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pameladeanThere are four or five unfinished entries stacked up in Semagic, and naturally it ate the most recent one that had the best chance of being posted. I figured, therefore, that I had better plunge in fast before the cold water formed a sheet of ice. I read LJ every day, but am often at an utter loss as to what, if anything, to say.
First, many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pnh for solving our problem with the missing episodes of "Veronica Mars," and also to everybody who suggested solutions or offered to help. Raphael and I are now careening through the subsequent episodes (somewhere between four and ten of Season Two), mouths often agape. David and Lydy are current; soon we will be able to talk about the show without fearing spoilers.
Winter has behaved oddly this year, arriving late but with a huge supply of bitter cold, then losing interest and wandering about in above-average warmth, with dribs and drabs of snowfall, for the whole month of January, suddenly realizing that its deep-freeze term paper is late and flinging it onto our doorsteps all full of typos, and then going off and getting groggy on us again. It can go home any time. But it will probably stay until May, just to make up for its sloppy performance so far.
Yesterday I opened the window for Ari, and while he was crouching there making snacking noises at the house sparrows, I looked between his ears, through the narrow rectangle of screen where the storm window won't go all the way down, through a little green-framed gap in the arborvita tree, and through one final oval gap formed by a couple of the bare gray branches of the peabush hedge, to see the red body and black mask of a cardinal, sitting still and making, very quietly, the chip-chip noise that means that something nearby is dangerous. I wonder if he could see the cat.
I'm going to put the last piece of this behind a cut-tag, because I want to talk about Going North, and some people want no spoilers at all. (For them: the book is moving forward in a fairly cooperative fashion, though too slowly.)
A few posts back I talked about the constraints on the dialogue of the various characters. Well, a few days ago, I decided that I must do a scene with Nora, Ted and Laura's mother. I hadn't planned for her to be a major part of the plot, but I felt that it would be unkind to readers and unrealistic not to have her show up at all. I was so worried about doing her justice that I failed to realize how much of a treat she would be. I'm sure that many of my readers feel that all of my characters engage in quotation in a profoundly unrealistic way, which may or may not be true and is probably beside the point in any case; but as a matter of fact I am continually squelching all of their ambitions in that regard, the single exception, of course, being Dominic in Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. Even the Classics majors in Tam Lin had to have their verbiage clipped periodically. But Nora! It's not that she can quote just anything, for of course she cannot. But she can quote almost anything that I think of for her to quote. Not everything that I think of, since our reading has a far from perfect overlap, and in any case I must continually remember that all of these characters went under the hill sometime in the late 1980's. But most of the things that I have wished for her to quote have so far been exactly right. Also, she and Ruth can talk in a completely different way than Ruth talks to her cousins or to anybody in the Secret Country. It's such a relief. And finally, she knows things that I don't.
I may have to dig up my plot outline and move all the plants around.
P,
First, many thanks to
pnh for solving our problem with the missing episodes of "Veronica Mars," and also to everybody who suggested solutions or offered to help. Raphael and I are now careening through the subsequent episodes (somewhere between four and ten of Season Two), mouths often agape. David and Lydy are current; soon we will be able to talk about the show without fearing spoilers.Winter has behaved oddly this year, arriving late but with a huge supply of bitter cold, then losing interest and wandering about in above-average warmth, with dribs and drabs of snowfall, for the whole month of January, suddenly realizing that its deep-freeze term paper is late and flinging it onto our doorsteps all full of typos, and then going off and getting groggy on us again. It can go home any time. But it will probably stay until May, just to make up for its sloppy performance so far.
Yesterday I opened the window for Ari, and while he was crouching there making snacking noises at the house sparrows, I looked between his ears, through the narrow rectangle of screen where the storm window won't go all the way down, through a little green-framed gap in the arborvita tree, and through one final oval gap formed by a couple of the bare gray branches of the peabush hedge, to see the red body and black mask of a cardinal, sitting still and making, very quietly, the chip-chip noise that means that something nearby is dangerous. I wonder if he could see the cat.
I'm going to put the last piece of this behind a cut-tag, because I want to talk about Going North, and some people want no spoilers at all. (For them: the book is moving forward in a fairly cooperative fashion, though too slowly.)
A few posts back I talked about the constraints on the dialogue of the various characters. Well, a few days ago, I decided that I must do a scene with Nora, Ted and Laura's mother. I hadn't planned for her to be a major part of the plot, but I felt that it would be unkind to readers and unrealistic not to have her show up at all. I was so worried about doing her justice that I failed to realize how much of a treat she would be. I'm sure that many of my readers feel that all of my characters engage in quotation in a profoundly unrealistic way, which may or may not be true and is probably beside the point in any case; but as a matter of fact I am continually squelching all of their ambitions in that regard, the single exception, of course, being Dominic in Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. Even the Classics majors in Tam Lin had to have their verbiage clipped periodically. But Nora! It's not that she can quote just anything, for of course she cannot. But she can quote almost anything that I think of for her to quote. Not everything that I think of, since our reading has a far from perfect overlap, and in any case I must continually remember that all of these characters went under the hill sometime in the late 1980's. But most of the things that I have wished for her to quote have so far been exactly right. Also, she and Ruth can talk in a completely different way than Ruth talks to her cousins or to anybody in the Secret Country. It's such a relief. And finally, she knows things that I don't.
I may have to dig up my plot outline and move all the plants around.
P,
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Waaaaaaaaaaaant!
Date: 2006-02-27 07:05 pm (UTC)I mean I'll wait. I understand that I have to wait.
(I'm still waiting.)
I hope it keeps going very well, and as fast as is healthy for it and you.
Re: Waaaaaaaaaaaant!
Date: 2006-02-27 09:14 pm (UTC)Re: Waaaaaaaaaaaant!
Date: 2006-03-02 10:55 pm (UTC)Health, well, yeah. I still recall vividly the last month of writing on The Dubious Hills, when I would get up, take two ibrprofen, and start in typing, taking more ibuprofen as warranted and subsisting on food I won't even mention.
P.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 09:21 pm (UTC)(And, so I'm not just a Completely Random Stranger commenting out of nowhere -- my name's Marie Brennan, I'm a writer, and I've been reading and loving your books since I found Tam Lin years ago.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 10:57 pm (UTC)I think the pinnacle of quotation glory has to be Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books, wherein she has a character who quotes copiously, and yet cannot draw either on Shakespeare nor on the King James Bible, because neither has yet been written.
I guess that in your case I'd have leapt at the excuse to rent tapes of lots of plays, or to read them, or both, and, well, possibly never got the story done.
P.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-03 12:06 am (UTC)I keep meaning to buy the companion books to the Lymond Chronicles, since I'm told that they not only ID the quotes but translate the seventeen foreign languages Lymond speaks. Halfway through The Game of Kings, I gave up on trying to translate the ones I had dictionaries for.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 10:58 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 10:59 pm (UTC)I'm delighted you like my metaphor. The whole affair just felt so shabby and unconsidered somehow, that's what sprang to mind.
P.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 11:02 pm (UTC)But I'm always so delighted that anybody has read "This Fair Gift." The anthology went through publishing hell and didn't get a lot of attention overall. It's based on "The Boy and the Mantle," which is Child #29. Loosely based, anyway.
As for the Liavek stories, I had more fun writing them than is probably legal, so it's also lovely when people like them. I hope the new one is worthy.
P.