

Clues

The leading character is Napoleon’s greatest enemy of the howling wolf forest, a wise, older woman, Efrosinia, the scribe and healer who knows exactly which plants will heal and nurse the villagers back to health. Efrosinia, the scribe and healer is rightly named after Efrosinia Polatskaya, a patron saint (who took a new name, Pradslava) of the land now called Belarus. You are now Efrosinia.

As a leading character, Efrosinia is a woman of 1812 fortunate enough to have inherited wealth from an ancestral line of architects. She grew up as a friend to the Kutkowski extended family. This character, Efrosinia, is your alter ego and takes on your own personality as she solves problems or crimes using her healing touch.

1. To write your story, would you prefer to
a. go to the Belarus archives in order to have translated two letters sent by Zabeyko’s teenage fiancée, Jadwiga to the 1812 ruler of Wolkowysk asking to send her a new fiancé (down-to-earth) or
b. dig deeper and find out the connections between the two documents, reading fear between the lines and noting the reluctance Zabeyko’s fiancée expresses in being forced to marry her servant, the tutor, Jagello? (verve)
a. □

b. □

2. Would you be more interested in researching history and writing about
a. the closeness or distance of the relationships that surfaced between the Belarus farmers, Baltic Lithuanians, Russians, and the Poles (enthusiastic) or
b. analyze the business deals and diplomatic events between these equal powers to see who was winning the race to becoming the superpower of the century? (rational)

a. □

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. Zabeyko’s teenage fiancée, Jadwiga wrote all her letters in Swedish, not in the Belarus (White Russian) dialect (down-to-earth) or

b. Zabeyko’s father, Polotskay Kutkowski, was so hated after his death because he worshipped the spirits inhabiting pine trees, that his face was scratched off all his monuments and wall friezes in his traveling circus? (verve)

a. □

b. □

4. Would you rather write about
a. Zabeyko being adopted, sent as a gift from a Tatar trader during his step father's festival celebrating the birth of his 12th son (enthusiastic) or
b. the mystery of why Zabeyko turned up “buried in Budapest” (never reaching Venice) near his music teacher’s land with both the Tatar horse amulet, a tamga, on his neck and a cobra twisted into music notes on his headstone? (rational)?

a. □

b. □

5. You are Jadwiga. Would you rather
a. exercise your right as a fiancée to claim Zabeyko's unmarried Tatar brother, Prince Atil (enthusiastic) or
b. marry Zabeyko's male nanny, Jagello because it's only right and fair to restore a Tatar prince in hiding from his throne even while he dwells in Wolkowysk, as he works with equally brilliant Jadwiga? (rational)

a. □

b. □

6. Zabeyko's fiancée wrote to her father-in-law to send her another of his sons for marriage to her. As a writer of her life story, would you rather

a. create a laundry list of princes either Tatar, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, or of Wolkowysk, that she must interview and screen in a dating game (down-to-earth) or

b. create a story where she rides 1,000 miles across the forests and steppes to run away from Zabeyko’s tutor, Jagello after he forces her to marry him. Finding herself childless, she then studies design disguised as a 14-year old boy. But growing wiser and older, she travels in disguise along the Silk Road to study architecture where she meets her true soul mate and business partner. (verve)

a. □

b. □

7. Are you more interested in ending your story with

a. Jagello marrying Zabeyko's fiancée, Jadwiga, then quickly getting rid of Jadwiga as Jagello marries Zabeyko’s adoptive grandmother, Pradislava, for her land and property.as his second wife, so that you have closure and an ending for your story (decisive) or
b. would you rather let your story remain open for serialization, since Zabeyko's fiancée is never heard from again and disappears just like Zabeyko did after Jagello marries her and then marries his adoptive grandmother, Pradislava. The fate of Zabeyko’s fiancée after marrying Zabeyko’s tutor, Jagello is not recorded in history. (investigative)

a. □

b. □

8. If you were a Tatar prince living in a foreign land, would you prefer to

a. decide immediately to obey the diverse European nobles of Wolkowysk and leave Tataristan to marry Jadwiga of the howling wolf forests because duty required it, knowing you'll probably be killed when you arrive by the same person who killed Zabeyko, (decisive) or
b. stall for time as long as possible, waiting for validated information to arrive regarding the diplomatic climate between Tatars and Russians? (investigative).

a. □

b. □

9. You are Zabeyko, a Tatar prince adopted in infancy by a wealthy Belarus owner of many traveling circus acts. You have been given as a gift from the Tatar king to the Baltic Tribes because his wife had six daughters and no sons. If you were Zabeyko, would you
a. speak in the Tatar tongue in front of your Slavic tutor, thereby possibly inflaming the nationalism in him (investigative) or
b. plan and organize methodically to have a whole line of people close to you from your own Tataristan rather than from the Slavic lands in which you were raised?
(decisive)
a. □

b. □

10. Would you rather write about
a. terms of the treaty between Tatars and the Slavs based on the facts provided by records (down-to-earth) or
b. the theories set in motion when Jagello marries Jadwiga and soon after, she disappears, just like her financee, Zabeyko, and Jabello then marries Zabeyko’s mother? (verve)

a. □

b. □

11. Do you like writing about
a. enigmas or puzzles set in motion by symbols on intimate funerary equipment in a mystery novel (rational) or
b. why no other Tatar royalty emblem after Zabeyko’s life span ever again appeared on a medallion with a horse tamga inscribed in scrimshaw ivory with a vulture? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

12. A tag line shows the mood/emotion in the voice--how a character speaks or acts. Are you more interested in
a. compiling, counting, and indexing citations or quotes from how-to books for writers (down-to-earth) or
b. compiling tag lines that explain in fiction dialogue the specific behaviors or gestures such as, “Yes, he replied timorously.”? (verve)

a. □

b. □

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description? (rational)

a. □

b. □

14. To publicize your writing, would you rather
a. give spectacular presentations or shows without preparation or prior notice (investigative) or
b. have to prepare a long time in advance to speak or perform? (decisive)

a. □

b. □

15. If you were Jadwiga, would you prefer to
a. receive warnings well in advance and without surprises that Jagello is planning to get rid of you and marry your would-be mother-in-law (adoptive grandmother of Zabeyko) so you could conveniently disappear (decisive) or
b. adapt to last-moment changes by never getting down to your last man or your last coin? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

16. As a scribe, artist, and poet in Wolkowysk when Napoleon visited, would you
a. feel constrained by Zabeyko's time schedules and deadlines (investigative) or
b. set realistic timetables and juggle priorities? (decisive)

a. □

b. □

17. As Zabeyko's widow, do you feel bound to
a. go with social custom, do the activities itemized on the social calendar, and

marry your dead husband's unmarried brother because it's organized according to a plan (decisive) or
b. go with the flow of the relationship, deal with issues as they arise, make no commitments or assumptions about what's the right thing to do because time changes plans? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

18. You're the Tatar prince reading Jadwiga’s,
desperate letter. Is your reply to Jadwiga more likely to be
a. one brief, concise, and to the point letter (rational) or
b. one sociable, friendly, empathetic and time-consuming letter? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

19. You're the Tatar prince and music prodigy, Zabeyko, adopted and re-named by Belarus step-parents. You’re contemplating who wants more to replace you with a local noble. You make a list of
a. the pros and cons of each person close to you (rational) or
b. varied comments from friends and relatives on what they say behind your back regarding how your influence them and what they want from you. (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

20. You're the scribe trying to solve Zabeyko's murder in Vienna when he was supposed to be studying music in Venice. Would you rather investigate
a. the tried and true facts about Jagello (down-to-earth) or
b. want to see what's in the overall picture before you fill in the clues? (verve)
a. □

b. □

21. You’re a scribe painting Zabeyko's tomb shortly after his demise and you
a. seldom make errors of detail when looking for clues such as taking notice of Jagello’s wedding present to the young, healthy Jadwiga--her freshly inscribed coffin. (down-to-earth) or
b. prefer more innovative work like writing secret love poems to Jadwiga disguised as prayers and watching for Zabeyko's ghost to escape through the eight-inch square hole you cut in his headstone. (verve)

a. □

b. □

22. As a scribe in 1812 Wolkowysk, you become
a. tired when you work alone all day in a dimly torchlit room (outgoing) or
b. tired when Zabeyko interrupts your concentration on your work to demand that you greet and entertain his guests all evening at banquets. (loner).

a. □

b. □

23. When Jadwiga asks you as a scribe to write love poems for her that she can send to Zabeyko, you
a. create the ideas for your poems by long discussions with her (outgoing) or
b. prefer to be alone when you reach deep down inside your spirit to listen to what your soul entities tell you as the only resource for writing metaphors. (loner)

a. □

b. □

24. You travel to Venice and Vienna investigating the death of Zabeyko and prefer to
a. question many different foreigners and locals at boisterous celebrations in different languages (outgoing) or
b. disregard outside events and look inside the family history/genealogy inscriptions for the culprit. (loner)

a. □

b. □

25. Zabeyko, at age nine asks you to develop ideas for him about how to act when writing music. You prefer to develop ideas through
a. reflection, meditation, and prayer (loner) or
b. discussions and interviews among Zabeyko’s playmates on what makes Zabeyko laugh. (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

26. As a scribe you are
a. rarely cautious about the family position of those with whom you socialize as long as they are kind, righteous people who do good deeds (outgoing) or
b. seeking one person with power to raise you from scribe to noble, if only the richest noble in Wolkowysk would ask your advice. (loner)

a. □

b. □

27. You are a designer and builder of palaces. A rich noble asks you to carve a name for yourself on his palace door that's a special representation of its builder. Would you
a. inscribe the word that means ‘remote’ (loner) or
b. choose a special name for yourself that means, “He who shares time easily with many foreigners?” (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

28. As an early 19^th century scribe, do you work better when you
a. spend your day off daydreaming where no one can see you (loner) or
b. spend your free time training teams of apprentice scribes? (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

30. Do you depict your ruler’s victories on a stone column exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. only the ruler wants people to see? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

31. If you’re self-motivated, would you avoid learning from your overseer because

a. your overseer doesn’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

b. your overseer doesn’t let you follow in your father’s footsteps? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

32. Would you prefer to

a. train scribes because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about the future than about current chores (change-driven) or

b. invaders replace your forefathers’ familiar foods with unfamiliar cuisine? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

Self-Scoring the Test

Add up the number of answers for each of the following ten writing style traits for the 35 questions. There are seven questions for each group. The ten categories are made up of five opposite pairs.

Down-to-earth Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing

Traditional Change-Driven

Then put the numbers for each answer next to the categories. See the same self-scored test and results below.

1. Total Down-to-earth 6. Total Verve

2. Total Rational 7. Total Enthusiastic

3. Total Decisive 8. Total Investigative

4. Total Loner 9. Total Outgoing

5. Total Traditional 10. Total Change-Driven

To get your score, you’re only adding up the number of answers for each of the 10 categories (five pairs) above. See the sample self-scored test below. Note that there are seven questions for each of the five pairs (or 10 designations). There are 35 questions. Seven questions times five categories equal 35 questions. Keep the number of questions you design for each category equal.

Here is a Sample Self-Scored Assessment with Answers

Take the “Howling Wolf’s Scribe” Creative Writing Preference Classifier

Are you best-suited to be a digital interactive or ethnographic story writer, a nonfiction writer, or a mystery writer using historic themes? Do you think like a fiction writer? Take the writing style preference classifier and find out how you approach your favorite writing style using Zabeyko’s facts and acts.

The 10 Choices:

The Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing
Traditional Change-Driven

Sample Scores

Total Down-to-earth 0 Total Verve 5

Total Rational 0 Total Enthusiastic 7

Total Decisive 0 Total Investigative 7

Total Loner 4 Total Outgoing 3

Total Traditional 2 Total Change-Driven 5

In the already self-scored sample assessment that follows, the four highest numbers of answers are enthusiastic, investigative, imaginative loner. Choose the highest numbers first as having the most importance (or weight) in your writing style preference.

Therefore, your own creative writing style and the way you plot your character’s actions, interests, and goals (for fiction writing and specifically mystery writing) is an enthusiastic investigative vivacious (verve-with-imagination) loner. Your five personality letters would be: E I V L C. (Scramble the letters to make a word to remember, the name Clive, in this case.)

Note that there is a tie between C and V. Both have a score of ‘5’. However, since ‘V’ (verve) which signifies vivacious imagination with gusto competes with ‘C’ being change-driven, the ‘verve’ in the vivacious personality wracked with creative imagination would wither in a traditional corporation that emphasizes routinely running a tight ship. Traditional firms seek to imitate successful corporations of the past that worked well and still work. They don’t need to be fixed often unless they make noise.

Instead, the dominantly change-driven creative individual would flourish better with a forward-looking, trend-setting creative corporation and build security from flexibility of job skill. When in doubt, turn to action verbs to communicate your ‘drive.’ If you’re misplaced, you won’t connect as well with co-workers and may be dubbed “a loose cannon.”

You know you’re in the right job when your personality connects with the group to share meaning. Communication is the best indicator of your personality matching a corporation’s character traits. It’s all about connecting more easily.

Your main character or alter-ego could probably be an enthusiastic investigative imaginative loner. But you’d not only have lots of imagination and creativity—but also verve, that vivacious gusto. You’d have fervor, dash, and élan.

The easily excitable, investigative, creative/imaginative loner described as having verve, is more likely to represent what you feel inside your core personality, your self-insight, as you explore your own values and interests.

It’s what you feel like, what your values represent on this test at this moment in time. That’s how a lot of personality tests work. This one is customized for fiction writers. Another test could be tailored for career area interests or for analyzing what stresses you. Think of your personality as your virtues.

Qualities on this customized test that are inherent in the test taker who projects his or her values and personality traits onto the characters would represent more of a sentimental, charismatic, imaginative, investigative individual who likes to work alone most of the time.

The person could at times be more change-driven than traditional. The real test is whether the test taker is consistent about these traits or values on many different assessments of interests, personality, or values.

What’s being tested here is imaginative fiction writing style. Writing has a personality, genre, or character of its own. The writing style and values are revealed in the way the characters drive the plot.

These sample test scores measure the preference, interest, and trait of the writer. The tone and mood are measured in this test. It’s a way of sharing meaning, of communicating by driving the characters and the plot in a selected direction.

This assessment ‘score’ reveals a fiction writer who is enthusiastically investigative in tone, mood, and texture. These ‘traits’ or values apply to the writer as well as to the primary characters in the story.

The traits driving a writer’s creativity also drive the main characters. Writer and characters work in a partnership of alter egos to move the plot forward. A creativity test lets you select and express the action, attitudes, and values of the story in a world that you shape according to clues, critical thinking, and personal likes. Below you’ll see the definitions of the 10 key word choices in this assessment followed by the sample assessment that already is self-scored.

Definitions of the 10 Key Words

Change-Driven - Visionary and forward-looking.

Decisive - Choices based upon feedback and avoiding blind spots

Enthusiastic - Charismatic and passionate

Grounded - Reality-based and driven by hindsight and pitfalls

Investigative - Vigilant

Loner - Inner-directed

Outgoing - Energized by spoken communication and touch
Traditional – Imitating and following long-time successful giants

Rational - Logical and critical thinkers

Verve - Imagination based on the big picture, and not small details.

Here’s the Sample Self-Scored Assessment

b. ■

a. ■

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. Zabeyko’s teenage fiancée, Jadwiga wrote all her letters in Swedish, not in the Belarus (White Russian) dialect (down-to-earth) or

a. □

b. ■

a. ■

b. □

5. You are Jadwiga. Would you rather
a. exercise your right as a fiancée to claim Zabeyko's unmarried Tatar brother, Prince Atil (enthusiastic) or
b. marry Zabeyko's male nanny, Jagello because it's only right and fair to restore a Tatar prince in hiding from his throne even while he dwells in Wolkowysk, the foreign land that has invited him for his brilliance in architecture as he works along with equally brilliant and beautiful Jadwiga? (rational)

a. ■

b. □

6. Zabeyko's fiancée wrote to her father-in-law to send her another of his sons for marriage to her. As a writer of her life story, would you rather
a. create a laundry list of princes either Tatar, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, or of Wolkowysk, that she must interview and screen in a dating game (down-to-earth) or

a. □

b. ■

7. Are you more interested in ending your story with
a. Jagello marrying Zabeyko's fiancée, Jadwiga, then quickly getting rid of Jadwiga as Jagello marries Zabeyko’s adoptive grandmother, Pradislava, for her land and property.as his second wife, so that you have closure and an ending for your story (decisive) or
b. would you rather let your story remain open for serialization, since Zabeyko's fiancée is never heard from again and disappears just like Zabeyko did after Jagello marries her and then marries his adoptive grandmother, Pradislava. The fate of Zabeyko’s fiancée after marrying Zabeyko’s tutor, Jagello is not recorded in history. (investigative)

a. □

b. ■

8. If you were a Tatar prince living in a foreign land, would you prefer to
a. decide immediately to obey the diverse European nobles of Wolkowysk and leave Tataristan to marry Jadwiga of the howling wolf forests because duty required it, knowing you'll probably be killed when you arrive by the same person who killed Zabeyko, (decisive) or
b. stall for time as long as possible, waiting for validated information to arrive regarding the diplomatic climate between Tatars and Russians? (investigative).

a. □

b. ■

b. □

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

12. A tag line shows the mood/emotion in the voice--how a character speaks or acts. Are you more interested in
a. compiling, counting, and indexing citations or quotes from how-to books for writers (down-to-earth) or
b. compiling tag lines that explain in fiction dialogue the specific behaviors or gestures and body language such as, “Yes,” he replied timorously. (verve)

a. □

b. ■

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description? (rational)

a. ■

b. □

a. ■

b. □

a. □

b. ■

a. ■

b. □

17. As Zabeyko's widow, do you feel bound to
a. go with social custom, do the activities itemized on the social calendar, and marry your dead husband's unmarried
brother because it's organized according to a plan (decisive) or
b. go with the flow of the relationship, deal with issues as they arise, make no commitments or assumptions about what's the right thing to do because time changes plans? (investigative)

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

a. ■

b. □

a. □

b. ■

a. ■

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar? (change-driven)

a. □

b. ■

30. Do you depict your ruler’s victories on a stone column exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. only the ruler wants people to see? (traditional)

a.□

b.■

31. If you’re self-motivated, would you avoid learning from your overseer because

a. your overseer doesn’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

b. your overseer doesn’t let you follow in your father’s footsteps? (traditional)

a. ■

b. □

32. Would you prefer to

a. train scribes because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a. □

b. ■

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about the future than about current chores (change-driven) or

b. invaders replace your forefathers’ familiar foods with unfamiliar cuisine? (traditional)

a.■

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a. ■

b. □

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a. □

b. ■

“Turanian Catalyst” Creative Writing Assessment

You are an historical fiction adventure and intrigue writer working on a novel, play, or script that will eventually become a computer video game for young males and/or an interactive audio book of stories with clues for the Web about a Turanian catalyst, a person who brings people together to join territories, tribes, or interests based on common ancient ancestry or language group. The setting is in a city you will choose, located in medieval Asia Minor, Central Asia, along the Steppes, or in Mongolia. Your hero’s name is Tumen Il-Kağan. The year is 551 of the Common Era. According to ancient Chinese sources, your hero’s name means “cloud of smoke.”

The plot of your story begins as Tumen gathers together a group of Turkic people who live in the Altay Mountains. Their village is very difficult to reach and is called Ergenikon. The scene opens in the cloud-whipped valleys beneath the Altay Mountains.

This person, avatar, or hero has unending adventures trying to create a vast territory of united Steppe Peoples speaking related languages. The hero calls this vast legacy of land, Turania.

Your first Göktürk Kağan travels between various places in Central Asia and Mongolia and is exposed to Buddhism from Chinese travelers he meets along the Silk Road. The hero is a Göktürk Kağan. You can make your main character or protagonist native to the Steppes or anywhere in Central Asia, Asia Minor, or Mongolia, but being of a Turkic-speaking language group. His mascot is the grey wolf, and the grey wolf has a white she-wolf companion. So the hero is seen walking with two wolves on each side of him signaling people he meets with the wolf hand sign.

Your protagonist/hero, Tumen Il-Kağan, is in a race against time because the area is in the grips of a mini-ice age. The hero travels to teach wolf hand symbols to fellow Turanians across Central Asia from the area on the West near the Black Sea (Pontus) all the way beyond the Caspian Sea’s East Coast to the Altay Mountains, along the Silk Road, and on to Mongolia and western China. The protagonist (main character) travels the Silk Road from his or her native land in the Altay Mountains.

He sets out on a road that leads to Western China and spreads the wolf hand sign greetings that was said to originate in Siberia thousands of years ago.

Across the Silk Road that the Byzantine Romans used, a teenaged Altay widow named Sui asked help from Tumen to prevent her from being forced into an unwilling marriage with a Sogdian refugee because the Sogdian refugees fled to Tumen’s territory. Shah Anushirvan Khorasau I. (closer in territory and language groups to Persia) persecuted the Zurvanites. Sui wants to marry the protagonist of your story. But the Sogdian refugee wants to marry Sui for power, so he can overtake the Kağan.

You have a bit of a Samson and Delilah theme somewhat. You can reverse the plot and make it a Delilah and Samson theme. The question is, according to your personality preferences, how will you write this interactive story, according to your writing style preferences?

Tumen meets Ashina, one of ten sons born to a grey she-wolf in north Gaochang. Ashina also was a ruling dynasty and tribe of ancient Turks in the 6^th century. The Ashina’s leader, Bumin Khan had descendants that revolted against the Rouran. His brother, Istemi, ruled over the east and west of the Göktürk empire.

Ashina’s ancestors came from the Suo nation, north of Xiongu. Chinese legends say Ashina’s mother was a wolf and the goddess of a particular season. The Ashina tribe of skilled military archers were descended from one archer named Shemo.

This Shemo fell in love with a sea goddess near Ashide cave, according to the Book of Zhou (Lighu Defen, et al. Also see the Book of Sui (Wei Zheng, et al.) The Ashina royal family was composed of many different ethnic groups. They arose out of the Pingliang soldiers from eastern Gansu.

So you have a story line right there of why they would want to use the wolf hand symbols or signs made (in profile view) with the middle finger and ring finger pressed to the thumb to signify the nose and mouth of the wolf with the pinky and index finger straight up to signify the wolf’s ears. With all this information, how will you organize your story?

Clues

The leading character is the Kağan who also is a scribe in several languages he’s learned from his travels in Altay and along the entire length of the Silk Road between Western China, the Altay, and Byzantine Constantinople. This is the 6^th century. In the Altay, nature is worshipped. As he travels closer to China, he is influenced by Buddhism.

This first Kağan of the Göktürks has inherited wealth from an ancestral line of Altay royalty. He’s a male healer and scribe, age 20, living in the royal yurt. He grew up learning many languages as he traveled the Silk Road from the Altay to China and west to Asia Minor. This character is your alter ego and takes on your own personality as he solves problems or crimes.

It is also known that 30,000 Alans (an Iranic-speaking tribe) formed the royal guard (Asud) of the Yuan court in Dadu (Beijing) China.

The 10 Choices:

The Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing
Traditional Change-Driven

1. To write your story, would you prefer to

b. dig deeper and find out the connections between Chinese and the Turkic documents, to read about who was the first Kağan of the Göktürks. You’d look up other books listed online and in libraries on the history of Turks and Turanians. Then you’d look up wolf hand symbols and signs among other cultures from India to Native Americans and Siberians.

Then you’d read the emotions and gestures, the body language of the wolf hand symbols to see what they mean and where they originated—Siberia, or the Altay (also spelled Altai) or beyond to Mongolia. Then you’d deduce why Sui doesn’t want to marry the Sogdian refugee that she has been promised to by her father who is destitute and caught in the famine of the mini-ice age of 6^th century Altay. (verve)
a. □

b. □

2. Would you be more interested in researching history and writing about
a. the closeness of the relationship that surfaced between the Huns and the Turks from the sixth century back to 4,000 years ago (enthusiastic) or
b. analyze the business deals and diplomatic events between these equal powers to see who was winning the race to becoming the superpower of the century? (rational)

a. □

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. A Turanian Khatun (Queen) who wrote all her letters in an Altay (Altai) dialect, (down-to-earth) or

b. To find out whether the Kağan’s father, was so admired or so hated after his death because he worshipped the lucky charm, a tamga, of a wolf spirit or whether he worshipped a tamga of a white horse or a hawk. (verve)

a. □

b. □

4. Would you rather write about

a. The sons of a royal Ashina clan being adopted, sent as a gift from Mongolia during their Altay step father's festival of his many years of reign (enthusiastic) or

b. You’d prefer to solve the mystery of why some of the sons of the royal Ashina are thought to be associated with the Tribe of Levi by some, according to whether they have a ‘Y’ chromosome sequence that has the letter ‘Q’ in it that may link some royal Ashina to some Levites from Eastern Europe. Ashinas are said to come from the Suo nation, north of Xiongu (rational)?

a. □

b. □

5. You are a Khatun (Altay Queen). Would you rather
a. exercise your right as a widow to claim an unmarried Altay prince (enthusiastic) or
b. marry your late husband’s male nanny because it's only right and fair to restore an Altay Turanian to Turania’s throne? (rational)

a. □

b. □

6. An Altay princess of a vast stretch of land she calls Turania in the 6^th century who is a widow may have written to her father-in-law to send her another of his sons for
marriage to her. As a writer of her life story, would you rather
a. create a laundry list of princes that she must interview and screen in a dating game (down-to-earth) or
b. create a story where she rides 1,000 miles on a donkey to run away from her servant after he forces her to marry him and has magical adventures disguised as a 14-year old boy studying philosophy and alchemy with Chinese acupuncture healers and
astrologers she meets in her travels at the far end of the Silk Road? (verve)

a. □

b. □

7. Are you more interested in ending your story with
a. A Turanian prince marrying an Altay young widow, then taking the Kağan’s adoptive grandmother, (you might create a story about a mythical Queen Yildiz) as a second wife, so that you have closure and an ending for your story (decisive) or
b. would you rather let your story remain open for serialization, since the Kağan’s widow is never heard from again after she marries her late husband’s regent and nanny. He then marries a different princess, from the royal Ashina tribe, since the fate of the Turanian Kağan’s widow after marrying the regent is not recorded in history? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

8. If you were a Turanian, would you prefer to
a. decide immediately to obey the Ashina Kağan and leave your own country to marry the widowed Queen of the Turanians because duty required it, knowing you'll probably be killed when you arrive by the same person who killed the former Kağan, (decisive) or
b. stall for time as long as possible, waiting for validated information to arrive regarding the diplomatic climate between the Ashina and the Turanians (since Turanians are Altay and the Ashina are similar, but from Xiongnu)? (investigative).

