for yesterday, really, since it's already tomorrow.
I've got 450 more words here, so I'm 280 behind...
1/29/2011 11:51 PM
[Notes: That last post was a stab at a vague idea I’ve had for many years now: to re-tell a Tolkien-clone story where the Wizard is a big fake. Actually a young girl (or boy) who pretends to be an old man on the theory that people will respect them more. I’m not sure I want to start with the fakery known to the reader. Better, perhaps, to start from the POV of the ordinary farm-boy hero. The slightly crazy ugly kid tries to tell him about the big danger and gets brushed off. Then the (fake) Wizard shows up. This requires the wizard to be able to fake wizardry. Maybe they really can do it.
[There must be a big scene where the Wizard is revealed as a fake, maybe ¾ of the way through. The rest of the ‘fellowship’ mostly abandons the Wizard and the Quest.
[The Wizard will discover true power of some kind—maybe the power of physics and engineering? And have another big scene where he/she defeats, maybe, the Big Bad Guy’s chief lieutenant.
[More notes:
[I’m working on several different stories at the moment: The Mad Scientists in Spaaace, the two boys lost in the weed patch that’s a jungle, and fragments of some other stories.
[So what are some scenes I want for the space story?
[The scientists try to leave the stowaway girl with their friend the brothel manager.
[The scientists meet their old mentor, and discover there’s a single intent of some kind behind the seemingly random events they’ve experienced.
[The octopuses in the moat explore the main castle, looking for fish, and discover the scientist’s troubles.
[The scientists must take the girl to the galactic core with them, because the glowing gadget she is carrying around, and that she can’t get rid of, is of some crucial importance to the plot.
[Scenes for the jungle story:
[The jungle-king’s mate (the jungle queen) is summoned by the monkey to find one or the other of the boys. She’s just as awesome, if not more so, as the jungle king.
[The boys are chased by a cannibal village.
[the hunters in the elephants graveyard are chased by angry natives? Rescued by the jungle king?
[A correlation between the jungle and the weed patch must be present.
[this will require a more precise explanation of the layout of the weed patch: a streamlet trickling through the patch corresponds to a river, a puddle is a lake, an anthill is a lost city… the elephant graveyard is a small pile of animal skeletons.]
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Resurrection of the Blog
Here I am, trying to write 360 words per day until Oct 31, which will give me 100K words, the moral authority to blow off NaNoWriMo.
What'll happen?
Cassie Jonsdotter wakes up with a gasp. It's the Dream again, the bad one. And in a short time--years? months? she doesn't know--It'll be more than a dream. But how can she convince anyone? Crazy Cassie, skinny, flat-chested, pimply, going gray already at less than twenty (she was pretty sure), with the cross-eye. Who'd believe her? Nobody. But if nobody does anything...
She has to try, at least.
She kicks off the mess of ratty furs and rattier blankets that serves her as a bed, jumps to her feet and throws the pile into a corner. Can't have a regulation bed. Have to play the part of the crazy witch girl, after all. She crosses the cold wood floor of the hut on bare feet to the wood stove and cracks open the stove door to peep inside. The carefully banked coals still radiate heat and a few minutes of work stirs the fire to roaring life again. She's almost out of wood, have to see if she can talk Fred Davidson into chopping her some more. She mentally runs through her collection of mostly useless charms, wondering if Davidson would want one to ward off skunks... Maybe.
Maybe she can talk Davidson into doing something about the Dream.
"Fred," she'll say, "I have something Very Important to tell you," only it'll come out with a stammer and a mumble, or else a shriek. "You have to stop the Dream."
"What Dream? What are you talking about?"
But as usual by the time she's boiled a pan of oatmeal on the stove for breakfast, the exact details of the Dream are gone from her mind.
What can she tell him? "A bad Dream I can't remember?"
Why, she wonders in frustration, *can't* she remember? If the Dream is that important, and she knows it is, why does it *fade*? If the Higher Power, whoever, whatever, it is, wants her to *Do* *Something*, why does it make it so difficult to do it?
Whoever or Whatever is maybe not the Highest Power, she supposes.
What'll happen?
Cassie Jonsdotter wakes up with a gasp. It's the Dream again, the bad one. And in a short time--years? months? she doesn't know--It'll be more than a dream. But how can she convince anyone? Crazy Cassie, skinny, flat-chested, pimply, going gray already at less than twenty (she was pretty sure), with the cross-eye. Who'd believe her? Nobody. But if nobody does anything...
She has to try, at least.
She kicks off the mess of ratty furs and rattier blankets that serves her as a bed, jumps to her feet and throws the pile into a corner. Can't have a regulation bed. Have to play the part of the crazy witch girl, after all. She crosses the cold wood floor of the hut on bare feet to the wood stove and cracks open the stove door to peep inside. The carefully banked coals still radiate heat and a few minutes of work stirs the fire to roaring life again. She's almost out of wood, have to see if she can talk Fred Davidson into chopping her some more. She mentally runs through her collection of mostly useless charms, wondering if Davidson would want one to ward off skunks... Maybe.
Maybe she can talk Davidson into doing something about the Dream.
"Fred," she'll say, "I have something Very Important to tell you," only it'll come out with a stammer and a mumble, or else a shriek. "You have to stop the Dream."
"What Dream? What are you talking about?"
But as usual by the time she's boiled a pan of oatmeal on the stove for breakfast, the exact details of the Dream are gone from her mind.
What can she tell him? "A bad Dream I can't remember?"
Why, she wonders in frustration, *can't* she remember? If the Dream is that important, and she knows it is, why does it *fade*? If the Higher Power, whoever, whatever, it is, wants her to *Do* *Something*, why does it make it so difficult to do it?
Whoever or Whatever is maybe not the Highest Power, she supposes.
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