Igenlode Wordsmith

"Before Dorothy", Hazel Gaynor

2026-05-10T18:09:32Z

Unfortunately I'm not sure I can use Before Dorothy as a 'comp', because it managed to thoroughly get up my nose within the first few pages, in addition to being nothing like my story :-(

In many ways it reminded me a lot of fan-fic, which raises the spectre that perhaps this type of fan-fic is not, as I had supposed, merely incompetent, but is actively attempting to emulate this type of book... :-O ( Read more... )

The basic concept of the book is fine, and the plot, such as it is, is fine. (Not entirely sure about the Big Twist, but the author had to get some dramatic conflict out of somewhere.) The execution of those ideas is what kills it for me.

If I'd just pulled this book down off the shelf in the library out of curiosity without knowing anything about it, I would definitely have put it back almost immediately, since it doesn't meet the 'read a few random pages, care about the characters and want to know what happens next' test. As it was, I persevered through 384 pages of the stuff -- given that what I'd been reading previously was Rumer Godden, Jack London, and Barbara Hambly, the difference in prose quality was all too apparent. You know you've got a problem when you find yourself consciously having to force yourself to continue reading a novel instead of taking refuge in your Russian textbook!

It also immediately makes me want to start editing it...

( Rewrite )

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Multiple variants

2026-02-08T15:47:46Z

I heard a woodpecker drumming this afternoon -- an unusual sign of spring, but a sign nonethless...

Thinking out loud:
I have almost translated the final section of my current song project -- or to be more precise I have translated it in multiple variants, none of which are entirely satisfactory :-(( Read more... )

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Two failed attempts

2025-11-24T21:08:58Z

Have I ever mentioned that I really, really dislike writing with no idea where I'm supposed to be going? :-(
( Multiple attempts towards an ending ) Not one of my best last lines, but it will do for a fic that basically doesn't have a storyline, the message being that Venya arrives as a 'waif and stray' and has now carved out a foreseeable place for himself in future at Bragelonne.)

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Another version

2025-09-30T00:08:08Z

All right, I think we have a new version of that final quatrain of the first verse( Read more... )

The word-order of the original Russian actually is a bit mashed up at this point thanks to poetic licence, so I can decently get away with a little enjambement, I hope...

Literal translation at this point:

Of the complicated earthly carousel
He takes care, and himself no longer remembers
How many, in order to save me,
Miracles he had accomplished from time to time.

Old version:

Across the weary whirling world enduring
He watches, and himself cannot recall
What miracles on my behalf procuring
The angel has accomplished, all in all.

( New version )
( Even newer version )

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Half a second verse

2025-09-25T20:04:46Z

I managed to get the first four lines of the second verse of All Shall Be Well today relatively easily, compared to my extreme struggles with the second half of the first verse (and I'm still not entirely happy with the outcome of that one, looking back on it). But the next quatrain came fairly quickly once I'd worked out that I could rhyme "sombre note" with "underfoot" -- which is frankly no more approximate than some of the rhymes in the original and sounds perfectly fine in the context of the music. And unsurprisingly it's very much easier to work backwards from the rhyming ends of lines than forwards (as in the previous verse) by translating the meaning of the entire line and then trying to fill in the spare syllables with something that rhymes and doesn't mangle the sense...

I had some trouble with the first line, not least because I'm still not quite clear about the function of Пусть there -- *not*, I think, the "Let it be so" that it normally represents, but more along the lines of "what if"/"even if". At any rate I have chosen to use 'poetic licence' to treat it as such!

First attempt at the first line:
"Though seemingly existence nears its ending"
Subsequently improved to
"Though life may seem upon the point of ending", which is a nice example of how you can translate the same thing twice in the same metre using the same rhyme-scheme and come up with multiple differing versions :-)

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Two versions

2025-08-18T20:25:46Z

I am *still* struggling with Наша честь -- I managed to 'fix' the first verse by rhyming 'infinity' with 'misery' (the original lyrics only do half-rhymes for the 'off' couplets anyway, e.g. то ещё (tò eshcho -- 'something else') with сокровище (sokròvishche -- 'treasure')). I got a credible translation for the start of the second verse as "we've had a tough time of it", by means of repeatedly adding and removing different words when submitting the phrase to an auto-translator, and that is basically covered by the various variants I had there already, as opposed "we still have time", which means something very different!