a. □

b. □

9. You are the Göktürk Kağan adopted in infancy as a gift from an Ashina ruler because the Khatun (queen) had six daughters. If you were Kağan, would you
a. speak in the Altay language in front of your Xiongnu-area dialect speaking Ashina Regent, thereby possibly inflaming the nationalism in him (investigative) or
b. plan and organize methodically to have a whole line of people close to you from your own country of origin, Altay and Turania originating in Central Asia) rather than from the lair of the wolf-goddess mother that legend has told you was the place of your origin?
(decisive)
a. □

b. □

10. Would you rather write about
a. terms of the treaty between the peoples of Turania and Ashina of Xiongnu based on the facts provided by records (down-to-earth) or
b. the theories set in motion when the Ashina Kağan marries the Altay Kağan’s widow and soon after, the widow disappears, and the Ashina marries another Khatun (Queen) mythically named Yildiz, the so-called daughter of a mother goddess of the wolf tribes that use wolf hand symbols to show loyalty to one another’s similar language tribes? (verve)

a. □

b. □

11. Do you like writing about
a. enigmas or puzzles set in motion by symbols on intimate funerary equipment in a mystery novel (rational) or
b. why so many other Turanians use wolf hand symbols or signs where the index finger and the pinky are raised to represent the wolf’s ears while the thumb crosses over the folded middle and ring fingers—or both the Turanians and the Ashinas use the wolf finger symbol of a wolf face in profile where the middle and ring fingers and thumb form the long wolf’s snout while the upheld pinky and index fingers form the wolf’s ears? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

12. A tag line shows the mood/emotion in the voice--how a character speaks or acts. Are you more interested in
a. compiling, counting, and indexing citations or quotes from how-to books for writers (down-to-earth) or
b. compiling tag lines that explain in fiction dialogue the specific behaviors or gestures such as, “Yes, he replied timorously.”? (verve)

a. □

b. □

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description? (rational)

a. □

b. □

14. To publicize your writing, would you rather
a. give spectacular presentations or shows without preparation or prior notice (investigative) or
b. have to prepare a long time in advance to speak or perform? (decisive)

a. □

b. □

15. If you were a Turanian Khatun (Queen), would you prefer to
a. receive warnings well in advance and without surprises that your late husband’s nanny and regent is planning to get rid of you and marry another Queen of a different Tribe (adoptive grandmother of your late husband); so you could conveniently disappear (decisive) or
b. adapt to last-moment changes by never getting down to your last man or your last bowl of fermented mare’s milk? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

16. As a scribe, artist, and poet in early medieval Turania would you
a. feel constrained by the Kağan’s time schedules and deadlines (due dates) (investigative) or
b. set realistic timetables and juggle priorities? (decisive)

a. □

b. □

17. As the Kağan’s widow, do you feel bound to
a. go with social custom, do the activities itemized on the social calendar, and marry your dead husband's unmarried
brother because it's organized according to a plan (decisive) or
b. go with the flow of the relationship, deal with issues as they arise, marry a Khazar warrior from another tribe, marry a Royal Ashina from Xiongnu, or simply make no commitments or assumptions about what's the right thing to do because time changes plans and you just prefer to wait until more information is available? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

18. You're the Ashina Kağan reading the Altay Turanian widow's desperate letter in your own country of Xiongu. Is your reply to the Altay (Turanian) Khatun (Queen) more likely to be
a. one brief, concise, and to the point letter (rational) or
b. one sociable, friendly, empathetic and time-consuming letter? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

19. You're the Göktürk Kağan contemplating who most wants to replace you with an
Ashina ruler. You make a list of
a. the pros and cons of each person close to you (rational) or
b. varied comments from friends and relatives on what they say behind your back regarding how your influence them and what they want from you. (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

20. The human body is like the Silk Road, you have been taught. You're the great healer who came all the way along the Silk Road from China trying to heal with acupuncture needles as your tools, working your way along the energy points of chi to help the Göktürk Kağan in medieval Turania. Would you rather investigate
a. the tried and true facts about energy points (down-to-earth) or
b. want to see what's in the overall picture as part of your expertise before you place the acupuncture needles at specific energy points that the Göktürk Kağan calls his clues? (verve)
a. □

b. □

21. You’re a Silk Road traveling healer looking for the energy meridians or points on the Göktürk Kağan’s older brother. Your job is to restore his energy in his golden wise years. You

a. seldom make errors of detail when looking for clues to heal such as taking notice of the Göktürk Kağan’s rival wedding present to the young, healthy Khatun (Queen)--her freshly inscribed tamga charm for good luck, an amulet of a white horse. (down-to-earth) or
b. prefer more innovative work like writing secret love poems to the Queen disguised as prayers to the wolf goddess and watching for the sacred horse’s spirit to escape through the ice cave hole dug into the frozen tundra near one of the Altay mountains. (verve)

a. □

b. □

22. As a scribe and healer, you become
a. tired when you work alone all day in a dimly-lighted yurt (outgoing) or
b. tired when the latest Göktürk Kağan interrupts your concentration on your work to demand that you greet and entertain his guests all evening at banquets with wolf hand shapes as shadow symbols on the walls of the yurt near a lamp of fire. (loner).

a. □

b. □

23. When the Khatun (Queen) asks you as a healer to write love poems for her that she can
hand to the Göktürk Kağan, you
a. create the ideas for your poems by long discussions with the Queen (outgoing) or
b. prefer to be alone when you reach deep down inside your spirit to listen to what your wolf goddess (soul entities) tell you as the only resource for writing metaphors. (loner)

a. □

b. □

24. You are in medieval Turania investigating the death of an elderly Göktürk Kağan and prefer to
a. question many different foreigners and locals at boisterous celebrations in different languages (outgoing) or
b. disregard outside events and look inside the family history/genealogy rune inscriptions on a stone for the culprit. (loner)

a. □

b. □

25. The next Göktürk Kağan, at a young age asks you to develop ideas for him about how to act when
ascending the throne so young. You prefer to develop ideas through
a. reflection, meditation, and shamanic prayer to tanri/tengri (loner) or
b. discussions and interviews among the Göktürk Kağan’s playmates on what makes the Göktürk Kağan laugh. (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

26. As an Altay healer and Shaman, you are
a. rarely cautious about the family position of those with whom you socialize as long as they are kind, righteous people who do good deeds (outgoing) or
b. seeking one person with power to raise you from healer to the next Göktürk Kağan of Turania, if only the present Göktürk Kağan would ask your advice. (loner)

a. □

b. □

27. You are a sculptor, healer, and scribe in early medieval Turania when the Göktürk Kağan asks you to carve a name for yourself using Ataly runes on a special stone with magical properties that bears the image of a wolf and is a special representation of its owner. Would you
a. inscribe the Turanic rune that means ‘remote’ (loner) or
b. choose a special name for yourself that means, “He who shares time easily with many foreigners along the Silk Road, beyond Altay?” (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

28. As an ancient healer, Shaman, and scribe, do you work better when you
a. spend your day off where no one can see you asking the sacred wolf goddess why its teeth are so sharp if it is supposed to be so intelligent (loner) or
b. spend your free time training teams of apprentice healers using the acupuncture needles you learned how to use before you left China to travel along the Silk Road due west? (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar to civilize your land? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

30. Do you depict the Göktürk Kağan’s victories on a stone in Turanian runes exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. the Göktürk Kağan wants people to see? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

31. If you’re self-motivated, would you avoid learning from your Tarkhan (military leader) because

a. your overseer doesn’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

b. your overseer doesn’t let you follow in your father’s footsteps? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

32. Would you prefer to

a. train healers, Shamans and scribes because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about going back along the Silk road to China or staying in the Altay in the future than about current healing chores in Turania (change-driven) or

b. do you think more about the stress of being of service to invaders from many different lands along the Silk Road that have now replaced your forefathers’ familiar Chinese foods with unfamiliar dairy cuisine from Altay and Xiongnu such as fermented mare’s milk? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from Turanian, Ashina, and Chinese philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

Self-Scoring the Test

Add up the number of answers for each of the following ten writing style traits for the 35 questions. There are seven questions for each group. The ten categories (your ten choices) are made up of five opposite pairs.

Down-to-earth Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing

Traditional Change-Driven

Then put the numbers for each answer next to the categories.

1. Total Down-to-earth 6. Total Verve

2. Total Rational 7. Total Enthusiastic

3. Total Decisive 8. Total Investigative

4. Total Loner 9. Total Outgoing

5. Total Traditional 10. Total Change-Driven

To get your score, you’re only adding up the number of answers for each of the 10 categories (five pairs) above. Note that there are seven questions for each of the five pairs (or 10 designations). There are 35 questions. Seven questions times five categories equal 35 questions. Keep the number of questions you design for each category equal. The other assessments containing 35 questions (in this book) are similar and are scored with the same self-scoring process as this assessment.

Look at the other previous sample 35-question assessments in this book that have their boxes checked. Note that in them, the four highest numbers of answers are enthusiastic, investigative, imaginative loner. This last but not least test would score the same way.

Choose the highest numbers first as having the most importance (or weight) in your writing style preference. Your score would be your own creative writing style and the way you plot your character’s actions, interests, and goals, one example of many (for fiction writing and specifically mystery writing) could be an enthusiastic investigative vivacious (verve-with-imagination) loner. Your five personality letters would be: E I V L C. (Scramble the letters to make a word to remember, the name Clive, in this case.) There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Your writing style is individual and can be made up of your personal letters or preferences. You write according to your personality choices, writing style, and the behavior and environment of your characters.

Note that in the first sample scored test in this book (using the first assessment’s setting in ancient Egypt) there is a tie between C and V. Both have a score of ‘5’. However, since ‘V’ (verve) which signifies vivacious imagination with gusto competes with ‘C’, being change-driven, the ‘verve’ in the vivacious personality wracked with creative imagination would wither in a traditional corporation that emphasizes routinely running a tight ship. Traditional firms seek to imitate successful corporations of the past that worked well and still work. They don’t need to be fixed often unless they make noise.

You know you’re writing in the right genre when your personality connects with the genre of fiction or creative nonfiction readers and groups to share meaning. Communication is the best indicator of your personality matching a corporation’s character traits. It’s all about connecting more easily.

Here’s a sample scored assessment.

“Turanian Catalyst” Creative Writing Assessment

This person, avatar, or hero has unending adventures trying to create a vast territory of united Steppe Peoples speaking related languages. The hero calls this vast legacy of land, Turania.

Your first Göktürk Kağan travels between various places in Central Asia and Mongolia and is exposed to Buddhism from Chinese travelers he meets along the Silk Road. The hero is a Göktürk Kağan. You can make your main character or protagonist native to the Steppes or anywhere in Central Asia, Asia Minor, or Mongolia, but being of a Turkic-speaking language group. His mascot is the grey wolf, and the grey wolf has a white she-wolf companion. So the hero is seen walking with two wolves on each side of him signaling people he meets with the wolf hand sign.

He sets out on a road that leads to Western China and spreads the wolf hand sign greetings that was said to originate in Siberia thousands of years ago.

Ashina’s ancestors came from the Suo nation, north of Xiongnu. Chinese legends say Ashina’s mother was a wolf and the goddess of a particular season. The Ashina tribe of skilled military archers were descended from one archer named Shemo.

Clues

This first Kağan of the Göktürks has inherited wealth from an ancestral line of Altay royalty. He’s a male healer and scribe, age 20, living in the royal yurt. He grew up learning many languages as he traveled the Silk Road from the Altay to China and west to Asia Minor. This character is your alter ego and takes on your own personality as he solves problems or crimes.

It is also known that 30,000 Alans (an Iranic-speaking tribe) formed the royal guard (Asud) of the Yuan court in Dadu (Beijing) China.

The 10 Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing
Traditional Change-Driven

1. To write your story, would you prefer to

a. go to the archives and find out who really was the first ruler of the tribe. You’d start with the book references listed in Wikipedia online, and then consult your own language translations, if any, of the book titled, The Turks, by Güzel, Hasan Celal; Oğuz, C. Cem (2002), The Turks, 2, Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, ISBN 9756782552. Then you’d look for translated letters sent by Sui to the Kağan asking to send her a young husband (down-to-earth) or
b. dig deeper and find out the connections between Chinese and the Turkic documents, to read about who was the first Kağan of the Göktürks. You’d look up other books listed online and in libraries on the history of Turks and Turanians. Then you’d look up wolf hand symbols and signs among other cultures from India to Native Americans and Siberians.

b. ■

2. Would you be more interested in researching history and writing about
a. the closeness of the relationship that surfaced between the Huns and the Turks from the sixth century back to 4,000 years ago (enthusiastic) or
b. analyze the business deals and diplomatic events between these equal powers to see who was winning the race to becoming the superpower of the century? (rational)

a. ■

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. A Turanian Khatun (Queen) who wrote all her letters in an Altay (Altai) dialect, (down-to-earth) or

a. ■

b. □

4. Would you rather write about
a. The sons of a royal Ashina clan being adopted, sent as a gift from Mongolia during their Altay step father's festival of his many years of reign (enthusiastic) or
b. You’d prefer to solve the mystery of why some of the sons of the royal Ashina are thought to be associated with the Tribe of Levi by some, according to whether they have a ‘Y’ chromosome sequence that has the letter ‘Q’ in it that may link some royal Ashina to some Levites from Eastern Europe. Ashinas are said to come from the Suo nation, north of Xiongu (rational)?

