Just Stick to the Original Speech
Dec. 24th, 2002 02:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_aeonsSo I put all this energy into believing I'm nowhere near as good as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lilairen insists on telling me I am, and then I open my notes and I see:
Even I have to admit that shit is funny. Rook's lines are looking unusually mangled, but this is from my notes, not even the first draft. I think I'm going to be tearing his dialect apart and putting it back together sometime in the near future, anyway. I'd like for it to be comprehensible even to people who don't geek about this sort of thing, but not sound like pretentious teen poetry.
Anyway.
Aside from the occasional note of that sort, I haven't worked on Life on Earth¹ in a few months, which is why the conspicuous silence on that front (and also the near-total loss of any direction or coherency my journal may have had, but I never put too much stead in direction and coherency). However, as hinted above, that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it. Now I'm ready to talk. And so, I present you with not one but — count them — two cut tags!
I've known from the beginning that Q're and Arunir have animal ... I'm not going to say totems. Wrong word. Resonances. They were a fox and a wolf, respectively. I was only half right, but I learned a lot about Arunir when I realized she was a jackal. They have a trickster reputation in parts of Asia, see. That's when I realized she had a sense of humor.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this, because I found it ... odd ... that there was this enormous Easter egg in the middle of my WIP and I had no idea as to its significance. I didn't figure it out. I still haven't figured it out, so don't wait for some kind of big revelation at the end of this section. As far as I know this is completely meaningless as anything but a behind-the-scenes characterization thing. I did figure out that Sweeney is a magpie, which I imagine was painfully obvious to everyone but me. He's black and white, he's sharp-tongued and unforgiving, he's easily distracted by pretty shinies and wears a lot of jewelry. Magpie.
At this point I was being bothered not so much by the presence of these totem ... resonance ... wossnames in three of the major characters as their absence in the other two. Well, actually, their absence in Rook. The doppelgäanger wasn't really bothering me, because it's a closed book to me in virtually every other respect. I suspect this is because it really has no personality of its own. I know a fair bit about the people whose minds it's eaten recently, and that should serve me. Anyway, Rook.
Rook is most definitely not a rook, that most saggy-assed of corvids. It's just his name, it doesn't mean anything. His birth name is Gideon, but you don't see him leaving Bibles in hotel rooms, do you? No.
Now, Rook is very tall. He's closer to six and a half feet than to six, and he's one of those slender, skinny guys with big hands who never look entirely comfortable, presumably because it's unpleasant to sit down when you have no ass. He wears glasses. He's overeducated enough to identify Q're's condition after one siezure. He doesn't talk when he doesn't have to, and when he does, unless he's very relaxed, he uses as few words as he can. He's extremely put-upon, which is mostly Sweeney's fault.
Not too long ago, I dreamt I was explaining him to someone, and that I said, "Picture a slightly confused stork."
I'm dumb. It took me, like, two days to think to ask Darkhawk to look up wading birds ('those tall gangly birds') for me in her Big Book o' Animal Totems. That conversation included the following two lines, which I still find amusing:
Those who are easily amused have more fun. What was I saying? Oh, right, Rook.
He's a crane.
He has elements of stork in him (nonvocal, wades into fantasyland [and gets all soggy and hypothermic in the process], weeps human tears when wounded, and I'm pretty sure he delivers his child by Q're), and no heron, but a lot of crane. Longevity and creation, ancestral roots, protectiveness and secrecy. He recognizes certain death and avoids it. He comes from the underworld.
I'm glad I got that squared away. (Poor guy, though. Surrounded by tricksters. It must be something about that family that compells them to give him shit.)
I'm about four days into the WIP. I think. I'd have to reread it to be sure, and I'm not comfortable doing that right now, but I'm pretty sure it goes something like:
Day one: Rook meets Sweeney, Rook is antagonized by Sweeney, Rook gets his nipples tweaked by Sweeney, Rook goes home and passes out sans Sweeney.
Day two: Exciting chase scene with doppelgängers, exciting hypothermia with mild profanity, basically very dull departure from Underground.
Day three: Saddlesore.
Day four: Climactic shaving nick. Interstate highway. Slavers, arrival in town, glazier not being eaten by a demon, evil local children, slavers again, agonizingly wordy exposition, dinner. I last stopped writing a thousand words or so into dinner.
It's not exactly four days, actually, because they leave Underground at the 'end' of day two, but there're a few hours of riding before day two technically ends, because Underground is running on a slightly different clock than the rest of the world. No sun, and they're a bit antisocial.
The thing is, that's all about forty-five thousand words. For four days and change. And, structurally speaking, I've barely started. I've maybe reached the middle of the beginning. It'll be at least another chapter or so before I can introduce the fifth principal character (the doppelgänger), and my chapters are running six to twelve thousand words. Chronologically speaking, I've pissed in the ocean. This story is at least nine and a half months long -- long enough for Rook and Q're to work up to sleeping together, long enough for Q're to carry to term, long enough for Rook & co. to wreak bloody vengeance when she dies in childbirth. Well, I'm guessing. It might not be bloody.