But I was never very happy with the all-important chorus, and have been repeatedly attempting to find an alternative translation that manages to fit in more of the elements of the original( Read more... )

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Similes in-period

2025-06-10T01:42:06Z

I had already realised that I can't use "live-wire" to describe a character in the 17th century; it has now dawned upon me that I can't use the analogy of a child's jerky clockwork toy either. Nineteenth-century, yes; seventeenth, no :-p

(I decided to go for the miller releasing the pent-up mill-stream as an idea of jostling, uneven energy...)

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Translating 18th century prose

2024-07-28T22:51:41Z

Having stumbled across the Wikipedia page for Thomas Cromwell's nephew out of mild curiosity as to how he acquired the surname 'Cromwell' despite being descended from the sister of Henry VIII's minister, I ended up spending eight hours or so in 'translating' virtually the entire page into 20th-century English prose out of the original text by an 18th-century antiquarian, which had been cut and pasted virtually verbatim to create the initial article. (I do not aspire to 21st-century prose: 'glow-up', 'call out' and 'problematic' are not in my vocabulary :-p)

Original 'untranslated' version

We shall see how much of it survives; I ended up having to do a good deal of research in order to check the validity of the various references I was trying to repurpose, and found at least two apparent errors in the original in the process. I also now know a great deal more about the said nephew than I did previously, my prior acquaintance being limited to the background of "Wolf Hall" -- but I am *not* an expert of any kind on the era, and limited myself to the existing sources already cited in the article.

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Fire and ice

2024-04-20T16:46:57Z

Yet another sample rewrite, trying to make the original into more of an 'action scene' and less choppy/laborious to read (which, ironically, for me at least means writing your 'action' with *longer* sentences, and not the ultra-short fragments often advocated as being a means of improving the pacing...)
As usual, it also ends up being an exercise in pulling out the necessary elements from amidst the unnecessary extra detail -- why is it so hard to do that with my *own* fiction? :-(
( Read more... )

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Batman and Alfred

2024-01-17T17:30:28Z

Perpetuating here (as opposed to perpetrating, but doing that as well) another piece of random Internet editing, because I did put far more thought and fiddling-around-with-wording into it than the recipient will ever have the faintest idea :-p

Alfred: "Master Bruce, you're back!"
Alfred: "What are you wearing?"

Bruce: "I'll tell you later."

Bruce walks into the manor, and walks towards the stairs.

"Master Bruce, you're back!" Alfred's smile faded to a rather appalled look. "But what on earth are you wearing?"
"I'll tell you later," Bruce said briefly, walking past him and straight up the stairs.

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Too many fingers

2023-10-27T09:17:48Z

Chapter 33 of Arctic Raoul complete at 3398 after editing; total word count now ~122,500.

In this chapter my bugbear was a spate of five finger-references within the space of about 200 words:

Christine captured Erik's slackening fingers and guided them back to rest → Christine captured Erik's slackening grasp and guided it back to lie in repose

His hands were fumbling across her fingers → His hands were groping weakly across hers again

She slipped the slim band from her finger and pressed it into the palm of one questing hand, closing his fingers around it → She drew off her slim wedding band[...] closing his grasp around it

I retained "She raised a finger briefly to her lips" as the sole survivor in this passage, though I could have substituted "gestured for silence" or something similar, since we have "took up the ring and set it once more upon her finger" 150 words later, at the start of the next scene -- but it's a different context, and it 'sounds' all right to me. Likewise I note that I managed to duplicate "grasp" in the course of my editing, but that doesn't jump out at me in the way all that finger-feeling did :-p