a. □

b. ■

5. You are a Khatun (Altay Queen). Would you rather
a. exercise your right as a widow to claim an unmarried Altay prince (enthusiastic) or
b. marry your late husband’s male nanny because it's only right and fair to restore an Altay Turanian to Turania’s throne? (rational)

a. ■

b. □

6. An Altay princess of a vast stretch of land she calls Turania in the 6^th century who is a widow may have written to her father-in-law to send her another of his sons for
marriage to her. As a writer of her life story, would you rather
a. create a laundry list of princes that she must interview and screen in a dating game (down-to-earth) or
b. create a story where she rides 1,000 miles on a donkey to run away from her servant after he forces her to marry him and has magical adventures disguised as a 14-year old boy studying philosophy and alchemy with Chinese acupuncture healers and
astrologers she meets in her travels at the far end of the Silk Road? (verve)

a. □

b. ■

7. Are you more interested in ending your story with
a. A Turanian prince marrying an Altay young widow, then taking the Kağan’s adoptive grandmother, (you might create a story about a mythical Queen Yildiz) as a second wife, so that you have closure and an ending for your story (decisive) or
b. would you rather let your story remain open for serialization, since the Kağan’s widow is never heard from again after she marries her late husband’s regent and nanny. He then marries a different princess, from the royal Ashina tribe, since the fate of the Turanian Kağan’s widow after marrying the regent is not recorded in history? (investigative)

a. □

b. ■

8. If you were a Turanian, would you prefer to
a. decide immediately to obey the Ashina Kağan and leave your own country to marry the widowed Queen of the Turanians because duty required it, knowing you'll probably be killed when you arrive by the same person who killed the former Kağan, (decisive) or
b. stall for time as long as possible, waiting for validated information to arrive regarding the diplomatic climate between the Ashina and the Turanians (since Turanians are Altay and the Ashina are similar, but from Xiongu)? (investigative).

a. □

b. ■

9. You are the Göktürk Kağan adopted in infancy as a gift from an Ashina ruler because the Khatun (queen) had six daughters. If you were Kağan, would you
a. speak in the Altay language in front of your Xiongu-area dialect speaking Ashina Regent, thereby possibly inflaming the nationalism in him (investigative) or
b. plan and organize methodically to have a whole line of people close to you from your own country of origin, Altay and Turania originating in Central Asia) rather than from the lair of the wolf-goddess mother that legend has told you was the place of your origin?
(decisive)
a. □

b. ■

10. Would you rather write about
a. terms of the treaty between the peoples of Turania and Ashina of Xiongu based on the facts provided by records (down-to-earth) or
b. the theories set in motion when the Ashina Kağan marries the Altay Kağan’s widow and soon after, the widow disappears, and the Ashina marries another Khatun (Queen) mythically named Yildiz, the so-called daughter of a mother goddess of the wolf tribes that use wolf hand symbols to show loyalty to one another’s similar language tribes? (verve)

a. □

b. ■

11. Do you like writing about
a. enigmas or puzzles set in motion by symbols on intimate funerary equipment in a mystery novel (rational) or
b. why so many other Turanians use wolf hand symbols or signs where the index finger and the pinky are raised to represent the wolf’s ears while the thumb crosses over the folded middle and ring fingers—or both the Turanians and the Ashinas use the wolf finger symbol of a wolf face in profile where the middle and ring fingers and thumb form the long wolf’s snout while the upheld pinky and index fingers form the wolf’s ears? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. ■

a. □

b. ■

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description? (rational)

a. ■

b. □
14. To publicize your writing, would you rather
a. give spectacular presentations or shows without preparation or prior notice (investigative) or
b. have to prepare a long time in advance to speak or perform? (decisive)

a. ■

b. □

15. If you were a Turanian Khatun (Queen), would you prefer to
a. receive warnings well in advance and without surprises that your late husband’s nanny and regent is planning to get rid of you and marry another Queen of a different Tribe (adoptive grandmother of your late husband); so you could conveniently disappear (decisive) or
b. adapt to last-moment changes by never getting down to your last man or your last bowl of fermented mare’s milk? (investigative)

a. ■

b. □

16. As a scribe, artist, and poet in early medieval Turania would you
a. feel constrained by the Kağan’s time schedules and deadlines (due dates) (investigative) or
b. set realistic timetables and juggle priorities? (decisive)

a. ■

b. □

17. As the Kağan’s widow, do you feel bound to
a. go with social custom, do the activities itemized on the social calendar, and marry your dead husband's unmarried
brother because it's organized according to a plan (decisive) or
b. go with the flow of the relationship, deal with issues as they arise, marry a Khazar warrior from another tribe, marry a Royal Ashina from Xiongu, or simply make no commitments or assumptions about what's the right thing to do because time changes plans and you just prefer to wait until more information is available? (investigative)

a. □

b. ■

18. You're the Ashina Kağan reading the Altay Turanian widow's desperate letter in your own country of Xiongu. Is your reply to the Altay (Turanian) Khatun (Queen) more likely to be
a. one brief, concise, and to the point letter (rational) or
b. one sociable, friendly, empathetic and time-consuming letter? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. ■

19. You're the Göktürk Kağan contemplating who most wants to replace you with an
Ashina ruler. You make a list of
a. the pros and cons of each person close to you (rational) or
b. varied comments from friends and relatives on what they say behind your back regarding how your influence them and what they want from you. (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. ■

20. The human body is like the Silk Road, you have been taught. You're the great healer who came all the way along the Silk Road from China trying to heal with acupuncture needles as your tools, working your way along the energy points of chi to help the Göktürk Kağan in medieval Turania. Would you rather investigate
a. the tried and true facts about energy points (down-to-earth) or
b. want to see what's in the overall picture as part of your expertise before you place the acupuncture needles at specific energy points that the Göktürk Kağan calls his clues? (verve)
a. □

b. ■

21. You’re a Silk Road traveling healer looking for the energy meridians or points on the Göktürk Kağan’s older brother. Your job is to restore his energy in his golden wise years. You

a. seldom make errors of detail when looking for clues to heal such as taking notice of the Göktürk Kağan’s rival wedding present to the young, healthy Khatun (Queen)--her freshly inscribed tamga charm for good luck, an amulet of a white horse. (down-to-earth) or
b. prefer more innovative work like writing secret love poems to the Queen disguised as prayers to the wolf goddess and watching for the sacred horse’s spirit to escape through the ice cave hole dug into the frozen tundra near one of the Altay mountains. (verve)

a. □

b. ■

22. As a scribe and healer, you become
a. tired when you work alone all day in a dimly torch-lit yurt (outgoing) or
b. tired when the latest Göktürk Kağan interrupts your concentration on your work to demand that you greet and entertain his guests all evening at banquets with wolf hand shapes as shadow symbols on the walls of the yurt near a lamp of fire. (loner).

a. □

b. ■

23. When the Khatun (Queen) asks you as a healer to write love poems for her that she can
hand to the Göktürk Kağan, you
a. create the ideas for your poems by long discussions with the Queen (outgoing) or
b. prefer to be alone when you reach deep down inside your spirit to listen to what your wolf goddess (soul entities) tell you as the only resource for writing metaphors. (loner)

a. □

b. ■

24. You are in medieval Turania investigating the death of an elderly Göktürk Kağan and prefer to
a. question many different foreigners and locals at boisterous celebrations in different languages (outgoing) or
b. disregard outside events and look inside the family history/genealogy rune inscriptions on a stone for the culprit. (loner)

a. □

b. ■

25. The next Göktürk Kağan, at a young age asks you to develop ideas for him about how to act when
ascending the throne so young. You prefer to develop ideas through
a. reflection, meditation, and prayer (loner) or
b. discussions and interviews among the Göktürk Kağan’s playmates on what makes the Göktürk Kağan laugh. (outgoing)

a. ■

b. □

26. As an Altay healer and Shaman, you are
a. rarely cautious about the family position of those with whom you socialize as long as they are kind, righteous people who do good deeds (outgoing) or
b. seeking one person with power to raise you from healer to the next Göktürk Kağan of Turania, if only the present Göktürk Kağan would ask your advice. (loner)

a. □

b. ■

27. You are a sculptor, healer, and scribe in early medieval Turania when the Göktürk Kağan asks you to carve a name for yourself using Ataly runes on a special stone with magical properties that bears the image of a wolf and is a special representation of its owner. Would you
a. inscribe the Turanic rune that means ‘remote’ (loner) or
b. choose a special name for yourself that means, “He who shares time easily with many foreigners along the Silk Road, beyond Altay?” (outgoing)

a. ■

b. □
28. As an ancient healer, Shaman, and scribe, do you work better when you
a. spend your day off where no one can see you asking the sacred wolf goddess why its teeth are so sharp if it is supposed to be so intelligent (loner) or

b. spend your free time training teams of apprentice healers using the acupuncture needles you learned how to use before you left China to travel along the Silk Road due west? (outgoing)

a. ■

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar to civilize your land? (change-driven)

a.□

b. ■

30. Do you depict the Göktürk Kağan’s victories on a stone in Turanian runes exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. the Göktürk Kağan wants people to see? (traditional)

a. □

b. ■

31. If you’re self-motivated, would you avoid learning from your Tarkhan (military leader) because

a. your overseer doesn’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

b. your overseer doesn’t let you follow in your father’s footsteps? (traditional)

a. ■

b.□

32. Would you prefer to

a. train healers, Shamans and scribes because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a.□

b. ■

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about going back along the Silk road to China or staying in the Altay in the future than about current healing chores in Turania (change-driven) or

a. ■

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a. ■

b.□

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from Turanian, Ashina, and Chinese philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a. ■

b.□

When you add up the sample scored assessment, the writer prefers a change-driven enthusiastic investigative vivacious (verve-with-imagination) loner approach to solving problems for his or her main characters. Your five personality letters for your varied writing style aptitude and/or your character’s personality preferences would be: E I V L C. (Scramble the letters to make a word to remember, the name Clive, in this case.)

Scores

Total Down-to-earth 0 Total Verve 5

Total Rational 0 Total Enthusiastic 7

Total Decisive 0 Total Investigative 7

Total Loner 4 Total Outgoing 3

Total Traditional 2 Total Change-Driven 5

Note that there is a tie between C (change-driven) and V (verve). Both have a score of ‘5’. However, since ‘V’ (verve) which signifies vivacious imagination with gusto competes with ‘C’, being change-driven, the ‘verve’ in the vivacious personality wracked with creative imagination would wither in a traditional corporation that emphasizes routinely running a tight ship. Traditional firms seek to imitate successful corporations of the past that worked well and still work. They don’t need to be fixed often unless they make noise.

You know you’re writing in the right genre when your personality connects with the genre of fiction or creative nonfiction readers and groups to share meaning. Communication is the best indicator of your personality matching a character’s traits. It’s all about connecting more easily with readers who enjoy the characters you create based on your preferences and the character’s actions.

Part V

Take the “Sailing the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and Her Family’s Dog, Xanthe” Creative Writing Assessment

First Read the Back Story and Clues Below to Get a Handle:

Time Traveling the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and her Family’s Dog, Xanthe

The Antikythera Device: The Day St. Paul of Patmos Taught Me to Pray for the Gift of Being Able to Trust in a Power Higher Than Human Who Doesn't Think of Me as a Snack…

Clues

I am the time traveler, Calliope of Patmos, whose family invented, owned, and gave up to the sea, one of the rare, Greek antikythera celestial navigation gears used for nearly three thousand years by Greek and later, Roman sailors. The antikythera device served as a mechanism of complicated gears physically representing the Callippic and Saros astronomical cycles.

It's not only gears I wanted to mesh. Intimate glimpses of the human condition may be found in numerous art galleries.

Well before the "common era" I lived on the small Greek island of Patmos, surrounded by the Aegean Sea at the time a neighbor, the white-haired Paul of Tarsus once sought a bowl of vegetable broth at my family tavern of sustenance serving food for the sensibilities.

My beliefs there on Patmos emphasized good deeds rather than complex creeds. I had been a builder of dreams seeking practical applications, but so far ahead of my century, that I actually found time-travel a gift of destiny.

For me back then, the daughter of a proper Greek widow who could write well. My mother copied numerous scrolls and letters that Paul of Tarsus on Patmos brought into the tavern. As a follower, mother would give me copies of some letters. My windowed mother, Xanthe committed herself to faith, keeping the family together in spite of all odds, and putting bread on the table.

Here on Patmos, the family goal focused solely on commitment. We all followed Paul's when he came near our tavern for his bowl of broth and a listened to the whisperings of his talks and writings. And yet I longed to be an explorer and observer of comparative thought in faraway places and future times.

As girl of sixteen alone in the world, and having arrived as the new tutor in a wealthy Roman household villa in the far west Neapolis, the only way I could study the human condition consisted of gawking at works of art where I could reflect. I kept a treasure hidden with me the prized antikythera navigation gears and astronomical calendar.

For it is written: Five hundred years before that time of Paul, my father's father-fourteen generations removed, invented the antikythera celestial navigation device, and in those years, it served well as my treasure.

Not only had I been granted Roman citizenship because of the treasured Greek family name appearing in writing in three languages as the celestial navigation gear's inventor, but now, on my first job as Greek language, poetry writing, and history tutor to a child in the wealthiest Roman family in Neapolis, where many people also spoke Greek.

The older child had a separate mathematics tutor, and a tutor for engineering and building bridges. But I was assigned to teach the five-year old to read, speak, and write poetry as a healing tool in Greek.

So begins my proper passage at sixteen from adolescence to womanhood as a tutor in ancient Rome, the last outpost of civilization to my senses. See any similarity in this holistic adventure to a timeless search for the perfect nurturing mother?

Look at your deeds, I heard my mother once say to Paul of Tarsus when he lived and wrote on Patmos, the island of my birth. I told Paul that our art shows us the human condition. And peace in the home feeds the growth of consciousness. Now, I found myself in Rome, hidden in villa gardens so far from my family. Yet my letters to Paul where still sent as often as my letters to my own mother whose life focused on commitment to family and faith.

Often, I wore that plain iron ring and carried the scrolls that set me apart from the denizens of slaves who also served as tutors. Because of my citizen-ring and the signed papers, none of my father had ever been slaves of the Romans.
Look at me at sixteen, a Roman citizen with signed deeds to my ancestor’s antikythera invention attributed to my family and me as the only heir.