I can't write a three million-word novel. I can't, if for no other reason than the people on rasfc would never stop teasing me. And the sheer density of information would kill me. I'm pretty sure I couldn't keep it up for that long even if I wanted to; I'd wind up detailing every cup of tea Sweeney made just to keep my words-per-day average up. No. So I'm looking at either doing a whole lot of summarizing, or just eliding large swathes of time.
This is where I admit that this part of the post isn't really supposed to be a productive, feedback-seeking thing so much as a vent, because nobody can tell me how to deal with this, not even me. I haven't gotten to a bit that needs to be summarized and/or elided, it's impossible to predict which it'll be ahead of time, and I know my own process well enough to be full aware that trying will just frustrate me. I'm just nervous, and I like for other people to know when I'm nervous. It's one of those misery-loves-company things.
One other thing. Life is tight third person, and at this point entirely from Rook's perspective. At some point, Arunir's going to need to be the perspective character, at least for a bit. I could tell you that this is because there are things about Rook that I can't show the reader from the inside, and so that I can get some characterization in on the doppelgänger, since it loves Rook, but he can't bring himself to be anything but utterly cold to it, so it avoids him, and in fact does most of its interacting with Arunir because she's not a very demanding conversationlist. I could. And it would sound good, too, but really, it's just something I feel needs done. I'm beginning to wonder if what I need to do is split this thing up into 'parts' or 'books' (though that latter not in the technical sense -- this is not a series) or what have you, separated by a period of weeks or months, and alternate between Rook and Arunir as POV character.
I don't have a tidy way of closing this; I'm just done.
¹ That title seems to be sticking. How peculiar. It's quite appropriate, though; inasmuch as it's about anything (and it's not, really; I don't do meaning) it's about Rook learning to live aboveground — because he is never, ever going back to Underground. So not only is it fitting, needlessly pretentious-sounding, and a reference, it's a stupid pun. Score.
lilairen insists on telling me I am, and then I open my notes and I see:Rook picked up a corner of the sheet and looked under it. Nothing. He put it down again, and yawned. "All that furious energy spent you to get me to tie my hair back, and now I can findn't the tie because you pulled it off and I known't where you dropped it."
"Why do you think I made you tie your hair back in the first place?"
"Because are you easily enraged?"
Sweeney paused. "I was going to say I was spending all my time thinking about running my hands through it, but I have to admit you're not technically wrong."
Even I have to admit that shit is funny. Rook's lines are looking unusually mangled, but this is from my notes, not even the first draft. I think I'm going to be tearing his dialect apart and putting it back together sometime in the near future, anyway. I'd like for it to be comprehensible even to people who don't geek about this sort of thing, but not sound like pretentious teen poetry.
Anyway.
Aside from the occasional note of that sort, I haven't worked on Life on Earth¹ in a few months, which is why the conspicuous silence on that front (and also the near-total loss of any direction or coherency my journal may have had, but I never put too much stead in direction and coherency). However, as hinted above, that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it. Now I'm ready to talk. And so, I present you with not one but — count them — two cut tags!
I've known from the beginning that Q're and Arunir have animal ... I'm not going to say totems. Wrong word. Resonances. They were a fox and a wolf, respectively. I was only half right, but I learned a lot about Arunir when I realized she was a jackal. They have a trickster reputation in parts of Asia, see. That's when I realized she had a sense of humor.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this, because I found it ... odd ... that there was this enormous Easter egg in the middle of my WIP and I had no idea as to its significance. I didn't figure it out. I still haven't figured it out, so don't wait for some kind of big revelation at the end of this section. As far as I know this is completely meaningless as anything but a behind-the-scenes characterization thing. I did figure out that Sweeney is a magpie, which I imagine was painfully obvious to everyone but me. He's black and white, he's sharp-tongued and unforgiving, he's easily distracted by pretty shinies and wears a lot of jewelry. Magpie.
At this point I was being bothered not so much by the presence of these totem ... resonance ... wossnames in three of the major characters as their absence in the other two. Well, actually, their absence in Rook. The doppelgäanger wasn't really bothering me, because it's a closed book to me in virtually every other respect. I suspect this is because it really has no personality of its own. I know a fair bit about the people whose minds it's eaten recently, and that should serve me. Anyway, Rook.
Rook is most definitely not a rook, that most saggy-assed of corvids. It's just his name, it doesn't mean anything. His birth name is Gideon, but you don't see him leaving Bibles in hotel rooms, do you? No.
