The lost post
Apr. 2nd, 2008 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceThe pavements of Newcastle (mainly) are littered with story ideas, snippets of dialogue, titles and characters and all the marginalia of the writing life: twenty-five years of Chaz wandering around and thinking of stuff and then forgetting it before he gets home, for lo, I am not a notekeeping man.
In recent years, this fictional accumulation has been much enriched by the addition of unremembered blogposts, witty little jewels that I thought to send to LJ and, uh, forgot.
Sometimes I remember that I have forgotten them; this doesn't really help much.
As today. I was going to say something lovely to y'all, and I don't know what it was. So it goes.
Still:
Spring is here, spring is here! Life is skittles and life is beer.
Except that it isn't really, of course, either half of that equation. Skittles fall over and beer is bitter, and we're expecting a cold snap at the weekend. But still. The sun is warmly shining as I type, and the rhubarb and garlic in the yard flourisheth as the green bay tree. Which also flourisheth, by definition.
And I have finished my retelling of Dracula, or at least reached the end of a first tentative draft. They may hate it, for I have radically remade the ending, or at least chopped it off a few hundred miles short of where Stoker took it. The trouble with Dracula, I have decided, is a constancy of comings and goings; wherever the story takes you, you have to come back and go there again. And, oftentimes, again and again. This is wearisome. It's probably Deeply Significant in some thematic meaning, but still. Wearisome.
So, anyway. I have more or less achieved the required brevity, largely by dint of not doing that. Farewell,endless shuttling back and forth thematic meaning! This draft stops in London. This may go against company policy; we'll find out soonish. I'm going to read it through and send it off, and then go to the pub. Beer is bitter, and bitter is good. There will be no skittles.
In recent years, this fictional accumulation has been much enriched by the addition of unremembered blogposts, witty little jewels that I thought to send to LJ and, uh, forgot.
Sometimes I remember that I have forgotten them; this doesn't really help much.
As today. I was going to say something lovely to y'all, and I don't know what it was. So it goes.
Still:
Spring is here, spring is here! Life is skittles and life is beer.
Except that it isn't really, of course, either half of that equation. Skittles fall over and beer is bitter, and we're expecting a cold snap at the weekend. But still. The sun is warmly shining as I type, and the rhubarb and garlic in the yard flourisheth as the green bay tree. Which also flourisheth, by definition.
And I have finished my retelling of Dracula, or at least reached the end of a first tentative draft. They may hate it, for I have radically remade the ending, or at least chopped it off a few hundred miles short of where Stoker took it. The trouble with Dracula, I have decided, is a constancy of comings and goings; wherever the story takes you, you have to come back and go there again. And, oftentimes, again and again. This is wearisome. It's probably Deeply Significant in some thematic meaning, but still. Wearisome.
So, anyway. I have more or less achieved the required brevity, largely by dint of not doing that. Farewell,
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 01:32 pm (UTC)And, ooh, Dracula. Sounds interesting...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 01:48 pm (UTC)The Dracula thing is a wee publisher producing brief retellings of classic (out-of-copyright) novels for kids and reluctant readers: I've done The Lost World as well. In five thousand words. The Lost World was comparatively simple, as it's a short book anyway and very plainly told. Dracula, not so. Hence this heretical reinterpretation (I cut Renfield altogether, thereby leading a friend of mine to exclaim over the dinner-table that I clearly didn't understand the book at all...).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:33 pm (UTC)5000 words? Hum... I can manage 'Dracula bit, Lucy died. Dracula bit, Mina cried. Jonathan hunted. Dracula fried.'
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:47 pm (UTC)Slugs
Date: 2008-04-02 04:19 pm (UTC)I'm using Rebellion Red beer from Marlow. I once saw an experiment described where different beers were tried. Slugs liked real ale best of all, quite liked Guiness and weren't at all impressed by lager.
Re: Slugs
Date: 2008-04-02 07:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:46 pm (UTC)(Actually I have a horrible feeling the London electorate is about to vote for Boris, rather than squish him)
*/g*
And thank you for the offer, but no: tried the whole dictaphone thing. Granted this was before the ubiquity of the mobile phone, but I still felt something of a prat wandering around and muttering into an object. Also, I rarely got around to transcribing my mutters at the other end. (Now, if you could mutter at the one end, pull a card out, plug it into the PC and have the mutters appear automatically transcribed, that might be another matter. But you can't...) I have long since learned to live with lost words.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 02:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-02 03:38 pm (UTC)