Igenlode Wordsmith

I've managed to tie myself into worse knots than before in trying to re-establish my intended chronology for the d'Artois expedition. Reading what I've written it appears the plan for the expedition was as follows:

• Arrive midsummer Year 1
  Send supply ship Amélie back to Norway to report safe arrival of expedition
  
• Midsummer Year 2: return of supply ship to replenish provisions and allow for a change of personnel
  
• Midsummer Year 3: expedition due to return to Paris
  

What actually happens:

• Winter Year 1/2: overwinter as planned
  
• Summer Year 2: supply ship fails to arrive (and Raoul confirms 'over a year later' that the initial report failed to reach Paris)
  
• Winter Year 2/3: overwinter on short rations in the hopes of rescue in summer of Year 3
  
• Spring Year 3: vain attempt to reach Greenland across the ice. No ship arrives "in what remained of the year" after the venturers return.
  
• Midsummer Year 4(?): Wreck of the "Requin"
  

( Read more... )

I've more or less decided (yet again) not to switch timelines back to Raoul at the end of the chapter... when I eventually reach it. It just makes the whole business of trying to work out who was where when much too complicated, though I do still need to have a general idea of elapsed time for my own purposes. So the current intention is to end on the 'cliff-hanger' of Erik's illness, but without using this as a window of opportunity to change viewpoints; I'll just go straight on to Christine's desperation and eventual release in the next chapter.

Meanwhile my 1911 encyclopædia supplies the following hard facts (thank heaven for old reference works!): "By the Seal Fisheries Act 1875 the season for seal-fishing between 67 and 68° N lat. and 5°E and 17°W long. begins on April 3" and "By the Bering Sea Award Act no fur seals may be killed between May 1 and July 1 N of lat. 35° and E of long. 180° until the water boundary of the United States and Russia is reached" -- the latter reference is aimed at preserving the seal stocks for Russian use, of course, but I assume it reflects the period during which the Russians were expecting to hunt them.
So it looks as if it would be reasonable for Raoul to get picked up by a sealer heading homewards to Tromsø in mid-May -- thank goodness. Ironically that also cuts down considerably the amount of extra time I need to allow for him to get round the top of Norway and travel down from the Arctic, so he probably could probably set off on his small-boat trip at the same time as Christine escapes...

Still working my way very slowly through plot point 6; I just need the episode with the Lapp (?and his herd?), and then I was going to use the calf-kissing episode as the end of the chapter. I just hope this isn't going to be as laborious to read as it is to write -- it does need to be a pretty soul-draining experience, because it isn't exactly a barrel of laughs for Christine, plus I suspect that the audience appetite for C/E interaction is much greater than mine :-p

However, having decided that I was going to pursue this plotline to the bitter end before branching back to Raoul, I'm now strongly tempted all over again to switch at the end of this chapter( Read more... )

Facts and figures:

Reindeer calves are born in May. Reindeer migrate in April/May, before their calves are born 'in the foothills of the mountains'. Swedish migration patterns seem to be basically towards the Norwegian border all along the mountains -- I'm assuming they went on down to the sea in the days before border control, as other sources talk about reindeer/caribou going to the coast for the summer...
I've very carefully avoided any clear indication of exactly where Erik is holding Christine prisoner( Read more... )

More date problems: my original plotline called for Erik to injure himself chasing/rescuing Christine, and to be on the point of death from septicaemia when she returned. However, it also calls for Christine to travel first to Paris, then down to Chagny, then back to Sweden to retrieve her papers and visit Madame Valerius, then an unspecified bureaucratic delay before they legally can be married there (?three weeks?), followed by a search across Sweden to locate the hut again.
All of which implies that Christine doesn't get back for a couple of months -- far too long for Erik to survive a bout of septicaemia! ( Read more... )

I've definitely started a new story now (several days' steady progress :-D)

Based on the idea of writing Philippe de Chagny's last moments as he searches vainly for his brother beneath the Opera, but it's basically a retelling of the relationship between the brothers de Chagny from Raoul's conception onwards, the whole thing being done in flashback. (And in consequence all in the perfect tense, which is getting a bit awkward.) I'd hoped to write this while I was on holiday, and took a pen and notebook with me, but I never really got enough peace of mind until the last day when I did a solo walk... and came up with about half of it there and then, establishing the rest over the next couple of days. Giving Raoul's older brother something of an Œdipus complex was an interesting explanation as to why he hasn't married (and not one of the two or three I'd previously come up with!), and also as to why he resents Christine so much (Raoul is effectively desecrating their mother's memory by putting this hussy in her place). It was an unintended offshoot of the idea that it might be more interesting to have a domineering mother and an ineffectual father, though, since by default people assume that Raoul takes after a gentle mother...( Read more... )