in silence trailing away/by the shore of the tumbling, clamorous, whispering sea

[hawkwing_lb]

Still too much in awe of Worldwired to say anything that makes sense. The Nasty Sick has also placed obstacles in front of my saying anything more coherent with regard to Narnia: I spent all my coherency on achieving not quite one third of my writing goal for today.

The Plan, before I contracted the Ick, was to write 3,500 words daily for the rest of the month of December. This, needless to say, did not happen today. However, I did get to switch to a different POV character for some of it, and this can be counted as Progress. Of a sort.



Progress, Mon 12 December 2005:

"Dreamdark, or, the Confused-Title Story"

New words: 1141
Previous words: c. 4730
Total relevent words: c 5871
Words typed: 1141
Total relevent typed words: 5778
Old-and-now-irrelevant-but-I'm-still-counting-them words: c. 20,000
Total words: c. 25,871
Estimated words required: 120,000
Words left (#1): 94,129
Words left (#2): 114,129
Unpleasant things that characters were subjected to: Darric: more stitching of wounds (over at last! sayeth the writer); Elise: the intimation of bad news to come.



The real "Dreamdark":

5,871 / 120,000 (4.9%)

"Dreamdark" and Ye Olde and Abandonned Drafte:

25,871 / 120,000 (20.0%)

Comments

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Any funerary requests? (a sort of monkey get well soon irritant). C.S. Lewis... I am wondering how the prose translated to film, and whether they were fairly faithful to the book. Sigh. Wish they'd make some DWJ books into major movies.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Make sure I'm well dead when they bury me ;-). Thanks, monkey. I'm (nearly, nearly) over the Sick, so coherent thoughts may soon be forthcoming.

In short; from what I remember of the book (sold years ago to make more space on the bookshelves) it was an extremely faithfully translation, and worked really well - in my opinion, at least. Mum, who'd never read the books, enjoyed herself immensely as well. Definitely worth seeing, if only for Tilda Swinton doing a really good eeevil as the Witch.

Actors well cast. Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy; everything I could have hoped they would be. The costumes are just wonderful, although since I have recently escaped from a semester of ancient Greek art, the centaurs and fauns seemed rather... tame.

Liam Neeson sounds very odd to me as Aslan. I imprinted on him early as Michael Collins in the film of the same name, so.

Minor gripe, which has not to do with the film but with books in general: why is Susan always the sensible one? I swear, someone should write an intelligent punk-goth Susan who hasn't a mother-substitute thought in her head (though Pratchett did come close, with Death's granddaughter. She still ended up in a sensible job).

DWJ wouldn't happen to be Diana Wynne Jones, would it? I appear to be shamefully under-read when it comes to her books. I've only read Howl's Moving Castle - they made a film out of that one, didn't they?

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

DWJ yes, that her. Um. I'm actually profoundly shocked to discover you haven't read them, particularly the early books. In those there is a feeling of a disturbing undercurrent, almost, for want of a better description, a madness of genius peeking through. Later she does more humour, more accessibility and less depth. Books like the Spellcoats, and Drowned Ammet, or ?power of three, evoke that sort of blend between myth and accessiblity that leaves me feeling like I am more than half in that world. Too much for a lot of readers I suspect. Only Zelazny at his best ever does that to me. Uncomfortable. Her later and more successful books have hints of it, but only small hints.

Yes, Howl's Moving Castle has been filmed - by a small Japanese film-maker. Forget the name right now. It's apparently brilliant.

(chuckle) If I sell the Goth girl/prince swap one I'll call her Susan. She would of course prefer to be called 'Blade'

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

DWJ. Well there are a couple of her books in the library, to which I plan to hie me today, so perhaps that fault shall start being rectified :-).

Zelazny is another author to whose work I have been shamefully underexposed. I've only read one or two. Where would you recommend I start :-)?

Yes, please! Start an Unsensible Susan trend! Down with Susan as the Mother-Substitute in fiction!

Ahem. Excuse me, please. :-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Zelazny. LORD OF LIGHT. An absolute "must read". Possibly the best 'synthesis' sf book of the 20th century, multliayered, yet accessible with likable characters, and occasional bits of truly stunning prose.
I IMMORTAL -- lovely synthesis of greek myth and sf.
A NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER -- possibly the best 'horror' story ever written. hilarious and macabre (sp?)From the 'familiars' POV. A delight. The only 'horror' I ever re-read (and re-read)

The Amber books are not favorites of mine, and neither are his other later works

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thank you!