Sarah Avery (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dr_pretentious) wrote2005-11-15 11:46 pm
dr_pretentious) wrote2005-11-15 11:46 pm
The Halfway Mark in Sight, I Pine for Clausewitz
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22,123 / 50,000 (44.2%) |
New words: 1736
Current deficit: 2882 Shrinking again!
Working conditions: Longhand at Starbucks in New Brunswick in afternoon with fretful Breva the Axe; after-dinner excursion to B&N with Dan, where I typed from longhand notes while he did research for the GURPS campaign we run; ineffectually attempting to type fresh words while we watched the second half of The Two Towers; typing fresh words in my study after Dan went to bed. Persistent cat on keyboard.
Notable accomplishments: In addition to exceeding quota slightly, I reworked all my Stisele chapter documents into standard manuscript format (which I should have done in the first place when I set them up, duh), and set up correctly formatted new files for the Laurebes interludes, which I hadn't bothered with before November. I had to do something! I had accumulated a small mountain of hard copy with no page or chapter numbers, and was driving myself crazier than strictly necessary.
Notable story incidents: Stisele witnessed death in battle for the first time today. She can see the spirits of the dying as they leave their bodies, and it really freaks her out. Also, Harentil's about to get shipped off to Twenty Locks to study medicine. Harentil doesn't mind so much, because it's what she had in mind to do eventually anyway, but Stisele's heartsick, since the House elders intend it as a sort of banishment. That'll teach those girls to sneak The Book of Cloud out of the library! Keep 'em separated.
Those of you who watched while I bludgeoned my inner scholar to death in my desperate bid to escape from academia will be surprised to read the following sentence:
It pains me terribly that I cannot immerse myself in research.
Back in October, I bought a lovely clothbound edition of Clausewitz's On War, thinking I would have time for some research before Nanowrimo started. Joke's on me. Didn't get to it. The book is flirting with me from across my study. It has...not masculine wiles, exactly, though if the book had a gender, it would certainly be masculine. Informational wiles, that's what they are. Every time I run into a plot problem, I am absolutely certain that reading Clausewitz would make everything come clear. On War is now among the books to which I impute bizarre salvific powers. (And if only I made time to finish Carlyle's The French Revolution, then Hands of Beltresa would magically become irresistible to editors and agents, through the power of its luminous accuracy. Really. And it will, too. Just you wait and see!)
At least it's been a good teaching day. Four weeks ago, when I first met my newest student, Model U.N. Girl, she was unable to name, let alone define, ANY of the parts of speech. Today, she was able to explain in her own words what it means to say that a verb tense is simple, progressive, perfect, or both progressive and perfect. I'd like to be able to claim credit for her improvement, but it's so dramatic, this has to be a case of native ability previously unprompted.
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Karen Elizabeth Gordon's approach is to tell you what you can get away with, and to urge you to get away with it. For an adult writer of fiction, especially a native speaker of English with decent ear training, The Transitive Vampire and The Well-Tempered Sentence are adequate refresher courses on the rules, and Gordon's examples are hilarious sentences. They're not really suitable for children, though--all that salacious deployment of clip-art collage!--and they're not designed to be user-friendly for teaching.
It's not embarrassing. If I weren't teaching grammar, I wouldn't remember how to explain what my ear knows, either.
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