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Fic progress
Now on a new notebook (the ancient ledger is finally full: 90 pages at ~500 words per page: circa 45,000 words) which is much lighter to carry and has much thinner, more closely-ruled pages. This one seems to run at about 300 words/page, so at 100 pages that means I've got room for another 30,000 words in the story. I think I'm over halfway.
Three chapters done of Arctic/Nautical Raoul so far. Currently he is still having small-boat adventures, but I need to get him back on board the Requin in the coming chapter... I'm a bit worried about how comprehensible the nautical vocabulary is going to be (when I talk about a 'sea-anchor', people are going to assume the boat is somehow moored to the bottom -- in the middle of the sea!), and I am trying to bear in mind that either the general gist of any term needs to be apparent from the context or else merely a matter of local colouring :-(
As far as I remember, I myself learnt all my nautical terminology from novels before I ever did any practical sailing, but I don't remember how those authors managed it.
Two more characters created to fill out the roster: Boudin, of whom nothing is known save that he was the third man on board the other boat (with Perret and Reux), and Reux, a Jerseyman whose real name is Le Maistre, and who is a swarthy piratical-looking type hinted to have earned a living 'salvaging' ships that didn't need to be rescued :-p
The salvaging operation is his suggestion...
By a strange coincidence, I came across a Parker Vector fountain-pen being thrown away that was identical to my own (it even appears to have the fine nib), and managed to scavenge a replacement lid, since mine had become distinctly sloppy and kept dropping off in bags, etc. I was a bit suprised that it was the actual metal lid and not the somewhat battered plastic of the nib unit that was causing the problem, but presumably it had become slightly deformed by being dropped too many times...
I'm keeping the other pen as a backup/spare.
Three chapters done of Arctic/Nautical Raoul so far. Currently he is still having small-boat adventures, but I need to get him back on board the Requin in the coming chapter... I'm a bit worried about how comprehensible the nautical vocabulary is going to be (when I talk about a 'sea-anchor', people are going to assume the boat is somehow moored to the bottom -- in the middle of the sea!), and I am trying to bear in mind that either the general gist of any term needs to be apparent from the context or else merely a matter of local colouring :-(
As far as I remember, I myself learnt all my nautical terminology from novels before I ever did any practical sailing, but I don't remember how those authors managed it.
Two more characters created to fill out the roster: Boudin, of whom nothing is known save that he was the third man on board the other boat (with Perret and Reux), and Reux, a Jerseyman whose real name is Le Maistre, and who is a swarthy piratical-looking type hinted to have earned a living 'salvaging' ships that didn't need to be rescued :-p
The salvaging operation is his suggestion...
By a strange coincidence, I came across a Parker Vector fountain-pen being thrown away that was identical to my own (it even appears to have the fine nib), and managed to scavenge a replacement lid, since mine had become distinctly sloppy and kept dropping off in bags, etc. I was a bit suprised that it was the actual metal lid and not the somewhat battered plastic of the nib unit that was causing the problem, but presumably it had become slightly deformed by being dropped too many times...
I'm keeping the other pen as a backup/spare.