An Air upon an A String
7 October 2019 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI cycled 15–20 miles today in incipient rain without lunch, waterproofs or a map in order to obtain a replacement 'A' string for my violin from the nearest surviving music shop, instead of just ordering one from Amazon like everyone else :-(
(The lack of equipment was because it was an impulse decision; I decided that as I was part of the way there already I really ought to take advantage of the opportunity while I thought of it, rather than returning home, by which point the shops would probably be shut. I didn't get there until almost five pm as it was.)
It wouldn't have taken quite so long if I hadn't managed to get lost on the way back as a result of turning off too soon and misjudging my direction while trying to navigate back onto my route by dead reckoning -- the only thing I can say in my favour is that I did realise after a while (when it started to rain) that the only way to get back safely was to retrace my tracks up hill and down dale until I worked out where I'd gone wrong. Precisely the sort of getting lost that never happens to anybody any more in the mobile internet era...
One small consolation is that the online price is still actually (to my surprise, given the economies of the warehouse approach) more expensive. Although the price difference would have about covered the bus fare and left my chafed and aching rear intact -- I didn't have my cycling shorts on, either :-p
Fanfic progress: I thought I was working my way through Plot Point 14 in the current chapter, but in fact I seem to have slipped over the edge into Plot Point 15, which I'd assumed didn't start until they discovered the hut. Plot Point 14 is evidently extremely short! (And that's even after having included a brief marriage-and-wedding-night sequence, my determination not to do so having weakened as a result of my concern that readers might be confused by an offstage marriage -- there was an opening for it in Christine's train of thought, so I worked it in.)
Just the one major scene of Plot Point Fifteen to be handled (I need to switch back to Raoul's point of view for that, but we've had plenty of balancing Christine-chapters now), and then I shall actually be within sight of the end. A strange thought.
Writing an entire novel on your own is a bit like being the only person in the audience in the cinema; you witness all these dramatic events played out on a broad canvas, but nobody else can see any of it...
I wonder if I can work Lancard's sister into the epilogue? We already know she has a weakness for the nobility, and if Christine could get Philippe to issue an invitation for her to share their window she would probably be delighted to come (Lancard is down below in the procession of course). That would tie that strand neatly back in.
The only end that's still a bit loose is Philippe's youthful romance, although the obvious place for that to tie in would have been the point where he gives his consent for them to marry. It didn't quite seem to fit with his motivations at that point, though, and I think its inclusion has already been justified in the context in which it was introduced, as an (intended) object lesson to Raoul that one doesn't actually die of a broken heart, however great the tragedy may seem at the time.
Marrying Philippe off to sister what-ever-her-name-was (oops! Gilbertine?) -- or even hinting at such a thing as a happy ending for him -- would be rather rushed and soap-opera-ish, I think. And I want to keep Philippe true to his philosophy: he really is entirely recovered from his youthful (and entirely genuine) passion for poor Paola, and quite content as a cynical bachelor who has armoured himself against any further such recurrences, rather than being a Tragic Broken Figure who needs the love of a good woman to make him whole.
(I've written two versions of a reasonably successful middle-aged marriage for Philippe already, and they were both undertaken in an entirely unromantic spirit.)
(The lack of equipment was because it was an impulse decision; I decided that as I was part of the way there already I really ought to take advantage of the opportunity while I thought of it, rather than returning home, by which point the shops would probably be shut. I didn't get there until almost five pm as it was.)
It wouldn't have taken quite so long if I hadn't managed to get lost on the way back as a result of turning off too soon and misjudging my direction while trying to navigate back onto my route by dead reckoning -- the only thing I can say in my favour is that I did realise after a while (when it started to rain) that the only way to get back safely was to retrace my tracks up hill and down dale until I worked out where I'd gone wrong. Precisely the sort of getting lost that never happens to anybody any more in the mobile internet era...
