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silences and silences broken
Mar. 9th, 2006 07:52 pmSorry for the long silence. I've been quite busy.
Writing
Overhaul of the novel proceeds apace. I was having a serious Ondaatje problem -- I was writing great scenes, having trouble fitting them together in a coherent story. I think I've found the way to overcome that now. I edited and wrote fifty pages Wednesday, and 20 pages today.
I'd started it as a realistic novel with a touch of dark fantasy. It's now really a fantasy novel set in the present day :/
The only remaining problem is the denouement -- and my problem writing believable action scenes.
School
My first major presentation of the year went off without a hitch, remarkable since I couldn't get any solid information. It was on the School-Book Question of 1866, a major crisis of Canadian history that's been completely forgotten by Canadians. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article on it -- or a mention of the event in the biographies of its major players.
I couldn't even get a hold of the schoolbooks in question.
My next major project is on early-Canadian sonnets. Most of what I'd come across in the databases was really awful, until one of my teachers put me on to a book of truly brilliant sonnet-work. And almost every sonnet in there had been lost to history.
Canada needs a Renaissance. There's a lot of the past mouldering on shelves in used bookstores, on the verge of being forgotten. There's some on the federal government's database, but it's only 1% of what was published in the 19th century. A lot of the best stuff is missing.
Work
( work drama )
Writing
Overhaul of the novel proceeds apace. I was having a serious Ondaatje problem -- I was writing great scenes, having trouble fitting them together in a coherent story. I think I've found the way to overcome that now. I edited and wrote fifty pages Wednesday, and 20 pages today.
I'd started it as a realistic novel with a touch of dark fantasy. It's now really a fantasy novel set in the present day :/
The only remaining problem is the denouement -- and my problem writing believable action scenes.
School
My first major presentation of the year went off without a hitch, remarkable since I couldn't get any solid information. It was on the School-Book Question of 1866, a major crisis of Canadian history that's been completely forgotten by Canadians. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article on it -- or a mention of the event in the biographies of its major players.
I couldn't even get a hold of the schoolbooks in question.
My next major project is on early-Canadian sonnets. Most of what I'd come across in the databases was really awful, until one of my teachers put me on to a book of truly brilliant sonnet-work. And almost every sonnet in there had been lost to history.
Canada needs a Renaissance. There's a lot of the past mouldering on shelves in used bookstores, on the verge of being forgotten. There's some on the federal government's database, but it's only 1% of what was published in the 19th century. A lot of the best stuff is missing.
Work
( work drama )