Bits and pieces
Oct. 27th, 2022 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeI have reached 40,000 words on my FotH/Kidnapped crossover longfic! And I think I have got to the point of needing a break from it—the last couple of weeks of writing have been a bit tough, and various things are not working out quite how I want. But I am going to be pleased with this achievement, and put it aside and work on Yuletide stuff for a little while—and then go back and decide what to do next. One possibility is that I start to re-draft the earlier chapters before writing more; at the moment it's feeling a bit weighed down by plot and characterisation that I know I haven't got right yet and want to change. We shall see!
Chantemerle is making slow but steady progress. It's the longest ebook I've done so far at 158,000 words, about a third as long again as Sir Isumbras. I'm working my way through rewrapping the text file (making all the lines the right length and organising them nicely); after that will come the slightly daunting task of formatting the (many, varied) chapter epigraphs in both text and HTML.
...But in the course of (unsuccessfully) trying to look up one of those chapter epigraphs today, I have found another Jacobite novel from 1905 which looks like it might be about an intense loyal friendship between female characters! One of them is the famous Lady Nithsdale who memorably and ingeniously helped her husband escape from the Tower of London after the '15. I will read it immediately and report back.
I learnt yesterday that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an alternative set of lyrics to the Skye Boat Song—number XLII in this collection. I think I like this version better than the more well-known original! The images are less hackneyed and more evocative, and there's a lovely wistfulness to it.
I've been continuing my D. K. Broster researches by looking her up in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, to which I have access through the public library. The entry has some interesting details that I hadn't heard before, including that she thought The Yellow Poppy was her best book, but her favourite was The Wounded Name (I think that shows excellent and hilarious judgement; although the DNB doesn't say, and I'd like to know, when she said it—how many, if any, of her later books were not written yet to compare to those two?), and a little bit about her personality: she was known as a worrier, obsessed by the difficulties of daily living, the need to be ready for any and every emergency. I probably shouldn't quote the whole entry here, but I'm happy to send a copy to anyone who would like one! I'd like to continue these biographical researches properly; I think I'll make another delve into the Ancestry records (now only accessible actually in libraries, so I'll have to make a visit to one), and then see if I can work up the courage to ask the people at St Hilda's College Archive if I can go and have a look at these papers, which sound terribly interesting.
Chantemerle is making slow but steady progress. It's the longest ebook I've done so far at 158,000 words, about a third as long again as Sir Isumbras. I'm working my way through rewrapping the text file (making all the lines the right length and organising them nicely); after that will come the slightly daunting task of formatting the (many, varied) chapter epigraphs in both text and HTML.
...But in the course of (unsuccessfully) trying to look up one of those chapter epigraphs today, I have found another Jacobite novel from 1905 which looks like it might be about an intense loyal friendship between female characters! One of them is the famous Lady Nithsdale who memorably and ingeniously helped her husband escape from the Tower of London after the '15. I will read it immediately and report back.
I learnt yesterday that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an alternative set of lyrics to the Skye Boat Song—number XLII in this collection. I think I like this version better than the more well-known original! The images are less hackneyed and more evocative, and there's a lovely wistfulness to it.
I've been continuing my D. K. Broster researches by looking her up in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, to which I have access through the public library. The entry has some interesting details that I hadn't heard before, including that she thought The Yellow Poppy was her best book, but her favourite was The Wounded Name (I think that shows excellent and hilarious judgement; although the DNB doesn't say, and I'd like to know, when she said it—how many, if any, of her later books were not written yet to compare to those two?), and a little bit about her personality: she was known as a worrier, obsessed by the difficulties of daily living, the need to be ready for any and every emergency. I probably shouldn't quote the whole entry here, but I'm happy to send a copy to anyone who would like one! I'd like to continue these biographical researches properly; I think I'll make another delve into the Ancestry records (now only accessible actually in libraries, so I'll have to make a visit to one), and then see if I can work up the courage to ask the people at St Hilda's College Archive if I can go and have a look at these papers, which sound terribly interesting.
