Readers

“I sincerely believe that books don’t live until they’re read. While I think I’d write even if nobody was reading - it’s who I am - I thrive because I know the stories are being brought to life by all of you. In this, stories are a special kind of art, particularly ones written down. Each of you imagines this book, and its characters, a little differently - each of you puts your own stamp on it, making it yours. I don’t think a story is quite finished until that has happened to it - until the dream in my head has become a reality (even if briefly) in yours.

And so this book is yours, as are all of them once you read them. Thank you so much for bringing life to my work, and to the Cosmere.”

Brandon Sanderson, The Sunlit Man, Postscript

What the story is not.

“You find the story by discovering what the story is not.”

Mary Robinette Kowal, Writing Excuses (Season 19, Episode 1)

Moving the Action Figures

Davy has reached the storytelling age.

Mix and match scripts from Zelda and Room on the Broom and Daniel Tiger.

John Hodgman reminding fiction writers that we're just playing make believe.

And that's where the magic is. 💫

"Then suddenly, when you're writing, a character will say something that you didn't think of.

Of course you did think of it, unconsciously. It's from your brain.

But only from a part of your brain that would never have been activated until you sat there and moved the action figures around enough."

John Hodgeman, This is a Secret Society

The Christmasaurus

Our bedtime story game has rapidly leveled up from board books to chapter books.

Right now we’re listening to The Christmasaurus audiobook on Davy’s Yoto radio and reading along in the hardcover.

The audiobook is British and the hardcover we have has been Americanized. I’ve texted changes I’ve noticed to a few friends and realized that this is just the sort of pedantic obsession that should live on the chronofile.

What follows is not an exhaustive list of changes, but those that stick in my mind without taking active notes at bedtime. There is a possibility of human error.

I’ll update this post as we read, but I’ve already ordered a UK hardcover (from Blackwells who offer free shipping to the US.) I find these changes really remove so much British charm.

Ok, time for the pedantry.

• mum → mom

• millimetres → inches

• rubbish → terrible

• tastes like marmite → tastes like chicken

• tele → TV

• school dinner → lunch

• dinner ladies → lunch ladies

• chips → French Fries

• car park → parking lot

• flask → cup

• cutlery → silverware

• wardrobe → closet*

• loo → restroom

• jumper → sweater

• loony → strange

• no mates → (completely cut)

• hell → horrible

• nattering → chattering

• plug hole → drain

• barmy →

• red post box → mailbox

• post → mail

• ickle → little

• it wasn’t anything to do with → it had nothing to do with

• goose pimply → goose bumpy

• cracker in the works → wrench in the plan

• handmade → made

• → horrible

• upon → on

• cinema → theater

• spotty → polka dot

• whilst → while

• pound notes → dollar bills

• holidays → vacations

• takeaway → takeout

• snooker → pool

• dreamt → dreamed

• fairy lights → Christmas lights

• stroppy → spoiled

• opening hours → regular hours

• GET ON! → HURRY UP!

• I guess we should start at the beginning. → Let’s give it a try.

• dressing gown → bathrobe

• the shudders → the shivers

• gawping → gaping

• a maniac with a gun → saving a dinosaur from a hunter

• barmy → out of his mind

• absolutely potty → absolutely zany

• scrummy → scrumptious

• pool → pond

• can’t make people die → can’t hurt people

• take out a teacher → take down a teacher

• said from somewhere → came from somewhere

• they → the boys

• whilst → while

Honestly I was fascinated by this little linguistic differences when I lived in London for a year. Chips to fries and jumper to sweater is almost understandable. And I can’t imagine including hell in a middle grade novel. 🤯 But all together the changes break the story’s sense of place.

The marmite one is particularly worrisome as it completely changes the meaning.

British terms the editor didn’t spot included:

• fairy liquid (a brand of UK dish soap)

• pants (meaning underpants)

There were also some sentence structure changes. Words swapped round.

And there seem to be opposing editorial stances on how often to repeat a character’s name. I found most of these changes ruined the rhythm.

It was clear straightaway that this must be the reason this book (and many others) do not have audiobooks for sale in American Audible. They’ve made too many changes to the text they would have to re-record it. And it wouldn’t even work with an American narrator or a British one by this point. It’s all muddled up.

* Imagine if they’d rewritten Narnia as The Lion, The Witch, and The Closet?! 😡

Most of the plant is underground.

I finished this book yesterday. The whole read was a delightful insight into the creative process, but my favorite insights were those about failure which mirror my own feelings about creative compost.

“The act of writing, for me, has most often been a process of failing repeatedly. It's the only way I know how to write! And in the moment of "failure," at the desk, banging one's "head against a wall," it's nearly impossible to see or feel the value in it.

But when I step back, I see a different picture. I know that Hadestown is—and this goes for any creative endeavor, I reckon—so much more than what meets the eye or the ear. What is seen and heard onstage is the blooming flower, but most of the plant is underground.

Every line, verse, or chorus—every idea any of us who worked on it ever had, even the ones that never saw the light of day—they're down there. They're the roots of the plant, and the flower wouldn't exist without them. The ones who bloom in the bitter snow bloom because they are supported from below by a thousand tries and failures.”

And (about the final line of the show), “The seed lay underground for a decade, and when the conditions were right ... it bloomed again. Keep trying.”

I was also struck by how slow this creative process was. