It's getting there. I've changed the hero's name three times now, but I think "Will" is going to stick. Also I demoted a nobleman, got sidetracked by some research, and re-thought the hair color of my antagonist.
Anyway I'm pretty sure I'll have it done in time for this contest deadline. Crossing my fingers I won't get a judge who values scenic description above all else, because I'm a little thin on that.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
What I'm Reading: Under the Banner of Heaven
This is Jon Krakauer's book about the Mormon religion and specifically the radical FLDS offshoot. Subtitled A Story of Violent Faith.
This stuff - specifically, the disadvantaged position of women in the FLDS society - fascinates me the same way I'm fascinated by Victorian marriage horror-stories. (Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Daniel Deronda.) Marriage, in a society where men have a disproportionate share of the power, can so easily devolve into a nightmare for women. And in an era where women didn't really have other options for supporting themselves, the stakes for choosing a partner and/or falling in love were incredibly high. I'd like to see a bit more of that awareness in historical romance.
Under the Banner narrates several instances of women whose husbands converted to FLDS ideals and became convinced it was their religious duty to take additional wives. Good God. After marrying in the church, and agreeing to the "forsaking all others" bit. How does any woman come to terms with that?
This stuff - specifically, the disadvantaged position of women in the FLDS society - fascinates me the same way I'm fascinated by Victorian marriage horror-stories. (Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Daniel Deronda.) Marriage, in a society where men have a disproportionate share of the power, can so easily devolve into a nightmare for women. And in an era where women didn't really have other options for supporting themselves, the stakes for choosing a partner and/or falling in love were incredibly high. I'd like to see a bit more of that awareness in historical romance.
Under the Banner narrates several instances of women whose husbands converted to FLDS ideals and became convinced it was their religious duty to take additional wives. Good God. After marrying in the church, and agreeing to the "forsaking all others" bit. How does any woman come to terms with that?
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
What I'm writing: 7.2 (still)
The hero and heroine have gotten into an argument, which they did not when this scene happened from her POV. Granted, when it was in her POV it came later in the story, too, and so maybe they were less prone to argue.
Progress has been slowed by that development, by not one but two sick kids at home this week, and by a sudden determination to crank out page 1 of the next MS for submission to Dear Author. Except yesterday I poked around that site and the First Page submission form is, ominously, no longer to be found. Maybe they've been snowed under with submissions and have decided not to take any new ones for awhile. (I'm sure there's something like a 2-year wait by now.)
At any rate my local RWA chapter has a first-few-pages contest with a deadline coming up very soon, so I think I'll aim for that.
Progress has been slowed by that development, by not one but two sick kids at home this week, and by a sudden determination to crank out page 1 of the next MS for submission to Dear Author. Except yesterday I poked around that site and the First Page submission form is, ominously, no longer to be found. Maybe they've been snowed under with submissions and have decided not to take any new ones for awhile. (I'm sure there's something like a 2-year wait by now.)
At any rate my local RWA chapter has a first-few-pages contest with a deadline coming up very soon, so I think I'll aim for that.
What I'm reading: still The Old Curiosity Shop
Page 367:
Some men in his blighted position would have taken to drinking; but as Mr Swiveller had taken to that before, he only took, on receiving the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever, to playing the flute; thinking after mature consideration that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation, not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbours.
Love.
And that, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order, is a sentence! Two semicolons, seven commas, seventy-four words, and absolute confidence in the reader's attention span.
Some men in his blighted position would have taken to drinking; but as Mr Swiveller had taken to that before, he only took, on receiving the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever, to playing the flute; thinking after mature consideration that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation, not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbours.
Love.
And that, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order, is a sentence! Two semicolons, seven commas, seventy-four words, and absolute confidence in the reader's attention span.
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