The deal, as always, was Faustian
Feb. 4th, 2008 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseSix random things make a post...
1) You know it's a day to stay home from work when you're trying to convince yourself to go by thinking, "Aside from the nausea and the headache, I don't feel *that* bad..."
I still got some housecleaning done. Not such that mom is likely to notice when she comes over tomorrow, alas.
2) One of the worst disadvantages of winter snow. I *know* in a way I never would otherwise that *everyone* in the neighbourhood with dogs walks up Wellington Crescent. I hope this is not what they meant when they said the sidewalks are lined with gold. (Yes,. I had to share that particular bit of disgust.)
3) So, how's this for wonderful going? EVERY single one of the six cups/bowls I made in my first attempt with the new clay this year cracked before it was even fired. Of course, so far all ten of the second batch are doing fine. Even the one that went flying off the wheel during trimming. (ETA: Er, not all of them. There were Seven. One of which I wrapped up separately because it needs decorating to fix up a throwing error. I then ended up shoving to the back of my overfull shelves, which is how I could forget it existed.)
4) I've decided to try and forego all things coffee-flavoured for Lent. Decaf or not. I attempted to do a purchased-only ban over Christmas and kinda halfway succeeded, though it didn't last as long past school's reopening as I'd hoped. But I've made sure I have a good store of good varieties of tea everywhere. Cutting my caffeine and my spending is hardly a bad thing, and I know how much even skim milk lattes are in terms of calories.
Besides, last year abacchus and _aura_ decided to skip cheese for those 40 days, and that would be WAAAAAY harder.
5) Finished Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven. I thought it a perfectly good McKinley book, considerably better than Spindle's End (By far her weakest) and at least up there with Sunshine or the Blue Sword, (If in a very different subgenre from either)... up to page 290 of my hardcover.
Before page 290, it was a solid book; a little slow, but it won me over. I could have complained about telling the whole thing from Jake's point of view, since he is admittedly extremely focused on a single individual project, and inclined to rant at length, but I liked the project (raising a baby dragon!!!) enough in itself, and he at least mentions the bigger picture enough to get the idea. (I think it might have been even more fun to cut some of his rants and add in some of the outside world events -- probably through Eric's eyes, since the glimpse we get of what's happening in that bastard's head in the epilogue is fun, but severely belated, and even more out of place than the rest of the epilogue.)
Pages 291 to page 342 are marked as an EPILOGUE. Yes, that's fifty pages of epilogue. And they start with, "I wrote all that five years ago..."
I kept reading because, well, McKinley. Her prose does this thing in my brain. I even read Spindle's End twice. Still, I found myself reading it the way I would read "what happened next" fanfiction for a book I'd thought ended well enough. Or like I'd closed the covers of a standalone book and opened the unexpected sequel. The epilogue suddenly includes three relationships and three cases of pregnancy/childbirth, when romance and its aftermaths were not in the story before the epilogue. Now, I'll grant, there's a rather *huge* incident in that epilogue that made it kind of worthwhile. But breathtaking as that event was, it was a *new story*. It was not the story of Dragonhaven. That story ended at page 290.
5) As I grumbled to Colin, I realised rather belatedly why exactly it is that this draft of Bird of Dusk is getting so long and so frustrating.
This isn't a rewrite. It's not even a "new draft" somewhere out beyond what I assumed I meant by new draft. Raising the Storm was a new draft. This is an exponential step beyond that.
I can't say it's a whole new story. I can still identify four whole plot points that existed. And a few characters.
And yet, it falls together in a vastly different way.
It seemed so innocent. First, one character whose previous defining characteristic was "not getting involved" got involved off the hop. Okay. So we've wandered a little. Thats fine. It makes his subplot easier. I chase after this new butterfly a while. Then, somewhere in the new chapter two, a little lemur-like critter popped up whose single action has repercussions through the whole thing. Oops. Further from the path, but it's such a nice little butterfly> Chase. Chase... After which, every other major character refused to tread the same old ground, and tried something different. People previously decent turned to assholes. Others refused to be jerks. And now the butterfly's gone, and so is the path it lured me away from.
So far, it's all to the good for the novel. Connections between events are much stronger than they ever were before. Things that in prior drafts were just life throwing a wrench in are now actually related to the whole. it all happens in much less time.
Except. This story is now so new to me, and covering such a different spin on the old stuff that I have to write down EVERYTHING, because I no longer know what's important. It's grown quite long on me again, but I don't yet know what I can afford to ignore.