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Fewer arms

2023-08-08T23:56:59Z

Doing the very final edits to Chapters 30 and 31, and discovering no fewer than five references to characters being held in 'his/her arms', to be altered in favour of other wording :-p

"found grateful oblivion in her arms"→"in her embrace"
"Christine hit solid earth with an inelegant thud, knees buckling. Raoul's arms were round her from behind, straining her tight"→"Raoul caught her from behind, clasping her tight"
"set his arms about Christine"→"caught Christine to him with a long sigh"
"slept last night with her clasped safe in his arms"→"clasped close against his heart"

Raoul gets to keep the last one: "he could lose himself in her arms without a thought for Erik" :-p

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Name edit

2023-06-15T20:14:50Z

I changed the name of the old midwife in What's In a Name? from Mère Mégane ("Old Mother Mégane") to Albine, after discovering that people were interpreting this as an anachronistic attempt to call the character 'Meg-short-for-Megan' :-O

To be honest I don't know *where* I got the name from (unlikely to have been from modern Americanised pop culture as I don't read that sort of French!) Possibly subconsciously from Messrs Renault, although I would guess that I was probably simply looking for a rare name -- e.g. not drawing from the standard Phantom writers' limited female palette of Marie/Louise/Jeanne/Blanche/Angelique! -- that would alliterate...

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Another rewrite

2023-03-13T02:48:24Z

Another rewrite (not so extensive this time) for someone who is 'struggling with an argument': as usual, I haven't done all that much to the actual dialogue, just tried to frame it in a smoother-flowing way. And fixed the actual errors.

"'Well you said the sigil looked fine.'

"'I wasn't paying attention. I expected you to be smart enough to remember basic kanji'.

"'You know I've always been average at everything.'

"'No, you're not!' Osu barked, and for a second, Kamitaro thought a compliment might be coming. 'You're not average. You're a freakin' idiot!'

"Kamitaro involuntarily changed into the kappa again. 'Don't pin this on me. You were meant to be protecting me. This is YOUR fault.'

"Osu's shoulders dropped at that and his face became expressionless, as though the anger had turned in on itself. His eyes flickered, hinting that there was a moment when he could have chosen not to say his next words.
( Read more... )

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Uploading Perrette

2023-03-10T00:59:59Z

Of course it's always *after* you have uploaded the chapter in three different places, one of them inaccessible, that you notice you used the term 'enlighten on [the matter]' twice in two different contexts in the space of the final paragraph... :-( "Apprise of" will do as a substitute, I think ("inform" isn't quite right, being too direct, and moreover we've had "form" in the preceding clause). "Advise of" would be less obscure, but I feel that unfortunately it risks getting read as Perrette actually offering advice on the matter rather than merely deigning-- or not-- to provide minimal information!

( AO3 series )

( page-view stats )

I *knew* this was not going to be popular and I wrote it anyway, just as I always do. It would be nice to be popular, but if you're going to insist on being wilfully obscure then you can't expect it.

Meanwhile I have very nearly finished typing the second chapter (another few hundred words to go), which is considerably shorter.

( my stats software is definitely broken )

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Textual revision

2022-11-13T14:48:16Z

Rewrites: working on the graveyard scene to try to clarify and get the impact I wanted.

Original (after editing at time of writing) text:

Another fireball, this one hot enough to graze my cheek. ~~If his aim shook enough, I thought~~ I'd shaken his aim enough, perhaps, that he might kill me without even meaning it.
My knees gave way~~, and~~. I sank down, not gracefully but in a clumsy overbalanced ~~fall.~~ lurch, caught my heel against the kerbstone of a grave and fell sidelong with bruising force. A deep, griping pain ran through my belly, and a deeper pang of terror cut through swimming senses.