Now, Rook is very tall. He's closer to six and a half feet than to six, and he's one of those slender, skinny guys with big hands who never look entirely comfortable, presumably because it's unpleasant to sit down when you have no ass. He wears glasses. He's overeducated enough to identify Q're's condition after one siezure. He doesn't talk when he doesn't have to, and when he does, unless he's very relaxed, he uses as few words as he can. He's extremely put-upon, which is mostly Sweeney's fault.
Not too long ago, I dreamt I was explaining him to someone, and that I said, "Picture a slightly confused stork."
I'm dumb. It took me, like, two days to think to ask Darkhawk to look up wading birds ('those tall gangly birds') for me in her Big Book o' Animal Totems. That conversation included the following two lines, which I still find amusing:
Tesla says, "Stop being nauseous!"
Tesla hits [Whitney's] gastrointestinal tract with a stick.
Those who are easily amused have more fun. What was I saying? Oh, right, Rook.
He's a crane.
He has elements of stork in him (nonvocal, wades into fantasyland [and gets all soggy and hypothermic in the process], weeps human tears when wounded, and I'm pretty sure he delivers his child by Q're), and no heron, but a lot of crane. Longevity and creation, ancestral roots, protectiveness and secrecy. He recognizes certain death and avoids it. He comes from the underworld.
I'm glad I got that squared away. (Poor guy, though. Surrounded by tricksters. It must be something about that family that compells them to give him shit.)
I'm about four days into the WIP. I think. I'd have to reread it to be sure, and I'm not comfortable doing that right now, but I'm pretty sure it goes something like:
Day one: Rook meets Sweeney, Rook is antagonized by Sweeney, Rook gets his nipples tweaked by Sweeney, Rook goes home and passes out sans Sweeney.
Day two: Exciting chase scene with doppelgängers, exciting hypothermia with mild profanity, basically very dull departure from Underground.
Day three: Saddlesore.
Day four: Climactic shaving nick. Interstate highway. Slavers, arrival in town, glazier not being eaten by a demon, evil local children, slavers again, agonizingly wordy exposition, dinner. I last stopped writing a thousand words or so into dinner.
It's not exactly four days, actually, because they leave Underground at the 'end' of day two, but there're a few hours of riding before day two technically ends, because Underground is running on a slightly different clock than the rest of the world. No sun, and they're a bit antisocial.
The thing is, that's all about forty-five thousand words. For four days and change. And, structurally speaking, I've barely started. I've maybe reached the middle of the beginning. It'll be at least another chapter or so before I can introduce the fifth principal character (the doppelgänger), and my chapters are running six to twelve thousand words. Chronologically speaking, I've pissed in the ocean. This story is at least nine and a half months long -- long enough for Rook and Q're to work up to sleeping together, long enough for Q're to carry to term, long enough for Rook & co. to wreak bloody vengeance when she dies in childbirth. Well, I'm guessing. It might not be bloody.
I can't write a three million-word novel. I can't, if for no other reason than the people on rasfc would never stop teasing me. And the sheer density of information would kill me. I'm pretty sure I couldn't keep it up for that long even if I wanted to; I'd wind up detailing every cup of tea Sweeney made just to keep my words-per-day average up. No. So I'm looking at either doing a whole lot of summarizing, or just eliding large swathes of time.
This is where I admit that this part of the post isn't really supposed to be a productive, feedback-seeking thing so much as a vent, because nobody can tell me how to deal with this, not even me. I haven't gotten to a bit that needs to be summarized and/or elided, it's impossible to predict which it'll be ahead of time, and I know my own process well enough to be full aware that trying will just frustrate me. I'm just nervous, and I like for other people to know when I'm nervous. It's one of those misery-loves-company things.
One other thing. Life is tight third person, and at this point entirely from Rook's perspective. At some point, Arunir's going to need to be the perspective character, at least for a bit. I could tell you that this is because there are things about Rook that I can't show the reader from the inside, and so that I can get some characterization in on the doppelgänger, since it loves Rook, but he can't bring himself to be anything but utterly cold to it, so it avoids him, and in fact does most of its interacting with Arunir because she's not a very demanding conversationlist. I could. And it would sound good, too, but really, it's just something I feel needs done. I'm beginning to wonder if what I need to do is split this thing up into 'parts' or 'books' (though that latter not in the technical sense -- this is not a series) or what have you, separated by a period of weeks or months, and alternate between Rook and Arunir as POV character.
I don't have a tidy way of closing this; I'm just done.
¹ That title seems to be sticking. How peculiar. It's quite appropriate, though; inasmuch as it's about anything (and it's not, really; I don't do meaning) it's about Rook learning to live aboveground — because he is never, ever going back to Underground. So not only is it fitting, needlessly pretentious-sounding, and a reference, it's a stupid pun. Score.
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Date: 2002-12-25 12:34 am (UTC)Riveting.