Yet as a proper Greek girl, and not a slave, invitations abounded to dine as the daughter of the long missing-at-sea Apollodorus. There were no more men left in my family to work as well-paid Greek architects contracted to draft the plans for villas in Neapolis for the wealthiest aristocrats as there had been for generations. I passed the precious time writing letters to Paul of Tarsus on Patmos as he wrote letters of his own that one day I would read.

And I, never really alone at sixteen with my mother's copies of Paul's letters nearby, spent a few nights on special feast days at the house of Salonius, a wealthy Roman and distant relative of the prosperous Cornelius family. His vast fortunes came from building many summer villas for still wealthier Romans in Neapolis overlooking the sea. Salonius, with wife and children shared this large villa.

At those times of my first few days on trial for employment as a tutor to my five-year-old playmate, Octavia, I lied awake, well protected, I thought, close to Octavia and to her rotund mother, Velia, an Etruscan who married into the old Latium family of Salonius Cornelius. As chaperoned children, we slept in the roped, rutted wool and feathered torus next to Velia.

"What's that you're holding?" Velia asked me.

"My Antikythera device," I said timorously. "It's a navigational tool for Greek sailors."

"Give me that!" Velia quickly removed it from my tiny fingers and pocketed the device.

"But it belongs to my father. It's been in our family for four hundred years." I quickly grabbed it back from her hands and placed it inside my goatskin purse.

"Well, now it's mine. Give it here." Pursy Velia huffed, pulling the gears from the sack strung around my waist.

"Go ahead keep it then," I sighed. "If you don't know how to use it right, there's the danger that any ship that misuses it might sink. I must not lose this. It's all that stands between my freedom and slavery. My Roman citizenship scrolls would be worthless without proof that my family line invented the device."

"Then I'll sell it so you won't envy this evil eye in front of me," Velia teased.
I used my own family members as models by memorizing the fruits of our family slogan of deeds, not creeds. I jostled the words to Velia without understanding their impact.

"Our Greek family travels only to study and understand the human condition for inner peace. And you can only learn about the human condition by studying what is in the art galleries of all peoples. Our goal is peace in the home.

You have to practice it in every room if you ever want to grow world peace. That's why you must return the antikythera to me or my mother or our friend, Paul of Tarsus who is now living on Patmos. The gears point the celestial direction of navigation. It belongs on a ship. Our family invented it for the purpose of growing peace."
"You grow peace, like a vine or a tree?" Velia looked up in surprise, grinning crookedly, but not smiling with her eyes.

"That's right," I told her eagerly. "You heal yourself into peace in an art gallery, not in a pantheon. Otherwise you're talking to yourself. Don't you know that the purpose of life is to understand the human condition?"

"You certainly can't do anything about it." Velia squealed with impatience. "You're just a crupper, a strap holding a riding saddle steady," Velia said impatiently. "I've heard about Paul of Tarsus. And I know all about your poor, widowed mother. You know what you are? You're trying to steady yourself on what Paul has taught you. I heard him speak on Patmos."

"So you know his followers."

"I've heard more than you understand about the oral traditions," Velia smirked as she retraced the sign of the fish by dipping her ring finger into a goblet of wine and tracing the x-tailed fish on the shiny edge of a platter of black figs.”

“You're only a sixteen-year old girl a very wealthy and smart girl for a foreigner,” Velia continued. “Luckily, you are not the slave of our oldest son's tutor. He's from Attica. Maybe you can fix some of the broken furniture around this house. What's more of a human condition than that torus I sleep on arriving back from repair full of vermin?”

"My friend, Paul of Tarsus told me and my mother ten years ago that the purpose of life is to take care of one another. That’s why Paul of Patmos gave me his little dog, Xanthe as a present when I sailed west."

"So that's how you repair what's broken," Velia laughed, admonishing me. “You take care of that filthy wolf cub. Romans prefer cats in the kitchen, not predators. Keep that dangerous wolf-dog in the atrium.”

“My half dog half wolf puppy will guard me well. I’ll put her in the garden house for now, but she is loyal and bonded to me. Look how beautiful her brushed fur is, like the silver rays of the moon.”

"That's a lot of strange information about she-wolves and dogs from a Greek young woman. Learning architecture might not be a useless plan after all for a Greek woman nowadays. Times are changing for women here in Neapolis. Women have more freedom here than in Rome. Have you heard about the new changes in property inheritance laws for women? Probably not… I bet all you can teach my five-year old daughter is the purpose of life. Well, what is the purpose of life? I suppose all you can do is spout ideas that can't be applied to real work around my house."

"My own tutors from Alexandria told me the purpose of life is to repair. But I wished Paul would have been my tutor."

"Paul is busy with more important things than being your tutor. So what did your tutors from Alexandria teach you about repairing the stench of life? My solution is to give the world our most practical Roman gift--flush toilets and underground pipes for warm baths."

"We had flush toilets and pipes underground to warm water before you did."

"Why don't you repair your own world with those healing unguents or spices your tutor brought you from Alexandria? I know you have brought them to Neapolis with you. What's in that sack?"

I opened the bags with the air holes first. This first day with my new employer as a tutor began to feel as grey, tense, and tedious. "Watch how the she wolf dog stretches her body in a dance."

Paul’s gift of Xanthe, (to my family) the wolf-dog puppy that I pulled from a perforated goatskin pack leaped from my hands, scattering across the mosaic floor. "Your five-year old daughter, Octavia will find that puppy is a good listener. The wolf dog is nearly twelve weeks old and is tame because Paul and I have cuddled and nourished the animal since she was five days old. Even her wolf mother was tamed. And this dog’s father is a Roman army Mastiff that served well on ships with the centurions."

I watched the slaves overstuff Velia's torus with swans down. They placed it upon the lectus so it would be high enough from the flagstones to be free from vermin and covered it with goat hide.

Velia had coarse, yellowed linens that scratched my arms and made me itch, and her bleached wool coverings reeked of the urine used to bleach it. The stench of sweat, roses, and myrrh still couldn't mask the bleaching with stale urine, no matter how many times the slaves beat the fabric underwater. Even when dried in the sun, the damp coverings smelled rancid. Fresh air couldn't erase what secrets those covers witnessed.

I watched in Salonius's villa as the carpenters made the first woodcut on the sopha and applied its moldings to match the room. Above, the ceiling murals of clouds on faded blue-green skies lulled me to sleep. I had my sixteenth birthday the day Octavia had her fifth, and we celebrated so that I was invited to sleep in the house of Salonius-Cornelius, chaperoned by Velia so that little Octavia, skinny me, and rotund Velia all shared and slept upon the same, soft torus on this enormous lectus full of wormholes. Velia even allowed Octavia to hold the kitten in the folds of her tunic.

Salonius, in the next bedroom slept with his 20-year old son in two separate lectus and torus far apart at opposite ends of the room. In the darkest hours of the early morning pouring rain chilled the room yet soothed the scraping of the crickets like nails on dry pumice stone and the erudite screams of the night.

"Remember when we played Suffering'? And I'd rub your belly, and your doll would be delivered like a baby?" Velia laughed and whooped her perpetual hacking cough from years of inhaling the dust of granite in her father's sculpture and stone mason industry. I rolled over, pulling my short dark hair from my eyes. Next to me five-year old Octavia soundly slept.

My mouth and nose felt paper-thin and raw as I trembled against the roar of thunder and the wintry rain pounding the roof tiles. Salonius tiptoed out of his sleeping chamber and crawled into bed with his wife. "What are you doing here?" I provoked him.

Salonius shed his tunic at the foot of the too-soft torus and climbed under the covers to have coitus with his wife. I knew about those acts at ten from enough spying through billowy curtains on Salonius's older son and one of the kitchen slaves.
Octavia woke with a start, rubbing her eyes. "Get out!" She raged in her five-year old, screeching voice. "Are you kicking me out?" Salonius stared at Octavia. His dark eyes bulged with unbridled anger.

"Look what you did," "frightened, beaten-down Velia interrupted with a whine. "You woke dragon dumpling."

"Shut up, you Etruscan whore."

"Don't call my little girl a whore."

"Better you should be crippled. You should have been born a boy. I'll kill you, you red-haired piece of garbage."

Salonius hurried his tunic back on and stormed out looking for something to smash. He found a hammer in the living room and began to smash Octavia's musical instrumentsfirst her turtle lyre. Octavia's birthday and mine todayI had almost forgotten.

Velia had saved a few sesterces from the pittance she told me that Salonius gave her each morning and bought Octavia two stringed musical instruments for her fifth birthday. I hadn't been home to look at the presents my loving father bought me, but that surprise could wait. I spent the night after Octavia's birthday party simply because Cornelius was close friends with his most important scribe, Salonius, and my father had work to discuss with Cornelius. We all spent the night in the house of Salonius.

And now rage overtook Salonius as if possessed by an angry bull. "We Romans don't worship animals, nor do we let them pollute our households. Once in a while our Egyptian slaves let their kittens ransack the kitchens to scare off rats and buzzing insects."

Yet the look on Salonius's face was that of a mad, starved animal charging his prey. Normally he was a charming man to Cornelius, or in public, but at home, I've seen him change in an instant before the eyes of his wife and children. And an hour later, he denied anything was amiss.

When Salonius finished smashing the smaller turtle lyres, he went for Octavia's wooden kithera with its special echoing sound box, and then for her larger, barbitos lyres. These were presents my father brought Octavia for her birthday. Then Salonius shouted in pain as he kicked his bare foot through the thick and solid arms of the eleven-stringed phorminx lyre and the array of extra sheep-gut strings that Velia purchased for her older son's seventh birthday.

After a year or two of lessons, he gave it up. For years it had stood among her son's undusted toys, forgotten, until Velia asked me if I wanted it and told me the story of how Hermes invented the lyre and how many years it remained in her family.
I did want it at first, until I realized that Octavia wanted it more. So I made sure it stayed with Velia's family. I told my father not to bring it to our house, even if Velia offered it to us once more.

Salonius put his foot through the paintings and other instruments brought for Octavia's birthday. Finally, he grabbed the Egyptian kitchen slave's striped kitten that lost its way and wandered into Velia's room and held its belly against the hot pipes being installed in the new indoor bathhouse, until it stopped meowing.

I looked in on Octavia's mother, but Velia didn't move or respond to my presence. She laid there, one arm over the sobbing Octavia crouching against her mother. Velia gazed unblinking at the ceiling, and Octavia had told me many times that her mother said she had given up all effort.

I would never give up trying to find a life, an identity, a self, or a sense of belonging. I ran into the peristyle and Octavia jumped up and followed me, clinging to me for protection, a protection Velia didn't try to give to Octavia or to me as a guest in Salonius's home.

"Not my birthday presents. Don't smash my presents." Octavia cried, but now Salonius had spent his rage and returned, exhausted to his own room, but the respite didn't last for long.

The louder the sounds of her voice grew, the more angry Salonius became.
He began to chase Octavia first and then both of us all over his house waving this fasces a set of rods bound in the form of a bundle which contained an axe. Salonius's cousin, the bodyguard of a magistrate, carried the fasces.

He must have left it with Salonius for safekeeping when he went to visit his son's new baby in the countryside. Now he separated the axe from the rods and swung the axe over his head like a madman.

"If I catch you, I'll cripple you." Heads will roll before you'll become a tramp." He went for the axe in his private closet, putting the hammer away. Octavia and I scampered under a table and crouched there, sobbing. I didn't know how to defend myself or protect Octavia, being a scrawny boy scared beyond uttering a sound. Salonius seemed like a raging giant, a belching volcano spewing his poisonous gases at me and waving an axe.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, daddy," Octavia cried.

"Better you should be crippled than to be born a girl and make trouble for me.
I should have flushed her out into the Tiber. Better she wasn't made or born," Salonius ranted.

I sneaked back into Velia's sleeping quarters dragging Octavia by the hand. And we saw that Octavia's mother began to stir and shout to Salonius who still hunted us down from the next room.

"If I have to get up you two fighting make me sicker." She began to cough again. "Leave my baby alone." I shoved Octavia under the lectus and sidled under it myself. As children, even I at sixteen and she at five could crouch there, but a giant like Salonius would never be able to squeeze in that space.

Salonius, now angrier with Velia, took a swing at Octavia and me with the hammer, and missed because we moved deeper into the dark under the lectus. Salonius ran out of the room to retrieve his axe and in the instant of time I had to flee, Octavia and I darted from the kitchen and dashed out of the atrium into the garden.

There was a deep hole dug for an outdoor as well as an indoor privy and also a partially built storage room under construction. The workers had left for the night, and the hole in the garden soil was deep enough with enough dirt to cover us.

In the darkness, Salonius chased his daughter and me, gaining on me as I disappeared into the hole in the garden. We squeezed our small bodies into a partially filled dung pit, hiding inside back of an old barrel left there as it was still too new and unfinished to be used by anyone.

We covered ourselves with garden soil. I had a small space for air there in the barrel, and there was enough sawed out of it for me to see the lamp Salonius held high as he looked around for a few seconds, wild-eyed, wiping the beaded sweat on his upper lip on his forearm. "If I catch you, I'll kill you," he shouted in a tremulous tone. I brought my puppy, Xanthe with me and held her snugly. She protected me, and I protected her and brought nourishment to the 12-week old canis-lupus. This animal friend given to me by Paul of Patmos must be protected from other beasts.

From between the wide slats of the broken barrel, I watched as he swung his axe overhead. As he passed a work table, Salonius slapped the ax against his thigh a couple of times. Then he sighed and left it on the table. Finally, exhausted, he plodded back into the atrium. I petted the puppy and covered her with my stola. We kept silent, and the silence tangled us together with one fate like a fisherman’s net as the full moon watched over us.

