Just slugging it out - me versus the world. I am finding it hard to write, although I have now moved my desk - the window is behind me - all I have to look at is the fireplace, the books on the mantelshelf and the screen, it's good I think. I have rearranged things so that there's more space on the desk somehow. How long before it turns into the usual chaos of tottering piles, time will tell.
I have struggled to settle to writing today, once I got down to it I managed 2,600 words - mostly acceptable. However, a lot of time was spent looking up things like a quote from Ovid (hard, I couldn't remember the Latin - so had to find it in an English version... then find the Latin - harder because the English version didn't match line numbers... and then try to find out whether there was any blackout in WW1 - there wasn't apparently, but I am sure there was something after the Zepplin raids in 1915, but couldn't find the book that I would have read it in, then some John McCormack (providing the soundtrack for the hero)..
I have also been doing a lot of seat grooving today - listening to my new dance playlist and wriggling about in my chair - I don't think this is exercise, but it feels a bit like it. I am annoyed that I didn't go to London today - hope I can go next week - the research is vital. I want to have a lot of stuff fermenting when I go to the Minster Abbey retreat - in the hope that it will all emerge. On the other hand, it will be a bugger not having the internet - I am so used to Googling for factoids. Last week I was reading We will not Fight by Will Ellsworth-Jones - about conchies. It was helpful, and interesting, but the amount of reading done to get at the half dozen juicy facts I actually needed was shocking. I'd like to find something more focussed - but it wouldn't make a very interesting book I suspect. The Indigent Writer's Guide to Historic Factoids gosh, one could have a whole series - like Terry Dreary's Horrible Histories... I am always having these ideas (well, since I was about 14 - when I wanted to write a Who's who of Tudor England - but I suspect that's been done).
What I'd really enjoy doing is a Who's who at the Court of Louis XIV - perhaps I should do it for my own amusement... M le Duc du Chevrefeuil is a name that comes to mind - but who is he? Chum of St. Simon's I think - his father in law perhaps? Perhaps this liking for little factual books of biographical nuggets is a bit aspy... Actually, I don't think he was called du Chevrefeuil - because that's French for the herb Chervil...Populating a book with imaginary aristocrats could have a certain anarchic panache, there would be a competition for people who worked out which ones were made-up. Have to avoid obvious blunders like using actual French nouns..I've noticed that the majority of the leading aristos at Versailles had titles which referred to properties in the Isle de France and the Beauce - presumably where the best land was - or the longest titles (couldn't award titles for places in Burgundy you didn't rule until 15thC), so that would be the place to look: the Michelin atlas..
Thank God for autobrain - if I was using my actual powers of ratiocination at present this would be a very dull entry indeed. And so to bed.
I have struggled to settle to writing today, once I got down to it I managed 2,600 words - mostly acceptable. However, a lot of time was spent looking up things like a quote from Ovid (hard, I couldn't remember the Latin - so had to find it in an English version... then find the Latin - harder because the English version didn't match line numbers... and then try to find out whether there was any blackout in WW1 - there wasn't apparently, but I am sure there was something after the Zepplin raids in 1915, but couldn't find the book that I would have read it in, then some John McCormack (providing the soundtrack for the hero)..
I have also been doing a lot of seat grooving today - listening to my new dance playlist and wriggling about in my chair - I don't think this is exercise, but it feels a bit like it. I am annoyed that I didn't go to London today - hope I can go next week - the research is vital. I want to have a lot of stuff fermenting when I go to the Minster Abbey retreat - in the hope that it will all emerge. On the other hand, it will be a bugger not having the internet - I am so used to Googling for factoids. Last week I was reading We will not Fight by Will Ellsworth-Jones - about conchies. It was helpful, and interesting, but the amount of reading done to get at the half dozen juicy facts I actually needed was shocking. I'd like to find something more focussed - but it wouldn't make a very interesting book I suspect. The Indigent Writer's Guide to Historic Factoids gosh, one could have a whole series - like Terry Dreary's Horrible Histories... I am always having these ideas (well, since I was about 14 - when I wanted to write a Who's who of Tudor England - but I suspect that's been done).
What I'd really enjoy doing is a Who's who at the Court of Louis XIV - perhaps I should do it for my own amusement... M le Duc du Chevrefeuil is a name that comes to mind - but who is he? Chum of St. Simon's I think - his father in law perhaps? Perhaps this liking for little factual books of biographical nuggets is a bit aspy... Actually, I don't think he was called du Chevrefeuil - because that's French for the herb Chervil...Populating a book with imaginary aristocrats could have a certain anarchic panache, there would be a competition for people who worked out which ones were made-up. Have to avoid obvious blunders like using actual French nouns..I've noticed that the majority of the leading aristos at Versailles had titles which referred to properties in the Isle de France and the Beauce - presumably where the best land was - or the longest titles (couldn't award titles for places in Burgundy you didn't rule until 15thC), so that would be the place to look: the Michelin atlas..
Thank God for autobrain - if I was using my actual powers of ratiocination at present this would be a very dull entry indeed. And so to bed.
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