Yes, it's been a thousand years and I'm sorry. I hope everyone is well.
Just in case anyone fancies reading it - I'm going to be attempting Nanowrimo again this year. I'll be posting at
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alea_nano like last year. Leave a note here if you'd like to be added.
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My thought on Branwen (I've been at work and mulling it over when I should have been concentrating...) are currently that I would write it as a story about telling stories. Parts of it are so fantastical - the scale of her brother Bran, for example - that I wouldn't be happy telling it without some further explanation, which of course currently doesn't exist. So what I'd like to do is explore how a story is formed out of events, how it is related and which bits are remembered. Who are painted as the villains and who are the heroes?
That said, I also had some new ideas for the invader story, so I might do still do that one and retire Branwen until December. We shall see.
I'm going to see my sister tomorrow so probably won't have internet for a couple of days. Will probably kill me :P
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Absolutely. [cringes and reaches for a blunt weapon] I used to OD on historical romances pretty regularly and since I started when I was twelve I didn't always realize when a writer was taking liberties. [cough] Looking back, though, it was pretty grim sometimes. And the ones I read later, after I'd actually started studying history, were pretty bad.
For example, I mean, OK, I see the reason why someone would mess with this particular historical reality, but just once I want to read a medieval where the Lord and Lady of the castle slept in a curtained niche in one wall and everyone else had a pallet on the floor of the great hall. There -- let's see you hide your illicit sex in that environment! :P I mean, you could, but you might actually have to get creative, what a concept. And it's just amazing how many of these fourteenth century castles came complete with a dozen private bedrooms. [facepalm]
there are of course people who deliberately mess with history, but in order to do that they still need to have done the relevant research
Absolutely again. [nodnod] I love alternate history, or even a historical story where the writer changed some particular thing or a few things, deliberately and to support the plot. But to do it well you have to know how things were to start with so you can make intelligent changes. And it's nice when the writer owns up to the changes they made -- Judith Tarr does that in a lot of her books, in the Author's Notes. Too many "historical" writers just change whatever out of apparent ignorance, though, because it's easier to do what five hundred other historical romance or fantasy writers have done than to actually look something up. [sigh]
So what I'd like to do is explore how a story is formed out of events, how it is related and which bits are remembered. Who are painted as the villains and who are the heroes?
That could be a very cool story. [nodnod] Mercedes Lackey did something like that in a short story once. She had this series of short stories about two female adventurers, one a mage and the other a mercenary, and there was this minstrel guy who wrote songs about them but got everything wrong, painting them as impossibly heroic when the actual stories had been very down-to-earth. She did this one story about the first time he actually caught up with them on their travels and was able to observe them in action for himself, rather than relying on travellers' tales. It was hysterical -- she showed what actually happened and then how he wrote the song, and all along the way we were in his POV so we saw how appalled he was about exactly how un-heroic his great bardic heroines really were. It was a great comic treatment of the subject. :)
Doing something serious would be cool as well. It's an important point to make, that stories are told and later written for different reasons. Everyone knows the old "the winner writes the history books" thing, but there are other factors as well. If you're telling a story as a cautionary tale or a moral exhortation or an explanation of some rule or doctrine or principle, then you've got a specific purpose you're trying to achieve in the telling and changing details, even fairly major ones, in service to that purpose probably won't seem like a horrible thing to do. You could make a great story out of how the story of some event changed and why.
Good luck with the next couple of days. Hang on, hon -- it's horrible being disconnected but it is survivable! ;)
Angie
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I think I'm probably going to run with the invaders story rather than the Branwen one, because I've had some new ideas about the invaders homeland that I'd like to explore (although when and how I have yet to discover!)
I have horrible double shifts tomorrow and Saturday (meaning I'm working 6.30am to 12.30pm, then 6pm to 12am) which seems like a really cruel way to start nano. But I am determined I will get my wordcount done (in between the essential naps!) and then Sunday I will breathe and maybe even plan.
How go your thoughts? Have you narrowed down the plans are are you just going to see what happens when you open up a new word document tomorrow?
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I still haven't decided. [headdesk] I finished a commentary on a novel manuscript for a friend a few days ago (the thing was thirty pages longer when I sent it back to her -- it took a while to do but she was very happy with the comments so that's good) and then I finished the edits on "Spirit of Vengeance" last night. Or actually this morning, since it was after midnight. Then I waited until Torquere put the Halloween stories up so I could post around with a link to mine. Then the usual BSing around with e-mail and stuff, talking to some of the other writers -- one of whom was also waiting for the stories to go up, and then afterward discovering a continuation to a favorite series and then chatting with that writer about it, which took a while so I was up all night till around 6am. I finally got to bed but couldn't sleep. [headdesk]
I should be fiddling around with NaNo ideas but my head's all buzzy, you know? Like, I'm too tired to do anything useful but I still can't sleep. I'll probably zombie around all day and then just start typing in a blank file tomorrow and see what it turns into. :P
Major suckage on your double shifts. :( Hopefully that's the last of that for a while?
Angie