Arthur Ransome, John M. Ford, and construction materials.

[mrissa]

There is an Arthur Ransome book called We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea, and it frustrated me very much as a child because it often got mis-quoted as We Didn't Want To Go To Sea, and they did want to go to sea; there was practically nothing they wanted more.

Well. I was thinking about that yesterday and missing Mike Ford, because I didn't mean to write a libretto, and more to the point I didn't want to write a libretto, and I thought, well, if there's anyone I've ever met to whom I could have wailed, "But I didn't mean to write a libretto! Bits of it just snuck up and started libretting on me! I couldn't help it!" and gotten sympathy, it would have been Mike Ford.

The difference, of course, being that the ones that happened to him were good.

Sometimes you finish writing a chapter and think, well, that was awful, and you go back and read it on the revision and find that it wasn't awful at all, you just needed perspective. But sometimes, oh, sometimes you know very well that it isn't a lack of perspective, and it isn't writerly angst, and it isn't an artistic temperament. It's that the chapter you've written is just no damn good.

And I was thinking about the kinds of no good a chapter can be and how this is a very functional kind -- how it's like having a tarp, maybe, or some plain wood over your head: it'll do for the moment, but eventually you're going to want insulation, and you're going to want shingles. And my brain said, "No. Tiles." And, huh, whaddaya know, my brain is right: the city of this book has tile roofs. And the thing about tile roofs is that I suspect it's far easier to chuck broken tiles at the king's guard than shingles. Far easier than thatch. And I'm back into another of the chapters that needs doing, because there is some brat on the roof with broken tiles making himself useful, and this bit is maybe good, maybe going to be worthwhile, maybe...yes. This is how this book goes.

I am all for self-defeating, useful whines in the future.

Comments

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

The brat on the roof reminds me of Kipling's Kim, and the last chapter--really epilogue--I'll soon be writing . . . I like brats on roofs.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have meant to reread Kim but not been sufficiently motivated. Hmm. How soon do you expect to be writing this chapter? Distantly enough that I could get a Kim from the library and read it while you're doing it so we can geek in each other's general direction?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Isn't KIM is on Project Gutenberg and such places?

As for Ransome, those are my most influential books too. I'm glad modern children don't find them unrealistic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad Project Gutenberg exists but don't find it personally useful for things of novel length.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

That is correct -- distantly enough, I think. I have to finish the chapter I am on, which WILL be soon, I am sternly telling it, and then write one more chapter before the epilogue.

The part I am on in the current chapter is fun -- dealing with Lewis Carroll's Alice novels -- but since the first part of the chapter took much longer than anticipated, I'm having to refresh my memory on the (potentially useful) Alice criticism. Thankfully, there isn't much of it that will be useful to me, but there is enough I have to re-familiarize myself with to cause a delay -- which is making me cranky.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It'd be very frustrating to find oneself running just to stand still while writing about the Alice novels, I should think. It would make one wonder what babies might turn into pigs when one wasn't looking.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

*laugh* No, it would be perfectly fitting to find oneself running just to stand still while writing about the Alice books -- very much like running with the Red Queen in Looking-Glass.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I adore Ransome. I gave him to my daughter to interest her in reading, and it has worked spectacularly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

He holds a place in my life no other author could. I would quite literally be an entirely different person without that series. Whenever I encounter those memes that ask you to say what books make you, Winter Holiday has to be on my list.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I am all for self-defeating, useful whines in the future."

They might even get you cloudberries.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What a lovely thought!

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was key that they hadn't meant to go to sea, because they had promised not to go beyond the harbour-marker buoy. Since those books are so wrapped up with honour and duty, this added an extra layer of worry and anxiety along with the physical danger and the discomfort of the seasick.

I love that book, and I still shiver in sympathy after nearly 40 years and maybe that many readings.

It was good to meet you, by the way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love that book, too, even despite its lack of Amazons. And you're right: one of the things I love about these books is that the kids are allowed to have meaningful senses of honor and duty without anyone smiling tolerantly: "Oh, isn't that sweet? He still thinks his word means something. Kids are so cyyyy-ute that way!" They are allowed to be responsible people. They are allowed to try to improve their skills and character without having weird glass ceilings placed in their way. They are allowed, in short, to matter. Would that more kids had those freedoms.