One small consolation is that the online price is still actually (to my surprise, given the economies of the warehouse approach) more expensive. Although the price difference would have about covered the bus fare and left my chafed and aching rear intact -- I didn't have my cycling shorts on, either :-p
Fanfic progress: I thought I was working my way through Plot Point 14 in the current chapter, but in fact I seem to have slipped over the edge into Plot Point 15, which I'd assumed didn't start until they discovered the hut. Plot Point 14 is evidently extremely short! (And that's even after having included a brief marriage-and-wedding-night sequence, my determination not to do so having weakened as a result of my concern that readers might be confused by an offstage marriage -- there was an opening for it in Christine's train of thought, so I worked it in.)
Just the one major scene of Plot Point Fifteen to be handled (I need to switch back to Raoul's point of view for that, but we've had plenty of balancing Christine-chapters now), and then I shall actually be within sight of the end. A strange thought.
Writing an entire novel on your own is a bit like being the only person in the audience in the cinema; you witness all these dramatic events played out on a broad canvas, but nobody else can see any of it...
I wonder if I can work Lancard's sister into the epilogue? We already know she has a weakness for the nobility, and if Christine could get Philippe to issue an invitation for her to share their window she would probably be delighted to come (Lancard is down below in the procession of course). That would tie that strand neatly back in.
The only end that's still a bit loose is Philippe's youthful romance, although the obvious place for that to tie in would have been the point where he gives his consent for them to marry. It didn't quite seem to fit with his motivations at that point, though, and I think its inclusion has already been justified in the context in which it was introduced, as an (intended) object lesson to Raoul that one doesn't actually die of a broken heart, however great the tragedy may seem at the time.
Marrying Philippe off to sister what-ever-her-name-was (oops! Gilbertine?) -- or even hinting at such a thing as a happy ending for him -- would be rather rushed and soap-opera-ish, I think. And I want to keep Philippe true to his philosophy: he really is entirely recovered from his youthful (and entirely genuine) passion for poor Paola, and quite content as a cynical bachelor who has armoured himself against any further such recurrences, rather than being a Tragic Broken Figure who needs the love of a good woman to make him whole.
(I've written two versions of a reasonably successful middle-aged marriage for Philippe already, and they were both undertaken in an entirely unromantic spirit.)
no subject
Date: 2019-10-07 10:38 pm (UTC)That has at least finally prompted me to go through tagging all the current posts on Lancard (all thirteen of them), a task which was becoming overdue -- not too bad, as they are all subsets of the 'swedish' tag, so I didn't have that many entries to check...
no subject
Date: 2019-10-08 02:04 pm (UTC)Philippe and romance don't go together in my mind, though he canonically has Sorelli for a mistress. Probably because he's Raoul's older and wiser brother, and therefore I see him as above such matters of the heart...
no subject
Date: 2019-10-09 02:15 pm (UTC)They seem to wear out faster than the others -- I've been carrying a spare E string (the thinnest) around for years without using it, expecting that one to go first. I wonder if it's something to do with the angle at which the string runs over that particular peg.
I'm not sure that Philippe is so much above matters of the heart as below them :-(
His liaison with Sorelli appears to be a far from romantic arrangement, and it's canonical that he's all in favour of Raoul's getting his end away with an opera singer but a lot less happy about it when he realises that his little brother has got himself seriously involved. "Il ne pardonnait point à Christine de faire souffrir Raoul, mais surtout il ne pardonnait point à Raoul, de souffrir pour Christine" -- "he could not forgive Christine for making Raoul suffer, but above all he could not forgive Raoul for suffering on Christine's account".
He's a fairly standard 'type' of the cynical man-about-town who considers romance to be a folly indulged in by the young and foolish; he takes his pleasures where he finds them, everyone concerned understands the rules in advance, and nobody gets hurt. From Philippe's perspective, Raoul's problem is that he has no sense of proportion.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-09 01:34 pm (UTC)