The next afternoon, Salonius denied anything happened out of the ordinary the night beforeat least in front of my father, his architect and physician friends, and the construction workers in Salonius's garden. In fact my father had paid for the new addition as Cornelius was noted for his thriftiness and Salonius for his dutiful long hours as Cornelius's scribe.

I had to stay another day while my father finalized business ledgers with poorly paid Salonius, Cornelius and the architects. Salonius kept grumbling about me eating him out of house and home as I sat eating some cheese and figs from the kitchen slave's hands.

I watched Salonius stalk into the kitchen pawing after the Egyptian slave girl who kept looking for her missing kitten. I told her what I saw Salonius do to the kitten as I sneaked after him trying to hide in the room where the pipes heated the new pool. Suddenly, Velia, in her best shrill, let him have her words as if they were daggers.

"No sooner did I put the baby on your lap then you told me to take her off because she gave you a stiff ache between your thighs."

"You keep hounding me just because your step father came into your room to ask you whether or not you wanted to copulate with him when you went to visit your mother."
"I told him don't even think of it and ordered him to get out. He's your rich brother and insisted I couldn't tell him what room to go to in his own house."
"You could have told your mother."

"I didn't want to upset her. She had enough meeting me for the first time as a grown woman after giving me away to my father and step mother when I was two."
"What was wrong with you that your own mother kept the boys and gave away the only girl? When she married for the second time, she kept the girl she had then and gave her all the inheritance, didn't she?"

"Yes. She said because I made her look old."

"Why did your father divorce your mother?"

"He wanted to marry that Thracian redhead."
"So why didn't you kick your stepfather out of your room?"

"I did. I insisted he get out. Then I told him I expected to be treated as a guest while visiting my own mother. Don't you understand or believe me?"

Velia pleaded. "I threw him out, but you don't see him grabbing an axe or a hammer and chasing innocent children, scaring them for life. Would you want your daughter to marry a man exactly like you?"

"Girls only make trouble. You know how many times I asked the that Delphi hag who delivered you to check to make sure maybe she made a mistake. Maybe Octavia was a boy?"

"Is that why you never held a conversation with your daughter or even smiled at her? Why do you distance yourself from your daughter? Not once in your whole life did you ever talk to the girl or show her that she's more than human garbage in your eyes."
"What about you going into your grown son's room to massage his feet every morning and comb the lice out of his hair?

"I'm a mother."
"He's twenty, and he tells me you're overbearing, you Etruscan harlot."
"I married you as a virgin. Don't you ever brand me with that word!"
"There was no blood."

"My skin stretches. I'm going back to bed."

"You have an answer for everything. I've run out of words, something I'll never do as Cornelius's scribe, but for speaking, you have to have the last word, just like a woman. And one of these days, you'll pay for that run-on mouth of yours with your life. Heads will roll. Where is Octavia?"

"In the garden again."

"Let her rot down there. Lower your voice. We have guests."

Salonius didn't even notice I sat at the back of the kitchen in a corner eating my figs and cheese, watching him, following him as he staggered back to bed. Velia spent the rest of the day at her distaff spinning wool and following the slaves around, envying them. My bodyguard finished his business with Salonius.

By the next day the litter arrived for me to leave, and I felt a droopy feeling at letting Octavia go back to that ambiance while I returned to Patmos, utterly rejected as the new language tutor. My bodyguard soon revealed that Velia had hired a boy with dreams of studying architecture.

If only I could take my little friend with me. I wanted to leave so much, and yet, reluctantly, I sat one more afternoon alone and watched tiny Octavia, much too young for me to play with as a friend.

I turned to bid farewell to wealthy Velia who wore the same stained and disheveled dark stola she wore the day before. But it covered her shortness and rotundity, her flapping ham-hock upper arms and her enormous la banza belly. Velia had revealed Octavia's older brother by fourteen years had a short temper like his father's.

"My older son had a fight with me over you and Octavia making too much noise," Velia said.

"Me?" I shouted. "I didn't do anything to spoil Octavia's fifth birthday party."

"If you think Salonius shouted and smashed all of Octavia's birthday presentsfine musical lyres, some of them gifts from your father, my oldest son broke an amphora over my arm. I dared him to do it. Octavia saw everything. She crouched under the table to hide. She was whining, complaining for her brother to show her how to play trigon with the boys. He told her to go away, and she cried."

"Does Salonius know your son broke an amphora over your arm?"

"I had to tell him. So now he smashed Octavia's brother's learning tools and tore up his scrolls he needed to study to become an advocate."

"I'm too tired to begin my travel back to Patmos today." I shuffled into the atrium passing the dead bird in the green cage. Velia and Octavia followed me.

"It caught too much heat." You'll have to take it down to the garden, make a pyre and burn it. Octavia is too young to light fires, and the kitchen slaves have their hands busy with food."

I ran, sobbing, into the bedroom. "Listen, you little mouse. Want to take Octavia to see the Neapolis market before you go back to Patmos? I'll be with your retinue today." Velia took a plate of pickled eggs from the kitchen slave and offered me a heel of bread.

Businesses opened their shutters. Bankers seemed to pose like gossiping statues on the steps of the temples. Beggars hid in the recesses and shadows in back of the doors of open shops.

I wondered what all the trade gossip meant and realized that only accomplishments, benefits, and advantages were pondered. At the end of the day, everyone would probably do the same thing as the sun drowned. At least the fragrant jasmine of Neapolis masked the pungent garum fish sauce stench of Rome's sweltering rooms in the heat of summer.

Velia, Octavia, and I walked through the dusty shops looking at the baubles and silken wisps of cloth, the sweet, sickly stench of distinctive odors, spices, incense, and unguents.

On her way I watched Octavia watch her mother, Velia steal from the vendors and shops lapis broaches, Scythian wolf earrings, a white stola so small it could never fit her rotundity, and tunics already woven and sewn for babies. When no one looked, she'd stuff clothing under her stola.

"I don't want any of the beads or perfume," Octavia whispered from the communal public privy. "They're cursed. You'll get bad luck."

Velia banged the shutter of each bakery we passed. "Your wealthy father only gives me grain for bread and a few lentils. How else can I live? He rewards the kitchen slaves with more than he's ever given me for spending. Can't you see he's in charge of who selects all the food in this house? I get a few asses for spending, but not enough even for a moldy dried fig."

I passed no judgment. Instead, I blurted out, "I'll pay for everything. Eat what you wish. I must repay you for inviting me to Octavia's birthday feast. Why don't you come back to Patmos with me and follow Paul of Tarsus while he is there? My mother can raise the funds needed to keep him in food and shelter while he writes and speaks to all who listen on Patmos." My body blocked the view of the litter.

"I don't want to wear that evil bracelet, "Octavia cried. Velia, the Etruscan, would lay that green-eyed curse on Octavia when she misbehaved, at least in my presence, and then Octavia would punish me by having an accident. It seemed the tiny girl had lifted herself up so she could fall as a release of the tension and terror.

Laying the fear on Octavia with Velia's palms caused the fear, Octavia told me that day, and later Octavia sought relief by getting hurt, getting the accident over with. Only the curse, the evil eye stood forth, and the punishment the child inflicted on herself fired from deep within her like a cold well of truth.

"Here, stuff this stola in the belt of your tunic and put this outer tunic over it."

"No! I won't."

Here in the market place, cheap tunics fluttered in the breeze I the midst of a sunlit square. Velia dragged whining me into a dimly lit shop. The old couple who ran the shop brought out some fabric remnants, and when their backs turned for a moment, the longer of the remnant ended up inside Velia's stola.

She waddled into the street to see the shoemaker. Velia and daughter sat down on a cushion before the shoemaker's shop.

"Give me that skinny foot," said the shopkeeper, trying to shove one of the new little sandals on Octavia's dirt-caked foot.

"The soles are too thin," Velia complained.

"Leave me alone!" Octavia whined, storming out of the shoe section. Octavia shouted a horrible obscenity at the shop keeper, the same word I heard her father call her last night as I looked over my shoulder at the shopkeeper's expression.

"That filthy rat," he stammered.

Breathless Velia caught up to her daughter in front of the public cistern where a line of slaves and poor citizens, all women, waited their turn to bring water into the small rooms they occupied around the market district called the Subura.

"Please, Velia, as an Etruscan, come back with me to Patmos where as a foreigner you'll be freer than you are here."

"I can't give up the villa."

The Subura, a place to shop here in Neapolis, is just like the same-named Subura in Rome. Both became a stench of dried blood, moldy fruit, rotting meat, sweat, urine, and manure.

In Rome when I was ten, our family took me to see it. To find the Subura in Rome, you enter the valley between the southern end of the Viminal and the western end of the Esquiline, or Oppius. Rome's Subura is connected with the forum by the Argiletum. It continues eastward between the Oppius and the Cispius by the Clivus Suburanus, ending at the Porta Esquilina. This Subura had the same look.

Now our litter ended up in the bakery district where we paused to find some shade. Velia chastised Octavia with a pointed finger. "Horse face, why by Jupiter did you say that?"

"He didn't have to call me skinny like in ugly," Octavia insisted, standing up for her reason for shouting an obscenity at the shoemaker. Velia threw her hands in the air out of frustration, or maybe she wanted to give up at that moment.

"Why did you have to wear that torn article of clothing outside the house? You're beginning to stink just like your father who's never taken a bath in years even with three pools.

The old stinker washes the bottom of his feet, his face and hands so Cornelius will think he's clean. He's afraid of water, says it makes his legs itch."

I listened in silence, then blurted. "Why doesn't he rub some oil on his skin if water makes it itch?"

Velia shook her head. While I observed but did not participate, she spent the day teaching Octavia how to steal clothing none of us needed from poor, old merchants who were overwhelmed with business or had no customers at all.

These merchants were too poor to own a slave to help them in their little shops, and most had sons who were killed in the wars. I felt sorry for them, but Velia only wanted this sensation she must have received from taking anything that didn't belong to her, and mostly nothing her size or Octavia's that she could use at home.

Everything anyone can buy from a shop could be found here. My eyes feasted on the sweets from the shops, but I had no coins with me.

I knew at any time my father left me a bag of coins I could have my bodyguards arrange for a litter and slaves to do the shopping for me. I knew Cornelius was a miser, as my father always joked, but I never realized that his wife had to stoop to stealing to get a thrill or a variety of raisin cake, or a bolt of fabric to sew Octavia her basic clothing.

"Where's your father, where's the bastard?" Velia whispered to Octavia.
"Probably doing scribe work for Cornelius. Or maybe Cornelius treated him to one of his flower shows."

"How brilliant of you to use grown-up words, Octavia," I said. Velia had to get her words in. "Some men go straight home after work. Salonius, he has his flower shows. Did you know he caught a brothel disease when Octavia's brother was five?"

"What's a brothel disease?" I asked Velia.

"Caught it from a Cappadocian harlot, he confessed to his Egyptian kitchen slave. I overheard them. He told me it came back from his soldiering days. He thinks I have my mother's head."

"See this scar on my face?" Octavia grimaced.

"So?" I said. "It's ugly. Now no man will want to marry you with that wide, red scar on your face."

"That's because you cursed me last year." Octavia cried as she looked up at Velia's frowning face. "Did you think your curse would give me this?"

"Where by Hercules is your father? He's never home, the bastard."

Tears ran down Octavia's sallow cheeks. "I told you that stuff you steal brings me the evil eye."

"Shut up! The market's crowded with gossip. You'll be overhead, and it will get back to Salonius or Cornelius."

"Everybody calls me crazy," Octavia sobbed, taking great gasps of air. "When I grow up nobody nice will marry me."

"Just ask anyone you want to marry," I teased. "If you wait for someone to ask, no one will. Ha, ha. But you'd better have a lot of money to bribe them."

Perhaps I teased Octavia too much that day when she was five. It stopped when I returned to Patmos, and we saw little of each other.

I sighed and pulled out her drawing tablet and stylus from the litter. She began to draw a grotesque face with pointy fingers on her small art tablet.

Poor Octavia Her entire world found solace in music and art, painting, playing the lyre, and sculpting. Now I watched the face she drew with her childish, but skilled fingers. The face was contorted with gaping month and reptilian.

"What kind of happy face is that?"

"I don't know. But it makes me happy to do it."

Velia watched her daughter draw as she whispered to me, "Last week my oldest son took Octavia on a trip. She told me that as they strolled together on a path, her brother stopped at the highest point on the bridge to gaze at the view. Suddenly my son gave his sister a shove and then pulled her back to safety before she could let out a wail. But the five-year old heard the whisper.”

"That's right," Octavia squealed. "He has no right to scare me like that."
Velia scratched her head.

"He denied it just like his father denies doing cruel acts. He started to sing to her. Then he lifted and dangled her as if to throw Octavia in the Tiber. She told me that she lashed out, flailing, screaming in terror. A passerby saw them horsing around, and she said he put her down harshly."

"I asked him why he did that," Octavia said, tossing her curls back like a rag doll. "And he said it was because I was his baby sister."

I vowed to find a way to help Octavia to a better life without adding more problems.

I felt the responsibility to help Velia and Octavia in any way I could. "I will talk to Paul when I get back to Patmos."

This became a heavy burden for my widowed, aging mother back in Patmos. But I would do my best as a family friend for this family that had rejected me as tutor because I happened to be a sixteen-year old woman seeking a man who would be slow to anger. And what they wanted focused on a boy that could inherit my family's generations of engineers, navigation inventors, and architects.

