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Breaking My Rules Already
Aug. 31st, 2011 11:04 am1,700 new words to re-write, as of last night, plus the 600 I wrote during the day. We're officially through the first two sections of "Chess and Oona in Hell" part last, and while it's still fairly unwieldy/emotionally bok-bok, it's eventually going to be done, fixable. Then on to the rest.
OTOH, that potential teaching job at George Brown came up again (Writing for Animation, starting September 21, ending before Christmas), and I felt genuinely constrained to turn it down. Didn't help that it would've run all through the remaining time I have left to write this book in, but frankly...I haven't really thought about it since last year, don't have any materials prepared, and it's more stress than I can handle for money I'm thankfully not in immediate need of. Perhaps that part of my life is over, barring occasional lectures and what-have-you; if so, I think I'm okay with the concept.
Otherwise: Went looking for stuff based on The Magician's Nephew and found this amazing piece of fanart, here (http://suburbanbeatnik.deviantart.com/art/The-Magician-s-Nephew-67053697). As I told Steve, I remained convinced for years that I had seen a version of the book with an original engraving illustrating almost the same scene--Jadis, holding Polly and Diggory's hands, framed in the bottom left corner with perspective behind them, looking out onto the vast, ruined expanse of Charn as the massive sun and lonely star stared down above. And Steve said he thought he'd seen that too! But no...it's just the after-taste of a paragraph describing the same scene, maybe cross-cut with my own memories of the dead city of Kor from H. Rider Haggard's She, and possibly this variant book-cover in which somebody's very obviously trying to keep to the original artist's style (http://eq5.net/baynes/xl-n-sett/pleasure-in-reading-1mn-010861.html). Probably based on the moment right after Jadis blasts the doors, it almost works, aside from her being dressed completely in green; I always "saw" Jadis as being in shades of red, black, gold and purple, as befits a seven-foot pseudo-Babylonian half-giant/half-jinn.
So much inspiration in my life stems from that book, it's sort of scary...I remember dreaming up all this speculation as to what Charnish culture was like, or what exactly sparked the war between Jadis and her sister (were they twins? Was it like Cleopatra and Berenice?), or even forming this weird theory based on "memories" of yet another non-existant illustration--Jadis sitting in her throat in the Hall of Images, towering above Diggory, Polly and all the rest of her ancestors--that the Charnish dynastics were getting larger rather than smaller as their family got more and more in-bred, as though the giantish blood was become super-concentrated. Did the Narnian giants of Harfang consider the Witch their cousin, or even worship her as a progenitor deity? Not the "nice" ones, obviously...but then again, "nice" Narnian giants seem universally fairly stupid. The Harfangers were both smarter and scarier, particularly in their ability to use charm and lies rather than total brutal strength.
Finally, why did I not know about the awesomeness of Saki's short story "Sredni Vashtar", which is also very much congruent with my interests? "Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar"--chilling, and very much in line with my feeling that gods can be created through worship, but that when gods enter into transactive relationships with humans involving sacrifice, both sides end up becoming deformed by their own expectations. You'll find a .pdf of it here, so check it out (http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0072.pdf).
Okay, gotta get my act together, run some errands, then drop the boy off at Mai-Mai's. See youse.
OTOH, that potential teaching job at George Brown came up again (Writing for Animation, starting September 21, ending before Christmas), and I felt genuinely constrained to turn it down. Didn't help that it would've run all through the remaining time I have left to write this book in, but frankly...I haven't really thought about it since last year, don't have any materials prepared, and it's more stress than I can handle for money I'm thankfully not in immediate need of. Perhaps that part of my life is over, barring occasional lectures and what-have-you; if so, I think I'm okay with the concept.
Otherwise: Went looking for stuff based on The Magician's Nephew and found this amazing piece of fanart, here (http://suburbanbeatnik.deviantart.com/art/The-Magician-s-Nephew-67053697). As I told Steve, I remained convinced for years that I had seen a version of the book with an original engraving illustrating almost the same scene--Jadis, holding Polly and Diggory's hands, framed in the bottom left corner with perspective behind them, looking out onto the vast, ruined expanse of Charn as the massive sun and lonely star stared down above. And Steve said he thought he'd seen that too! But no...it's just the after-taste of a paragraph describing the same scene, maybe cross-cut with my own memories of the dead city of Kor from H. Rider Haggard's She, and possibly this variant book-cover in which somebody's very obviously trying to keep to the original artist's style (http://eq5.net/baynes/xl-n-sett/pleasure-in-reading-1mn-010861.html). Probably based on the moment right after Jadis blasts the doors, it almost works, aside from her being dressed completely in green; I always "saw" Jadis as being in shades of red, black, gold and purple, as befits a seven-foot pseudo-Babylonian half-giant/half-jinn.
So much inspiration in my life stems from that book, it's sort of scary...I remember dreaming up all this speculation as to what Charnish culture was like, or what exactly sparked the war between Jadis and her sister (were they twins? Was it like Cleopatra and Berenice?), or even forming this weird theory based on "memories" of yet another non-existant illustration--Jadis sitting in her throat in the Hall of Images, towering above Diggory, Polly and all the rest of her ancestors--that the Charnish dynastics were getting larger rather than smaller as their family got more and more in-bred, as though the giantish blood was become super-concentrated. Did the Narnian giants of Harfang consider the Witch their cousin, or even worship her as a progenitor deity? Not the "nice" ones, obviously...but then again, "nice" Narnian giants seem universally fairly stupid. The Harfangers were both smarter and scarier, particularly in their ability to use charm and lies rather than total brutal strength.
Finally, why did I not know about the awesomeness of Saki's short story "Sredni Vashtar", which is also very much congruent with my interests? "Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar"--chilling, and very much in line with my feeling that gods can be created through worship, but that when gods enter into transactive relationships with humans involving sacrifice, both sides end up becoming deformed by their own expectations. You'll find a .pdf of it here, so check it out (http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0072.pdf).
Okay, gotta get my act together, run some errands, then drop the boy off at Mai-Mai's. See youse.