Current, supposedly final revision:( Read more... )

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He said, she said

2022-11-09T18:04:48Z

The anti-said brigade (who would be more convincing if they were more literate):

Your telling me, somone is writing a super intense scene about loosing their best friend in a warzone, firefights overhead and chaos all around them:

"Don't die on me." He said.

or

"Don't die on me!" He Screamed!

WHICH IS BETTER!?!?!

Do I want to read this timeless epic? No, I do not.

Trying for a 'super intense' rewrite, as described:

"Don't die." He stared down desperately into eyes that were already glazing, tightening his grip as if to ward off the inevitable by sheer force of will. "You can't do this to me, do you hear? I won't have it. Don't you dare-- don't--"

But Talke's head fell back heavily, and the ragged words ripped into a scream that was swallowed by the shellfire overhead.

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Sequel blurb

2022-07-30T01:29:59Z

And... another rewrite, this time of a blurb that would actively put me off reading the fic in question (assuming that the writing style of the cover actually doesn't reflect the nature of the interior prose -- otherwise, tweaking the outside really isn't going to do much good :-( )( Read more... )

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Purple prose examples

2022-07-05T18:06:44Z

More rewrites, in response to some rather uninspired 'how to improve your purple prose' examples.

Original 'bad' (and pretty implausible) example:
He moved slowly, at length, and carefully on tip toes through the room with an entirely unnecessary gaze trained on the purple, wooden front door.

Suggested 'improved' version, which was then accused of being boring:
He moved carefully through the room, training his gaze on the door.

My attempt for that one:
He moved cautiously through the room, keeping a wary eye on the front door.

Second 'bad' example (which I can actually imagine appearing quite inoffensively in the middle of one of those first-person teenage books with a geeky narrator):
The proliferation of thoughts in my mind was causing me to experience brain freeze in the middle of science class.

Suggested 'improved' (and rather didactic) version:
My mind was crammed with too many thoughts, which is why I had a brain freeze moment in the middle of science class.

My attempt at making it more 'active':
My mind was buzzing as one possibility after another tumbled in and was rejected, and stuck there in the middle of science class I couldn't seem to get out a single coherent thought.

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Unexpected boost for Arctic Raoul

2022-01-01T18:07:18Z

Well, the good news for the year is that my second beta-reader (the first having presumably abandoned the project altogether) has been reading the laboured chapters on the salvage of the Requin and apparently thinks they are *wonderful*: "Really exciting, and a nice blend of detailed technical knowledge and ‘human interest’. Please don’t keep me in suspense... I need to know what happens next."

Which was certainly not the reaction I'd been expecting after rereading them myself! (And of course the "I need to know what happens next" is what every writer dreams of hearing...)

( Read more... )

Hertha has finally reached "Don Juan", which means that I'm now back in my comfort zone of transcribing canon events from an alternate perspective. What I had *not* expected was that, in a situation where everyone else is disparaging the Phantom's music, Hertha turns out to be the one person who actually considers that there might be something in it from a modernistic point of view.
(Well, there has to be some balance for the fact that she basically regards the Phantom with absolutely zero sympathy the whole way through; she has no reason at all to feel sorry for him in the slightest, so there's a risk of the story coming out as a deliberate exercise in 'bashing'. She needs to feel a slight stab of empathy at the moment when Christine unmasks him, too.)( Read more... )

Another spur-of-the-moment unsolicited rewrite -- this time of text that was being held up to ridicule rather than asking for help :-(
(Only I just can't do the present-tense-description thing. It sounds all wrong to me in narrative, and more like an announcer giving a commentary on the Grand National in real time...)
( Read more... )

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Stracciatella

2021-10-16T17:06:20Z

It was raining, and I stopped off at a roadside Italian delicatessen stall on my way home from market and asked for some cheese that would be suitable to put on top of pizza (since I had some left-over dough in the fridge from my not-very-successful attempt at making pizza earlier in the week). He recommended me what he said was a tub of mozzarella (for eight pounds -- I had rashly not asked the price in advance, but told myself it was a luxury indulgence), but that wasn't what it said on the label. Which was why I'd asked, as I didn't recognise the names of any of the cheeses on offer...