Kindness and peace in the home brings out a healthy glow and sweetness in any woman wherever she may be present. In a way, I felt responsible to do a good deed for Octavia and her mother. I feel now at a loss that Velia succumbed, eaten by her resentment, and Octavia quickly had been signed away by Salonius, now years later, honored by miserly Cornelius's insistence of having Octavia's hand in marriage.

Some cannot help themselves. I thought about the striped silvery kitten. Nearly ten years had passed, and today I gazed fondly at the spitfire bride, Octavia, forged in the fires of her father's perpetual pool of anger, her mother's weak, hacking cough, persistent complaints of resentment, and growing frailty.

I'm back on Patmos with my friendly wolf-dog, far from Rome or Neapolis. I'm reading copies of Paul's letters, and he still savors the broth in my mother's sweet tavern and cares to gently pet the tavern’s official greeter, our canis-lupus, protector of commitment to family, faith, and friends. With a dog in the home, there is harmony.

When in Rome, trust the volcano nearby as a better protector of Greek women than a slave rebellion on the loose. But here in Patmos, we sit in a circle and listen to Paul of Tarsus and those who follow. In this village we are welcome to freely question, seek answers, and think for ourselves. Our symbols, like our gears, are our antikythera (from the Greek island of Antikythera long before we arrived on Patmos). They stand for exploration by celestial navigation. Our destiny is beyond the stars.

Take the “Sailing the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and Her Family’s Dog, Xanthe” Creative Writing Assessment

Backstory and Clues: Time Traveling the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and her Family’s Dog, Xanthe

Historical Fiction Creative Writing Assessment

Are you best-suited to be a historical novelist, mystery writer, video or board game script writer/designer, short story sprinter, digital interactive story writer on ancient civilizations, a nonfiction writer, or an author of thrillers using historical settings or universal themes? Do you think like a fiction writer, investigative journalist, or an imaginative, creative nonfiction author writing biography in the style of genre or mainstream fiction?

Dénouement as it applies to a short story or novel is the final resolution. It’s your clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot. What category of dénouement will your characters take to move the plot forward?

Take the writing style preference classifier and find out how you approach your favorite writing style using Toot’s facts and acts. Which genre is for you--interactive, traditional, creative nonfiction, fiction, decisive or investigative?

Would you rather write for readers that need to interact with their own story endings or plot branches? Which style best fits you? What’s your writing profile?

Enjoy this ancient echoes writing genre interest classifier and see the various ways in which way you can be more creative.

Do you prefer to write investigative, logical nonfiction or imaginative fiction—or a mixture of both? There are 35 questions—seven questions for each of the five pairs. There are 10 choices.

The Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing
Traditional Change-Driven

Writer's Creativity Style Classifier

Creative (imaginative) writing (fiction or nonfiction) is about building and being remembered for what you build into your story, fractal by fractal and word by word. Civilizations are remembered for either what they build up or what they tear down. And your plot and story line can be the reason for their behaviors. Your characters can work for freedoms and equality for all, regardless of diversity, belief, or no belief, for unity, or for the right to remain nomadic or any other way you want them to be.

How do you want your story’s characters and the plot (driven by characters) to be remembered by the world--by what they invent, create, or develop, or by what they implode, remove, or wipe out?

If a group of people are travelers or nomads, they can build stories from oral traditions out of seemingly “nothing” if the geographic areas they cover have no building materials such as trees or stone. Or art can be created on looms or from clay and minerals or from metals.

Creativity can be oral or artistic and can be told, recorded, or worn. You want your characters to be remembered for destroying a plague or disease or for building huge malls, enormous or useful architecture, or great centers of learning? Do you want your characters to be remembered for solving worldwide problems and getting measurable results? For providing detailed steps for others to follow? For moral and ethical revelations? Or as leaders and inventors? Or for taking humanity to newer planets? What is your goal as an imaginative writer? What are your preferences?

You are a mystery writer working on an interactive audio book of stories with clues for the Web about a scribe in ancient Rome and the Aegean Islands, 150 B.C.E, who has unending adventures trying to track down the person who now owns the antikytheria device, a navigational gear tool and astronomical calendar for the Mediterranean shipping trade that seems to be a type of ancient mechanical “computer” made of gears.

Your alter ego scribe and protagonist is in a race against time to save the 16-year old, Greek tutor, Calliope. She’s an ingénue, who is the daughter of an inventor of navigational devices.

Calliope is about to be forced into slavery in the home of a wealthy but harsh ancient Roman family. The family is scared of the Carthaginian slave rebellions in Rome that took place in 150 BCE.

Calliope becomes the tutor and nanny/companion to that family’s younger daughter. But Calliope is in danger of being forced into marriage with a friend of that family’s patriarch, an older man named Cornelius, or harassed by the family’s 20-year old son, or kept as a slave but required to work long hours as a tutor to the family’s 5-year old daughter, Octavia.

Calliope’s two goals are to find proof of her Roman citizenship to avoid being made a slave of the family where she lives as the tutor to their child and also to restore to her family the antikythera device stolen from her hands by Velia, the matriarch of the villa. She must also locate the correct scrolls that prove her late father’s family line to be the true inventors and engineers of the much in demand and cherished navigational tool. Calliope must use her intelligence to solve her problems.

How will you write this interactive story, according to your writing style preferences? How will Calliope get back her family’s newer addition to the antikythera invention based on an even more ancient Greek antikythera navigational device when it is taken away by Velia, the matriarch of the house?

Clues

The leading character is ‘Calliope,’ the nanny, tutor, and scribe.

Calliope arrives with her status unknown as to whether she is the family’s new slave, an employed tutor and nanny, or is to be adopted by the lady of the villa. Calliope is the daughter of a widow from Patmos, and Calliope’s late father is descended from a family of inventors, architects, and engineers who have travelled the ancient Mediterranean from Patmos to Rome.

1. To write your story, would you prefer to
a. go to the Greek archives of inventions now in ancient Rome of 150 BCE in order to have translated two letters sent by her late father to Salonius asking to send a tutor for their five-year old daughter, Octavia (down-to-earth) or
b. dig deeper and find out the connections between the proof of Roman citizenship for Calliope so she can avoid being made a slave and the proof of her father’s lineage as inventors of the navigational device. (verve)

a. □

b. □

2. Would you be more interested in researching history and writing about
a. the closeness of the relationship that surfaced between the Greeks and the Romans in 150 BCE (enthusiastic) or
b. analyze the business deals and diplomatic events between these equal powers to see who was winning the race to becoming the superpower of the century? (rational)

a. □

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. Calliope wrote all her letters in Latin, not in her native Greek (down-to-earth) or

b. Calliope would have to prove to Salonius and Velia that her late father’s lineages actually were ancestors that designed and built the first antikythera device? (verve)

a. □

b. □

4. Would you rather write about
a. Calliope being chosen as a preferred and well-paid Greek tutor and companion for Velia’s daughter, (enthusiastic) or
b. the mystery of why Calliope would have been chosen as one of the family slaves (if she couldn’t prove with the correct scrolls) her Roman citizenship that had been awarded to her late father, known for his inventions, and all of his family in Patmos? (rational)?

a. □

b. □

5. You are Calliope. Would you rather
a. befriend Octavia and try to help her (enthusiastic) or
b. marry Cornelius or some other wealthy friend of Salonius in order to make sure your Roman citizenship was validated and you married into an aristocratic family, thereby assuring that you would never be enslaved and put to work as a tutor? (rational)

a. □

b. □

6. As a writer following Octavia’s life story from the age of five to adulthood as her companion, tutor, and nanny, would you rather
a. create a laundry list of duties that she must learn as a child in a wealthy Roman family (down-to-earth) or
b. create a story where you, Calliope, and Octavia leave the house of Velia and Salonius to return to Patmos as female math enthusiasts teaching other women how to be financially independent as math and Greek tutors to the Roman Republic of 150 BCE (before the age of emperors)? (verve)

a. □

b. □

7. Are you more interested in ending your story with
a. Calliope marrying Cornelius or another wealthy friend or relative of Salonius in order to restore her family name as inventors from Patmos (decisive) or
b. would you rather let your story remain open for serialization, with Calliope running away to Alexandria with one of Velia’s household slaves hiding from his Roman masters so he can restore his birthright as a Macedonian Prince? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

8. If you were prince Calliope, would you prefer to
a. decide to leave your own country to marry a famous Centurion because duty required it, knowing you'll probably be killed by someone from your native country when you become the wife of a famous Roman (decisive) or
b. stall for time as long as possible, waiting for validated information to arrive regarding the diplomatic climate between Greek artists, inventors, and engineers and Romans shipping Greek art, gold, and engineers to Rome without paying for the art/sculpture treasures? (investigative).

a. □

b. □

9. You are Calliope, of Patmos. Would you
a. speak in Greek in front of the Roman family that hired you to teach Greek to their daughter, thereby possibly inflaming the Roman patriotism in Salonius when you actually want to show your skill in teaching Salonius’s daughter equally proficient in both Latin and Greek (investigative) or
b. plan and organize methodically to have a whole line of people from Patmos that are not household slaves close to you?
(decisive)

a. □

b. □

10. Would you rather write about
a. terms of treaties between Greece and Rome when war with Carthage is the real issue (down-to-earth) or
b. problems with exports of figs and dates from Carthage in North Africa to Rome temporarily distract Roman rulers from plundering the art and sculpture of Greece? (verve)

a. □

b. □

11. Do you like writing about

a. enigmas set in motion by sea shells representing Venus rising from the ocean etched on intimate ancient Roman funerary equipment in a historical mystery novel (rational) or
b. why female mathematicians in ancient Rome and Greece were so often punished or martyred (enthusiastic)?

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description and narration? (rational)

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

15. If you were Calliope, would you prefer to
a. receive warnings well in advance and without surprises that Salonius is planning to make you a household slave? Salonius has hidden your Roman citizenship documents. Your late father owed him money. To solve your problem, you decide to team up with Velia’s children, buy Salonius’s household slaves with your widowed mother’s inheritance. Your mother sends you money in care of a retired Roman general loyal to your family in Patmos. You free Salonius’s slaves and set sail for Patmos. The retired general has located proof of your family’s right to claim a sum of money. You now have validation in the Roman world that your family’s ancestors engineered the antikythera navigational device (decisive) or
b. adapt to last-moment changes by frequently having a new career in a new town. Your goal is to search your genealogy as you support yourself by planning lavish banquets for the rich and famous? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

16. As a tutor in ancient Rome would you
a. feel constrained by Salonius’s time schedules and deadlines (due dates) (investigative) or
b. set realistic timetables and juggle priorities? (decisive)

a. □

b. □

17. As a family friend of Paul of Patmos, do you feel bound to
a. go with social custom in Rome, do the activities itemized on the social calendar, and not rise above your station (decisive) or
b. make no commitments or assumptions about what's the right thing to do because time changes plans? (investigative)

a. □

b. □

18. In your letter to Salonius and Velia about what you want to do with your future now that you are sixteen, would you write
a. one brief, concise, and to the point letter (rational) or
b. one sociable, friendly, empathetic and time-consuming letter? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

19. To decide how you can help little Octavia, would you make a list of
a. the pros and cons of each person close to you (rational) or
b. varied comments from friends and relatives on what they say behind your back regarding how your influence them and what they want from you? (enthusiastic)

a. □

b. □

20. Would you rather investigate
a. the detailed facts about Salonius and Velia (down-to-earth) or
b. want to study the big picture of the entire household? (verve)
a. □

b. □

21. You’re a tutor/nanny who

a. seldom makes errors of detail when looking for clues such as taking notice of Velia’s present to Salonius—a bowl of mushrooms and a feather dipped in emetic. (down-to-earth) or
b. prefer writing secret love poems to Salonius’s dinner guest disguised as prayers to a garden statue of Minerva. (verve)

a. □

b. □

22. As a tutor in ancient Rome, you become
a. tired when you teach all day in a breezy atrium (outgoing) or
b. tired when Velia interrupts your concentration on teaching Octavia languages and math to demand that you greet and entertain her guests all evening at banquets. (loner).

a. □

b. □

23. When Velia asks you to write love poems for her that she can hand to her secret lover, you
a. create the ideas for your poems by long discussions with Velia (outgoing) or
b. prefer to be alone when you reach deep down inside your spirit to listen before you tell her husband, Salonius. (loner)

a. □

b. □

24. You are searching your genealogy and prefer to
a. question different foreigners at boisterous celebrations in different languages (outgoing) or
b. disregard outside events and look at family inscriptions on the back of the antikythera device for clues? (loner)

a. □

b. □

25. Velia asks you to develop ideas about how to test her daughter’s lessons in front of guests. You prefer to develop ideas through
a. reflection, meditation, and prayer (loner) or
b. discussions and interviews among Octavia’s playmates on what makes Velia’s daughter laugh. (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

26. As a young tutor to children, you are
a. rarely cautious about the family position of those with whom you socialize as long as they are kind, righteous people who do good deeds (outgoing) or
b. you are seeking one person with power to raise you from tutor who could at any moment become a slave to owner of your own villa in Neapolis, if only others would pay you to ask your advice. (loner)

a. □

b. □

27. You are asked to take a Roman name while employed in the villa of Salonius and Velia instead of using your Greek name, Calliope. Would you

a. take a name that means ‘remote’ (loner) or
b. choose a special name for yourself that means, “She who shares time easily with many foreigners?” (outgoing)

a. □

b. □
28. Do you work better when you
a. spend your day off where no one can see you doing mathematics that societies in ancient Greece and Rome would never teach women to modulate (loner) or
b. spend your free time training teams of slave tutors to sculpt their masters’ faces in clay when creating garden ceramics? (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar to civilize your land? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

30. If you were an artist or scribe in ancient Rome, would you depict victories on a stone column exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. the way rulers from Rome want people to see how other civilizations live and look compared to Romans? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

31. Are you self-motivated? Would you avoid learning from Salonius and Velia, your masters, because

a. your masters don’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

b. your masters don’t allow you to follow in your famous Greek ancestor’s footsteps in design and engineering because you’re a young woman or because you’re a foreigner in Rome trying to get back your Roman citizenship papers? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

32. Would you prefer to

a. train tutors over and over the rest of your life because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about the future than about current chores (change-driven) or

b. invaders replace your Greek forefathers’ familiar foods with less familiar Roman cuisine? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

Self-Scoring the Test

Add up the number of answers for each of the following ten writing style traits for the 35 questions. There are seven questions for each group. The ten categories are made up of five opposite pairs.

Down-to-earth Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing

Traditional Change-Driven

Then put the numbers for each answer next to the categories. See the same self-scored test and results below.

1. Total Down-to-earth 6. Total Verve

2. Total Rational 7. Total Enthusiastic

3. Total Decisive 8. Total Investigative

4. Total Loner 9. Total Outgoing

5. Total Traditional 10. Total Change-Driven

Here’s a Sample Self-Scored Test

Take the “Sailing the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and Her Family’s Dog, Xanthe” Creative Writing Assessment

Backstory and Clues: Time Traveling the Ancient Mediterranean with Paul of Patmos, Calliope, and her Family’s Dog, Xanthe

Historical Fiction Creative Writing Assessment

Would you rather write for readers that need to interact with their own story endings or plot branches? Which style best fits you? What’s your writing profile?

Enjoy this ancient echoes writing genre interest classifier and see the various ways in which way you can be more creative.

Do you prefer to write investigative, logical nonfiction or imaginative fiction—or a mixture of both? There are 35 questions—seven questions for each of the five pairs. There are 10 choices.

The Choices:

Grounded Verve

Rational Enthusiastic

Decisive Investigative

Loner Outgoing
Traditional Change-Driven

Writer's Creativity Style Classifier

How do you want your story’s characters and the plot (driven by characters) to be remembered by the world--by what they invent, create, or develop, or by what they implode, remove, or wipe out?

Your alter ego scribe and protagonist is in a race against time to save the 16-year old, Greek tutor, Calliope. She’s an ingénue, who is the daughter of an inventor of navigational devices.

Calliope is about to be forced into slavery in the home of a wealthy but harsh ancient Roman family. The family is scared of the Carthaginian slave rebellions in Rome that took place in 150 BCE.

Clues

The leading character is ‘Calliope,’ the nanny, tutor, and scribe.

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

3. Are you more interested in the fact that
a. Calliope wrote all her letters in Latin, not in her native Greek (down-to-earth) or

b. Calliope would have to prove to Salonius and Velia that her late father’s lineages actually were ancestors that designed and built the first antikythera device? (verve)

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

11. Do you like writing about

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

13. Would you rather write
a. dialog (enthusiastic) or
b. description and narration? (rational)

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

20. Would you rather investigate
a. the detailed facts about Salonius and Velia (down-to-earth) or
b. want to study the big picture of the entire household? (verve)
a. □

b. □

21. You’re a tutor/nanny who

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

a. □

b. □

27. You are asked to take a Roman name while employed in the villa of Salonius and Velia instead of using your Greek name, Calliope. Would you

a. take a name that means ‘remote’ (loner) or
b. choose a special name for yourself that means, “She who shares time easily with many foreigners?” (outgoing)

a. □

b. □

29. If you discovered a new land, would you build your cities upon

a. your wise elders’ principles as they always have worked well before (traditional) or

b. unfamiliar cargo that traders brought from afar to civilize your land? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

30. If you were an artist or scribe in ancient Rome, would you depict victories on a stone column exactly as

a. surviving witnesses from both sides recounted the events (change-driven) or

b. the way rulers from Rome want people to see how other civilizations live and look compared to Romans? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

31. Are you self-motivated? Would you avoid learning from Salonius and Velia, your masters, because

a. your masters don’t keep up with the times (change-driven) or

a.□

b.□

32. Would you prefer to

a. train tutors over and over the rest of your life because your father taught you how to do it well (traditional) or

b. move quickly from one project to another forever? (change-driven)

a.□

b.□

33. Do you feel like an outsider when

a. you think more about the future than about current chores (change-driven) or

b. invaders replace your Greek forefathers’ familiar foods with less familiar Roman cuisine? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

34. Do you quickly

a. solve problems for those inside when you’re coming from outside (change-driven) or

b. refuse to spend your treasures to develop new ideas that might fail? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

35. Would you rather listen to and learn from philosophers that

a. predict a future in which old habits are replaced with new ones (change-driven) or

b. are only interested in experiencing one day at a time? (traditional)

a.□

b.□

Scores

Total Down-to-earth 0 Total Verve 5

Total Rational 0 Total Enthusiastic 7

Total Decisive 0 Total Investigative 7

Total Loner 4 Total Outgoing 3

Total Traditional 2 Total Change-Driven 5

The four highest numbers of answers are enthusiastic, investigative, imaginative loner. Choose the highest numbers first as having the most importance (or weight) in your writing style preference. Therefore, your own creative writing style and the way you plot your character’s actions, interests, and goals (for fiction writing and specifically mystery writing) is an enthusiastic investigative vivacious (verve-with-imagination) loner. Your five personality letters would be: E I V L C. (Scramble the letters to make a word to remember, the name Clive, in this case.)

Note that there is a tie between C and V. Both have a score of ‘5’. However, since ‘V’ (verve) which signifies vivacious imagination with gusto competes with ‘C’, being change-driven, the ‘verve’ in the vivacious personality wracked with creative imagination would wither in a traditional corporation that emphasizes routinely running a tight ship. Traditional firms seek to imitate successful corporations of the past that worked well and still work. They don’t need to be fixed often unless they make noise.

You know you’re writing in the right genre when your personality connects with the genre of fiction or creative nonfiction readers and groups to share meaning. Communication is the best indicator of your personality matching a novel’s main character traits with readers. It’s all about connecting more easily with readers similar to your preferences.

I'm the author of 90+ books listed at http://annehart.tripod.com. Here is a list of my published books. I'm a book author full time and also write for magazines freelance since 1963. Here's a list of my paperback published books in print available from most online booksellers and the publisher.

Available Paperback Books Written by Anne Hart

Click on Underlined Link to Browse Each Book at Publisher's Web site at http://www.iuniverse.com. Books also are listed with most online booksellers.

1. 101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-by-Step Guide with Answers

2. 101 Ways to Find Six-Figure Medical or Popular Ghostwriting Jobs & Clients

3. 102 Ways to Apply Career Training in Family History/Genealogy

4. 1700 Ways to Earn Free Book Publicity

5. 30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open

6. 32 Podcasting & Other Businesses to Open Showing People How to Cut Expenses

7. 35 Video Podcasting Careers and Businesses to Start

8. 801 Action Verbs for Communicators

9. A Perfect Mitzvah Gift Book

10. A Private Eye Called Mama Africa

11. Ancient and Medieval Teenage Diaries

12. Anne Joan Levine, Private Eye

13. Astronauts and Their Cats

14. Cleopatra's Daughter

15. Counseling Anarchists

16. Cover Letters, Follow-Ups, Queries and Book Proposals

17. Creating Family Newsletters & Time Capsules

18. Creative Genealogy Projects

19. Cutting Expenses and Getting More for Less

20. Cyber Snoop Nation

21. Diet Fads, Careers and Controversies in Nutrition Journalism

22. Dogs with Careers: Ten Happy-Ending Stories of Purpose and Passion

23. Dramatizing 17th Century Family History of Deacon Stephen Hart & Other Early New England Settlers

24. Employment Personality Tests Decoded

25. Ethno-Playography

26. Find Your Personal Adam And Eve .

27. Four Astronauts and a Kitten

28. How To Stop Elderly Abuse

29. How Two Yellow Labs Saved the Space Program

30. How to Interpret Family History and Ancestry DNA Test Results for Beginners

31. How to Interpret Your DNA Test Results For Family History & Ancestry

32. How to Launch a Genealogy TV Business Online

33. How to Make Money Organizing Information

34. How to Make Money Selling Facts

35. How to Make Money Teaching Online With Your Camcorder and PC

36. How to Open DNA-Driven Genealogy Reporting & Interpreting Businesses

37. How to Open a Business Writing and Publishing Memoirs, Gift Books, or Success Stories for Clients

38. How to Publish in Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies, Policy Analysis, & Family History Research

39. How to Refresh Your Memory by Writing Salable Memoirs with Laughing Walls

40. How to Safely Tailor Your Food, Medicines, & Cosmetics to Your Genes

41. How to Start Engaging Conversations on Women's, Men's, or Family Studies with Wealthy Strangers

42. How to Start Personal Histories and Genealogy Journalism Businesses

43. How to Turn Poems, Lyrics, & Folklore into Salable Children's Books

44. How to Video Record Your Dog's Life Story

45. How to Write Plays, Monologues, or Skits from Life Stories, Social Issues, or Current Events

46. Infant Gender Selection & Personalized Medicine

47. Is Radical Liberalism or Extreme Conservatism a Character Disorder, Mental Disease, or Publicity Campaign?

48. Job Coach-Life Coach-Executive Coach-Letter & Resume-Writing Service

49. Large Print Crossword Puzzles for Memory Enhancement

50. Make Money With Your Camcorder and PC: 25+ Businesses

51. Middle Eastern Honor Killings in the USA

52. Murder in the Women's Studies Department

53. New Afghanistan's TV Anchorwoman .

54. Nutritional Genomics - A Consumer's Guide to How Your Genes and Ancestry Respond to Food

55. One Day Some Schlemiel Will Marry Me, Pay the Bills, and Hug Me.

57. Power Dating Games

58. Predictive Medicine for Rookies

59. Problem-Solving and Cat Tales for the Holidays

60. Proper Parenting in Ancient Rome

61. Roman Justice: SPQR

62. Sacramento Latina

63. Scrapbooking, Time Capsules, Life Story Desktop Videography & Beyond with Poser 5, CorelDRAW ® Graphics Suite 12 & Corel WordPerfect Office Suite 12

64. Search Your Middle Eastern and European Genealogy

65. Social Smarts Strategies That Earn Free Book Publicity

66. The Beginner's Guide to Interpreting Ethnic DNA Origins for Family History

67. The Courage to Be Jewish and the Wife of an Arab Sheik

68. The DNA Detectives

69. The Date Who Unleashed Hell

70. The Freelance Writer's E-Publishing Guidebook

71. The Khazars Will Rise Again!

72. The Writer's Bible

73. Tools for Mystery Writers

74. Tracing Your Baltic, Scandinavian, Eastern European, & Middle Eastern Ancestry Online

75. Tracing Your Jewish DNA For Family History & Ancestry

76. Verbal Intercourse

77. Where to Find Your Arab-American or Jewish Genealogy Records

78. Who's Buying Which Popular Short Fiction Now, & What Are They Paying?

79. Why We Never Give Up Our Need for a Perfect Mother

80. Writer's Guide to Book Proposals

81. Writing 45-Minute One-Act Plays, Skits, Monologues, & Animation Scripts for Drama Workshops

82. Writing 7-Minute Inspirational Life Experience Vignettes

83. Writing What People Buy

84. Writing, Financing, & Producing Documentaries

85. How to Start, Teach, & Franchise a Creative Genealogy Writing Class or Club: The Craft of Producing Salable Living Legacies, Celebrations of Life, Genealogy Periodicals, Family Newsletters, Time Capsules, Biographies, Fiction, Memoirs, Ethno-Plays, Skits, Monologues, Autobiographies, Events, Reunion Publications, or Gift Books

86. How to Make Basic Natural Cleaning Products from Foods: Solve your stain removal problems with spices, oils, salt, baking soda, vegetables, cream of tartar, milk, vinegar, or alcohol, and make your own mouthwash, toothpaste, shampoo, and pesticides from zinc, plants, calcium, oils, or vitamins. Shine hardwood floors and furniture with tea and linseed oil. Here are the best of the recipes and also where to find more home-made cleaning or greening recipes on-line.

87. How Nutrigenomics Fights Childhood Type-2 Diabetes & Weight Issues: Validating Holistic Nutrition in Plain Language. ISBN: 0-595-53535-6.

88. ADVENTURES in my beloved MEDIEVAL ALANIA and beyond, A TIME-TRAVEL NOVEL SET IN THE 10TH CENTURY CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS. ISBN: 9781440119552

89. Traveling Poems and Short Stories. Published both in paperback and as an e-book by lulu.com. See: http://www.lulu.com/content/3879306.

90. Do You Have the Aptitude & Personality to Be A Popular Author? Professional Creative Writing Assessments ISBN: 9781440125201. (ASJA Press imprint, iuniverse.inc.,http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000124541.

Plays, poetry, video and audio lectures, and Novels

See http://www.lulu.com and search under author's name, Anne Hart for paperback books, plays, and video or audio lecture files.

Growing Up During Coney Island's Heyday: The Play http://www.lulu.com/content/4453372

Search Engine Optimization and SEO Tools

Creative Writing Assessments and Enhancements

Creative Writing Assessments and Enhancements

Do You Have the Aptitude & Personality to Be A Popular Author?

Professional Creative Writing Assessments

It is also known that 30,000 Alans (an Iranic-speaking tribe) formed the royal guard (Asud) of the Yuan court in Dadu (Beijing) China.

It is also known that 30,000 Alans (an Iranic-speaking tribe) formed the royal guard (Asud) of the Yuan court in Dadu (Beijing) China.

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