Goat Notes

A first and merely qualitative attempt:

Degree of concern disclaimed	Acoustic Unit	Scatologic Unit	Erotic Unit
Significant	Hoot	Shit	Fuck
Detectable	Whinge	Fart	Stroke
Extreme	Holler	Sewer	Orgy

Notes:

1) The use of toss for stroke is henceforth deprecated, due to its popular abuse as a synonym for the larger unit. It is probably not worth bothering with at all.

2) The levels of indifference within each magnitude category are conjectured to be approximately comparable across scales, but accurate determination of the conversion ratios awaits a fully comprehensive survey of the socio-linguistic-apathetic landscape, and:

3) Nobody gives that much of a Care Bear.

The Personal Astronomer

I always think of you as William Herschel,
The fields of heaven spread before your eyes,
And you screwed tightly to your telescope
Discovering Uranus.

*

(The old ones are always the best.)

To which my protagonist's not-unreasonable reaction is, "That's it?  Mind out in case we get our souls eaten by the Wedding-Cake of Evil and the fucking Pig and Whistle?  Who even comes up with this stuff?"

And the measured response is something like, "'hem.  The kind of people who met one of the nice things there, so they more or less got home to scribble about it.  It's not a healthy interest, I'm afraid.  Coming?"

This jingle jangle  may or may not get into the final yarn, when it comes together.  The ambience and a few of the Things mentioned might hint at one of the literary influences on the developing story.

Did you know that sentences like this violate the laws of grammar, art, and manners, and make people want to punch you in the word processor.

Why not upgrade to courteous and stylish for only a few extra pixels.

*shakes fists at sky*

WHAT IMBECILE WEASELWAXER IS TRAINING PEOPLE TO DO THIS??????????

 Visiting family in Ohio just now, so little time to write, and less to post.  But I did just finish revising Scene17/Chapter Seven of the book.  Hard replotting is hard but is feeling really worthwhile.

Back to substantial posts and comments when I've made my way back over Lost Atlantis again.

Finished the first scene in the revised Fairfields Arc.  It was at least 50% erase-and-start-again.  I gave Luke's hosts better sense in how to deal with obviously traumatized and very very dangerous patients, and I gave Luke a better apple than he got last time.  Also, Makepeace Hall and its bit of land now have an actual - if very crude - map in my workbook, and an approximate daily routine against which everything else takes place.

Chief credit for helping me make sense of the Hall's domestic economy goes to:

- my mother, Jean Woodland, for many nerding sessions and pointed questions that have rendered many previously invisible things visible;

- that invaluable sourcebook, overview, and jumping-off point, Life in a Medieval Village, by Frances and Joseph Gies;

- green_knight and her many thoughtful postings on the writing process, for persuading me into the following excellent habit: When in doubt, map it out!

Oh, and the apple?  Here is the apple of awesome which I found out about while messing around, and immediately scrumped for my own use because it is such a perfect fit for this setting.  Read 'em and drool!

Chugging along here restructuring the Fairfields Arc, with several new scenes in prospect, and a much stronger rôle for Katy Elflocks herself.   Fixing of plotting and pacing continues.  I have two alternative timelines on the go, one of which is going to have to be eliminated before I know just what the whole plot and flavour will turn out like.  More work on hand before it's clear which version works best.

The great climactic scene of the arc, slightly revised for physical feasibility of the parts that are supposed to be physically feasible.  The Big Bad revealed in all its chaotic terror. 

A running challenge through the rest of the story has been to avoid making every future encounter with BB into a relative damp squib.  I still have work to do on those others.  Power-ups are not an option because this is not that kind of story.  I'm counting heavily on the unwritten "Triona's Way" arclet to bridge the gap between the obvious reasons to be scared of the Bad, and the right reasons to be scared of it.  That aspect is all developed in the text already: unfortunately, it's developed as I discovered it, rather than as I want the reader to meet it. 

This completes the revision of the Last Quest arc.  I certainly haven't finalized every last dot and comma, but every part of this first section now describes exactly what happens, in pretty much exactly the way it's to be told.  I have some standard polishing routines which I'll be running in parallel with the rewriting of the next arc, which have been so generally useful to me that I'll probably give them their own post in the fairly near future. 

But they're almost mechanical.  The big job of the revision is next: the sprawling, exploratory, and curate's-eggy mess that is the Fairfields Arc.  It will be hard work - the scene correspondence isn't going to be one-to-one between drafts in this section, I know that much already! - and also it ought to be a lot of fun.  Fairfields is, almost by definition, a place I love to visit.

For now I'm knocking off with one of the four big arcs completed, only three days behind schedule.  Off to shop for a big bunch of travel I have coming up - and then to celebrate!

In a culture whose nearest best approach to a great redemptive figure would be either Bacchus or alt-Alexander, a penitent has to take her rôle models where she can find them - however ill they fit her...

A little cleaning up; a little removal of inexplicable character amnesia/insouciance/boneheadedness about what this ought to remind them of; and a bit of foreshadowing of something I had yet to discover, first time around, for at least another fifteen chapters.

Next comes the climax of the arc.  I foresee a lot of time spent swearing at bad sketch-maps of the terrain where it happens.  Action scenes are a bastard that way!

Tired of reading liberals' lazy anti-libertarian caricatures on the Internet, I thought it was time I created a properly researched one of my own. All of the wisdoms below the cut have been encountered in speech, text, or action, up and including Number 30, from persons professing some sort of libertarian affiliation or other. Whilst I could certainly come up with a selection just as bad from other political stances, it is not my job to suggest to anybody how to be a piss-poor progressive or a crappy conservative, so I shall leave those tasks to others more closely concerned with them.

( Thirty-six ways to fox your freedom )