Well, swipe me!

[essayel]

I think I've wittered on about the movie that has been made locally. "Resistance" is based on a novel of the same name by local novelist/poet Owen Sheers and it will go on general release on 25th November. Well, astoundingly, the film premiere is going to be at our tiny local cinema on Monday 21st. And even the hoi polloi can attend if they can get one of the few public tickets. The curator is going, natch, and one of my colleagues is determined to attend, to represent the custodial stuff [makes us sound like we carry night sticks and tasers, dunnit?]

I'm not going because a] £40 to watch a film I can see a day or two later for £6.50 doesn't seem like good sense to me with Christmas coming up and b] Nanowrimo will be kicking my ass about then. But I tell you who IS going! Only HRH Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of all kinds of other places, and presumably an awful lot of scary men in suits with bulges under their arms. Curator and colleague's dress buying activities are going to be even more strenuous now.

I'm having my usual love/hate relationship with Nanowrimo. Last year I just wrote as fast as I could and didn't worry about anything other than my word count [and trying to end each day with a bit of a bang to amuse the people who had been added to the Gdoc of it]. This meant that I wandered off the point a lot and 50k was only half a story rather than a whole one. This year I'm not nearly as well prepared, even though the plot is laid out for me, and I'm finding I'm wandering about again. I've managed 15k and had hoped to actually have the real business of the story going, but instead I'm fiddling around with character development stuff. I need to have some big jumps in time scale to just get the damned story written!

Comments

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[rhi]

Hey, you're not expecting 50K to finish it as a novel so don't worry about it. If the characters want to tell you development stuff now, write that and count it. You can edit it in as small details/background later.

Meanwhile, 15K, go you! (Today's the 10th; you have 15K; you need 16.6K to be on target. You're going great, keep it up!)

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[essayel.livejournal.com]

18.5k now, thanks to a day off and www.writeordie.org! You're perfectly right. What I write now will just be a very rough first draft that will require a lot of editing.But I'd LOVE to get the bare bones of the story completely finished, so I can second draft it after November. I'm trying to be more disciplined. :D though It's tough when I keep thinking up daft things for my people to do.

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[rhi]

You can edit it back to reasonable levels of daftness later? ;-> Have fun! And congrats on 18.5 K!

[surexit.livejournal.com]

But £40 to meet HRH! VALUE. :D

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I might go down and wave a "Are you one of the 99%" flag at him. :D

I don't mind him, actually. I think it's grand that he turns out to support a local endeavor like this.

[surexit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm kind of fond of him, aside from my distaste at EVERYTHING HE REPRESENTS. I think he's quite a nice person.

An idiot about architecture, though.

[innerslytherin]

That looks like a fascinating movie. I hope it makes it my way. :)

I'm doing a rotten job at NaNoWriMo this year. I keep getting caught up in research and not doing the actual writing. Any chance you could point me in the direction of a good source on medieval mining? Or even Roman era? Gold, coal, whatever, doesn't really matter. I'm just having a devil of a time finding stuff about anything before, say, 1820. *sigh*

[essayel.livejournal.com]

The best source I know for everything from Roman to the Victorians is the Free Miners organisation of the Forest of Dean. There were Roman mines for coal and iron ore that just continued to be worked all through the dark ages, medieval period and into the modern age. The Forest is riddled with workings, some of whch you can go down. I've been deep level caving through the Roman parts and it's very eerie seeing the pick marks in the walls and knowing they were made 1400 years ago. Also - tunnels two feet deep, with 3 inches of water, pushing a basket and operating by the light of a candle stuck to a stick held between the teeth - they were MEN then. Or slaves, which is a more worrying thought.

There's some info here http://www.clearwellcaves.com/freemining.html and more elsewhere on the web.

Incidentally the stick with the flared end that held the candle was called a 'nelly' and I wonder if that it the origination of the phrase "not on your nelly".

[innerslytherin]

You are awesome! I knew you would know something about this. Thank you so much! I especially love the ochre mining. And now I have another reason I want to visit the Forest of Dean when I finally make it to England.

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

What is the theme of the story?

[essayel.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Gododdin - to cut long story short, it's an early welsh poem ascribed to Aneurin, taking the form of burial elegies for 300 cavalrymen from southern Scotland who took on a much larger force of Anglo-Saxons and were beaten catastrophically. Most of the poem is lost so only 82 of the warriors are named. Also there's a great deal of argument about the translation. I'm filling in some gaps with Dark Ages heroism, handsome warriors, brave steeds, blood, gore, plentiful angst and a leavening of humour. It's a bit like "300" only with more clothes and no elephants. :) It's fun when I'm not worrying about my word count.

[innerslytherin]

I have just been reading a bit about Y Gododdin! Mostly by mistake, because I was reading about medieval beliefs and sagas and themes, but how exciting! :)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I definitely want to see that one.

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I've seen lots of clips now and it's very much part of the school of British understated acting. I think it's going to be a nice change.

[vespican.livejournal.com]

The thought of actually taking part in NANOWRIMO crosses my mind a couple times each year. Usually when November comes around I modify it to attempting to work on the WIP that has not seen much progress for many months. Just seems that so many other things come up, that getting back to my third Stone Island Sea Story never happens.

Best of luck to you!
Dave

[essayel.livejournal.com]

Thanks Dave. I've just cracked 27k and feel quite proud of myself, though I did much better last year.

Maybe you could try picowrimo where you set your own target for the month? 25K or 20k might not be so daunting?

[sandra-lindsey.livejournal.com]

They were making a film up our way a couple of weeks back - some cutesy Christmas-themed sequel-thing with kids and stuff... oh, and David Tennant. I wasn't involved at all though (except for nearly driving into various crew who were having a pre-breakfast wander all over the road near my house).

Your local-film looks much more interesting.

[essayel.livejournal.com]

David Tennat - what fun!

Isn't it good that Wales is cheap and has lots of different kinds of scenery? It's fun spotting bits of it on tv and in movies.