This time for sure, Brain!

[truepenny]

Have finished vol. 1.

This time I mean it.

188,000 words
764 ms pages

Have sent email to agent, promising to mail ms on Monday, so I can't back out of it. It's really really really (temporarily) done.

Memo to self: plant more trees.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

Incidentally, if you're wondering who I am, I found you through papersky's LJ. You typed in an entry from the Oxford Dictionary of Christian Names. When I looked at your LJ, I was smitten by the extensive vocabulary and elegant sentence structure. And your interests! Ahhh, someone else who got the Webster joke in Shakespeare in Love. It's so embarrassing to be the only one laughing.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

*is dying to read the novel*

Feel free to abuse me if you need a pair of eyes LOL

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think the Webster joke in SiL is a perfect example of how to make jokes in fiction. The people who get it wet themselves laughing. The people who don't, don't notice that they've missed anything. The joke lends depth to characterisation. The character is plot important. (Repulsive child. I'm determind to dislike his plays forever because of that mouse.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Welcome! And thank you for the compliment on my prose style.

I watched Shakespeare in Love in a movie-theater in which I was the only person laughing at a good many of the jokes. It does make one feel the most complete loon.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The only problem I have with the Webster-thing in Shakespeare in Love is that I honestly like John Webster, and ended up being a little offended on his behalf that he was being portrayed as such a repellent little creep.

I was also (*sigh*) deeply disappointed by Christopher Marlowe's characterization, because frankly, that quiet, thoughtful, luminously wise person? So not Marlowe. Rupert Everett should have shamelessly been stealing every scene he was in, because that's what Marlowe should have done.

Right. I'll stop with the obsessive over-analysis of minutiae now.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to get out of this reply without completely embarrassing myself, but that seems better than not saying "thank you" when "thank you" needs to be said. So.

Thank you so much for being enthusiastic.

I know that sounds totally lame, but I mean it. I've been working on this series of novels for ... *checks back* holy fuck, almost exactly nine years, I mean within a matter of days. No wonder I feel like I'm fucking married to this thing. So it seriously makes me happy that other people are even remotely interested.

I'm blushing now, so I'm going to shut up.

Re:

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I understand :) Congratulations!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I thought it did very well on establishing Marlowe's stature, something that wouldn't necessarily be apparent to an uninformed viewer. I also thought he looked like Marlowe, though what combination of things caused me to think this I have no idea. I'd like to see Rupert Everett play Marlowe in a play about Marlowe, possibly an adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford or something of that nature.

(You like Webster? That reminds me of someone who came out of Amadeus defending the real Salieri. And, of course, my reaction to Macbeth. When dealing with history, one wants an audience who know neither too much nor too little.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Webster's plays are extremely morbid and gory, but they're also very good plays. I wanted The White Devil in my dissertation, but I just couldn't quite justify it. So the jokes about him and the rats, and the general morbidness, were right on target, but did he have to be so hateful?

Or maybe it's just that I consider being morbid to be a quality rather than a flaw.

And the movie was a sufficiently silly piece of anachronistic, metatextual nonsense that my little partisan Websterite reaction didn't interfere with my enjoyment. Besides, for all I know, Webster was a creepy little voyeuristic suck-up. I just want him not to have been. I had more trouble with Marlowe, to the point that I was watching the movie muttering, That's not Marlowe! Who the hell do you think you're kidding? Oh, come on! That's so not Christopher Marlowe, no matter what you've named the character. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief. There's actually a fair amount of evidence as to Marlowe's personality, collected when they were gearing up to try him for heresy (some of it extracted under duress from poor Thomas Kyd, who had the terrible misfortune to be Marlowe's roommate), and it's pretty clear that Marlowe was just as much a grandstander as Tamerlane, although mercifully less with the psychotic megalomania. Also, I'm afraid, not very much with the common sense.