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Random Minutiae
Vacation was wonderful, very restive. I've only been back a day, and so not fully into the swing of things yet, but I'm already procrastinating. Our DVR broke while we were away, thus I have no Dr. Who, no West Wing, no Veronica Mars, and no Boston Legal. I also can't get cable in my living room. The company will replace the unit on Tuesday, but it's not the sort of homecoming I'd have preferred.
I've spent the day alternating between the second book in Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master (the complete trilogy arrived while I was away, yay!) and the end of A Feast for Crows, with some forays into knitting books. I'm trying to convince myself that what I want to do is start revisions on the novel, or at least type up the chapters that are only in longhand at the moment, but I'm failing miserably. So I'm distracting my brain by trying to find a title for the book - its working title completely fails.
I've also got this story lurking in the back of my mind. Over a year ago, I came across![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mroctober's announcement about his forthcoming anthology, So Fey and had the kernel of a story. Like all things writing-related in my brain, it has taken this long to result in an actual plot that people might want to read. The opening scene is simple enough - a boy makes a bargain with a faery, and gets powers no teenager should have. I started writing it (it actually broke my stall), but it only comes in little fragments, nearly always at inconvenient moments such as meetings at work. I'm supposed to concentrating on a different kind of biology than that of horny teenage boys in meetings, in case you were wondering.
But really, the premise is simple - I keep remembering The Monkey's Paw whenever I try and describe it - a boy bargains for power and it results in misery. The faery tricks him with his own desires. But I'm failing entirely at the ending - surprising and inevitable, it really isn't. And more to the point, it's not cruel enough. Faeries are fickle, but they're also exacting and they hold you to the word of their bargains... and I can't see what the faery has to gain from it. I feel like I've got the fantasy, but this is my first look to horror, and I'm completely failing at adequate horror levels.
The sad thing is that I feel like I could make this story good enough to try submitting it, but until I have an ending, I'm not going to go anywhere.
And, just because AFfC appeared earlier in this entry, is it just me with Daario on the brain, or is the Tyroshi who tried to present Cersei a dwarf's head my favorite mercenary? Knowing that Tyrion probably winds up with Daenerys, the things the Tyroshi says of him almost sound like what Tyrion would have told someone to say. Further, I don't see why Martin would spend the word space to describe the scene in such detail if it wasn't going to pay off elsewhere - the other three people who claim information on Tyrion that day (including the one who refers Cersei to Jenny) only get a few sentences.
If it is Daario, I wonder what he'd be doing so in King's Landing. I'm also tempted to say the fact that the head was unconvincing is also contrived in that case - and if that's so, for what purpose? This book is beginning to frustrate me in its lack of clarity and forward progression of the plot. I want ADwD!
Also, massive "Hee!" to Petyr's commentary on how Cersei is ruining the realm much faster than he imagined - five, six years he says!
I've spent the day alternating between the second book in Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master (the complete trilogy arrived while I was away, yay!) and the end of A Feast for Crows, with some forays into knitting books. I'm trying to convince myself that what I want to do is start revisions on the novel, or at least type up the chapters that are only in longhand at the moment, but I'm failing miserably. So I'm distracting my brain by trying to find a title for the book - its working title completely fails.
I've also got this story lurking in the back of my mind. Over a year ago, I came across
mroctober's announcement about his forthcoming anthology, So Fey and had the kernel of a story. Like all things writing-related in my brain, it has taken this long to result in an actual plot that people might want to read. The opening scene is simple enough - a boy makes a bargain with a faery, and gets powers no teenager should have. I started writing it (it actually broke my stall), but it only comes in little fragments, nearly always at inconvenient moments such as meetings at work. I'm supposed to concentrating on a different kind of biology than that of horny teenage boys in meetings, in case you were wondering.But really, the premise is simple - I keep remembering The Monkey's Paw whenever I try and describe it - a boy bargains for power and it results in misery. The faery tricks him with his own desires. But I'm failing entirely at the ending - surprising and inevitable, it really isn't. And more to the point, it's not cruel enough. Faeries are fickle, but they're also exacting and they hold you to the word of their bargains... and I can't see what the faery has to gain from it. I feel like I've got the fantasy, but this is my first look to horror, and I'm completely failing at adequate horror levels.
The sad thing is that I feel like I could make this story good enough to try submitting it, but until I have an ending, I'm not going to go anywhere.
And, just because AFfC appeared earlier in this entry, is it just me with Daario on the brain, or is the Tyroshi who tried to present Cersei a dwarf's head my favorite mercenary? Knowing that Tyrion probably winds up with Daenerys, the things the Tyroshi says of him almost sound like what Tyrion would have told someone to say. Further, I don't see why Martin would spend the word space to describe the scene in such detail if it wasn't going to pay off elsewhere - the other three people who claim information on Tyrion that day (including the one who refers Cersei to Jenny) only get a few sentences.
If it is Daario, I wonder what he'd be doing so in King's Landing. I'm also tempted to say the fact that the head was unconvincing is also contrived in that case - and if that's so, for what purpose? This book is beginning to frustrate me in its lack of clarity and forward progression of the plot. I want ADwD!
Also, massive "Hee!" to Petyr's commentary on how Cersei is ruining the realm much faster than he imagined - five, six years he says!