Why the Platypus
Jul. 26th, 2002 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_aeonsI've been wondering about the title of the WIP, but haven't been devoting a lot of CPU cycles to the subject, on the principle that it will title itself when it's done. (Notice my cunning use of the word 'when'.) So imagine my surprise when it became apparent that the WIP may be titled Life on Earth, after the David Attenborough book by the same name, which Rook spends a fair amount of time reading both for recreational purposes and because it's good practice for his Old English. It's been a couple of days since I had this epiphany, and the title still seems to ... fit.
Anyway, 1172 words yesterday, unless you don't count the ones I wrote a few months ago — which I don't — in which case 932. 825 the day before.
Highlights:
I eliminated all the auxiliaries I could from Rook's dialogue; again, not very hard work. He's doing some speaking in Old English now, when he's talking to Arunir, and he turns out to have a pretty bad stutter. Poor kid.
In a continuing slightly-unexpected-things theme, I spent a while last night pondering Sweeney's tattoo and back piercings, and later, when I wrote the scene wherein Rook cuts himself shaving because Arunir is unexpectedly naked, it turned out that Arunir is not just scarred — which I knew about — but in fact scarified. I had no idea until I wrote it. Well, she does take after her father.
Anyway, 1172 words yesterday, unless you don't count the ones I wrote a few months ago — which I don't — in which case 932. 825 the day before.
Highlights:
The next morning it was Arunir who woke him, employing a cunningly simple variation on the zip-open-the-tent technique: she opened the flap, and then she walked away, leaving Rook to a series of increasingly paranoid fantasies about what she would do to him if he didn't get up.
"Are you sure you want to do that?"
"If knew you what I look like with a beard, you would askn't."
"I'm not sure I want to know what you look like with your face cut off, either."
It was wide, yes, but too shallow for him to even work up a good spongebath in.
A new addition to the list of small but pivotal items he deeply regretted not remembering to pack was a mirror. Water was reflective, but it was also lamentably prone to moving at the slightest provocation and occasionally had fish in it, such that his reflection shivered and fragmented — and occasionally had fish in it. Add to that the fact that he was shaving with a bloody great dagger and a bar of soap, and Rook had a recipie for disaster.
I eliminated all the auxiliaries I could from Rook's dialogue; again, not very hard work. He's doing some speaking in Old English now, when he's talking to Arunir, and he turns out to have a pretty bad stutter. Poor kid.
In a continuing slightly-unexpected-things theme, I spent a while last night pondering Sweeney's tattoo and back piercings, and later, when I wrote the scene wherein Rook cuts himself shaving because Arunir is unexpectedly naked, it turned out that Arunir is not just scarred — which I knew about — but in fact scarified. I had no idea until I wrote it. Well, she does take after her father.