Can you give me an "aaaaargh!"?
1) You know it's a day to stay home from work when you're trying to convince yourself to go by thinking, "Aside from the nausea and the headache, I don't feel *that* bad..."
I still got some housecleaning done. Not such that mom is likely to notice when she comes over tomorrow, alas.
2) One of the worst disadvantages of winter snow. I *know* in a way I never would otherwise that *everyone* in the neighbourhood with dogs walks up Wellington Crescent. I hope this is not what they meant when they said the sidewalks are lined with gold. (Yes,. I had to share that particular bit of disgust.)
3) So, how's this for wonderful going? EVERY single one of the six cups/bowls I made in my first attempt with the new clay this year cracked before it was even fired. Of course, so far all ten of the second batch are doing fine. Even the one that went flying off the wheel during trimming. (ETA: Er, not all of them. There were Seven. One of which I wrapped up separately because it needs decorating to fix up a throwing error. I then ended up shoving to the back of my overfull shelves, which is how I could forget it existed.)
4) I've decided to try and forego all things coffee-flavoured for Lent. Decaf or not. I attempted to do a purchased-only ban over Christmas and kinda halfway succeeded, though it didn't last as long past school's reopening as I'd hoped. But I've made sure I have a good store of good varieties of tea everywhere. Cutting my caffeine and my spending is hardly a bad thing, and I know how much even skim milk lattes are in terms of calories.
Besides, last year abacchus and _aura_ decided to skip cheese for those 40 days, and that would be WAAAAAY harder.
5) Finished Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven. I thought it a perfectly good McKinley book, considerably better than Spindle's End (By far her weakest) and at least up there with Sunshine or the Blue Sword, (If in a very different subgenre from either)... up to page 290 of my hardcover.
Before page 290, it was a solid book; a little slow, but it won me over. I could have complained about telling the whole thing from Jake's point of view, since he is admittedly extremely focused on a single individual project, and inclined to rant at length, but I liked the project (raising a baby dragon!!!) enough in itself, and he at least mentions the bigger picture enough to get the idea. (I think it might have been even more fun to cut some of his rants and add in some of the outside world events -- probably through Eric's eyes, since the glimpse we get of what's happening in that bastard's head in the epilogue is fun, but severely belated, and even more out of place than the rest of the epilogue.)
Pages 291 to page 342 are marked as an EPILOGUE. Yes, that's fifty pages of epilogue. And they start with, "I wrote all that five years ago..."
I kept reading because, well, McKinley. Her prose does this thing in my brain. I even read Spindle's End twice. Still, I found myself reading it the way I would read "what happened next" fanfiction for a book I'd thought ended well enough. Or like I'd closed the covers of a standalone book and opened the unexpected sequel. The epilogue suddenly includes three relationships and three cases of pregnancy/childbirth, when romance and its aftermaths were not in the story before the epilogue. Now, I'll grant, there's a rather *huge* incident in that epilogue that made it kind of worthwhile. But breathtaking as that event was, it was a *new story*. It was not the story of Dragonhaven. That story ended at page 290.
5) As I grumbled to Colin, I realised rather belatedly why exactly it is that this draft of Bird of Dusk is getting so long and so frustrating.
This isn't a rewrite. It's not even a "new draft" somewhere out beyond what I assumed I meant by new draft. Raising the Storm was a new draft. This is an exponential step beyond that.
I can't say it's a whole new story. I can still identify four whole plot points that existed. And a few characters.
And yet, it falls together in a vastly different way.
It seemed so innocent. First, one character whose previous defining characteristic was "not getting involved" got involved off the hop. Okay. So we've wandered a little. Thats fine. It makes his subplot easier. I chase after this new butterfly a while. Then, somewhere in the new chapter two, a little lemur-like critter popped up whose single action has repercussions through the whole thing. Oops. Further from the path, but it's such a nice little butterfly> Chase. Chase... After which, every other major character refused to tread the same old ground, and tried something different. People previously decent turned to assholes. Others refused to be jerks. And now the butterfly's gone, and so is the path it lured me away from.
So far, it's all to the good for the novel. Connections between events are much stronger than they ever were before. Things that in prior drafts were just life throwing a wrench in are now actually related to the whole. it all happens in much less time.
Except. This story is now so new to me, and covering such a different spin on the old stuff that I have to write down EVERYTHING, because I no longer know what's important. It's grown quite long on me again, but I don't yet know what I can afford to ignore.
Can you give me an "aaaaargh!"?
