Now that the November novel is written, I should be blogging a little more often.
The title needs more work.
Another November, another 50,000 words, another novel.
I won't look at the mess for at least a week, and then I'll have a better idea of what's there.
Highlights of this whole mess:
The Jules Verne on the Great Eastern took a strange and promising turn. It always bothered me that Verne didn't provide any explanation about captain Nemo. Since nature abhors a vacuum, I was nature's friend and created an identity for Nemo as Verne's alter ego haunting his dreams. The only significant insight into Nemo Verne gave us is his unlimited arrogance fueled by his absolute belief that all powerful men are arrogant and capricious. Starting with that, Nemo grew to resemble Satan from Paradise Lost. Verne's dreams while aboard the Great Eastern are filled with Nemo's successful efforts to foil the Great Eastern's 1865 cable expedition. As I write this I find myself wondering why Nemo wouldn't have just waited for the cable to be laid, and walk out with snips and make a few cuts. After all, pressure is not an issue in Nemo's ocean. That wouldn't have made much of a story.
The saga of Augustus Cary was expressed as a series of letters from Cary to his fiancee in Detroit. He never wondered if he would have great great grand children in California, since that would have been totally Mary Sue. This was by far the easiest to write, since I have written a lot of letters in my life, and the one verified sample of Augustus Cary's writing (a treatise about technical issues in cranberry farming by Stevens Point, WI) revealed a beautifully stilted Victorian era prose.
I honestly can't remember the story around the ship's building and launch. I've been too occupied with spitting out the 30,000 words after that story. I think it was historical fact through the lens of an angst filled engineer. Poor Isambard Kingdom Brunel got killed twice, since his collapse and death om the eve of the maiden voyage (I didn't make this part up, it happened) touched Augustus Cary as well as the engineers.
I am tired of writing now. That's all.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
1 comment:
It's a good title -- has a sort of flow and comes complete with a subtitle, like every good Victorian novel should!
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