Research Roundup and a fall off the wagon
Aug. 20th, 2007 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clarentineShe walked up the bank, out of the stream, like a nymph, if nymphs had wind-chapped cheeks and callused hands and muscles built by men's labor.
Ah, Mary. You're going to kill me, girl.
Satisfaction is at something like 361 pages SMF, somewhere in the second act, and I'm swimming through the morass of the middle of the book to reach a second turning point I have not identified and the start of the third act. Argh!
It probably didn't help that I was well and truly vacating this past week while visiting with my parents and sister and her kids. Ah, well. I feel better for the downtime but it's mighty hard climbing back up on the horse.
Good thing it's only 750 words a day.
Guess I'd better get working on today's, eh?
*****
I've done lots of research since the last report, mostly relating to Jamaica and its northeastern coast and the water depths thereof. I studied up on bananas and tried to figure out if Hans Sloane would have seen a banana plant and what he'd have thought of it if he had.
Mostly, though, I spent my downtime trying to figure out how to do a revelation of gender scene that isn't totally farcical, and getting inside the head of a woman who'd lived several years under the guise of a man on not one but three ships and in an army unit, too. Mary Read was no shrinking violet, and she knew full well what choice she was making--not out of desperation, either. I want to do her justice. Anne Bonny was easier, once I'd made certain assumptions about her past. Mary has not been easy.
Ah, Mary. You're going to kill me, girl.
Satisfaction is at something like 361 pages SMF, somewhere in the second act, and I'm swimming through the morass of the middle of the book to reach a second turning point I have not identified and the start of the third act. Argh!
It probably didn't help that I was well and truly vacating this past week while visiting with my parents and sister and her kids. Ah, well. I feel better for the downtime but it's mighty hard climbing back up on the horse.
Good thing it's only 750 words a day.
Guess I'd better get working on today's, eh?
*****
I've done lots of research since the last report, mostly relating to Jamaica and its northeastern coast and the water depths thereof. I studied up on bananas and tried to figure out if Hans Sloane would have seen a banana plant and what he'd have thought of it if he had.
Mostly, though, I spent my downtime trying to figure out how to do a revelation of gender scene that isn't totally farcical, and getting inside the head of a woman who'd lived several years under the guise of a man on not one but three ships and in an army unit, too. Mary Read was no shrinking violet, and she knew full well what choice she was making--not out of desperation, either. I want to do her justice. Anne Bonny was easier, once I'd made certain assumptions about her past. Mary has not been easy.