When I got it home and opened the tub, it clearly wasn't anything like mozzarella. https://www.lalatteria.co.uk/stracciatella/
( Read more... )

Another little exercise in writing, this time done in an attempt to provide an illustration of the difference between a 'third-person limited' viewpoint and a 'deep third-person [limited]' viewpoint. Ian Fleming's original text was paraphrased from memory out of "Octopussy and other stories", which I'd got down to quote from earlier and couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and search for all over again; the scenario and character perspective are canon, but the exact wording isn't!
( Read more... )

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Royal wedding

2021-10-02T22:19:27Z

Another 'sample rewrite' that seemed worth saving: an exercise in trying to pull out the essential from amid a mass of detail to create the desired atmosphere.

The talented chapel choir above the pews starts to sing a Nordic hymn as the entrance opened, and at last, the royal strawberry-blonde bride appeared in the mirror's view. She was grinning with twinkled, peacock eyes and rosy cheeks towards her smiling husband-to-be while walking towards the altar, holding an elaborate bouquet of colorful flowers with her dainty hands while her long veil trailed after her on the crimson carpeted aisle.

Her vivid wedding ballgown, which comprises a milky close-fitting off-shoulder bodice with flowered shoulder drapes around her bare, freckled shoulders, sweetheart neckline, and a full bell-shaped plain skirt, was certainly eye-catching, reflecting the cheery atmosphere of the chapel. And the golden tiara atop her round head that resembles the crocus of Arendelle made her look shinier.

"At long last the bride came into view. The roses in her cheeks echoed those in the bouquet she held pressed to her breast, and the smile in her eyes matched that of the husband who awaited her. She came down the aisle as if the creamy sweep of her skirt weighed nothing at all, and her small head, held high, was crowned with a tiara like the gold at the heart of a crocus."

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Another rewrite

2021-08-29T02:10:39Z

Oops, I did it again -- apparently I just can't stop sticking my fingers in other people's pies :-(

But I did rather like the way this one came out in the end, and don't want to throw it away...

( rewrite )

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Potter flashfic

2021-05-15T01:59:39Z

Even without access to fanfiction.net, apparently I haven't lost the urge to rewrite other people's mangled fic...

(Unfortunately the beginning of this is just as bad as the point at which I started the rewrite, so if I do decide to post it as an 'epilogue' scene in its own right I'll have to find some other introduction. The canon's a bit dodgy, as Snape's portrait ought to be in the Headmaster's office, not that of the teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts, but I suppose they might have moved it in the course of twenty years :-p)

https://m.facebook.com/FantasticBeastsIMO/photos/a.119923721984057/805427063433716/
( original )

( rewrite )

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All caught up

2021-04-29T01:06:45Z

Right, I've finally completed the proofreading on all the chapters of Arctic Raoul that I've currently got typed up (twelve of them totalling 44,500 words). Again, I'd made quite a few active changes while doing the typing-up, however many weeks/months ago that was [edit: 4^th March], and elected to retain almost all of them — just one I think was probably the result of an accidental skipping of a line during transcription, and I decided it was an improvement anyway.

I did a little more tinkering with the text; the only line that really gave me trouble was the one about the lonely herdsman sitting with his wife (implicit contradiction), whiling away time while (unfortunate repetition) whittling with his knife (undesirable rhyme). He is now an 'unknown' herdsman with a 'goodwife' by the fire — and an 'and' instead of a 'while' ;-p
It's amazing how long that sort of reworking always takes...

Anyway, the whole thing has now been printed off (considerably delayed by the printer's paper feed dying of apparent old age in the middle of the print run, with taking it to bits failing to fix the problem) and has been taken down to the post-box, albeit at about 1.30am. I took the opportunity to reread the entire Christine-section, and found a few more typos that had clearly slipped through previous proofreadings... but it's good. I still think that, of its kind, it's good.( Read more... )

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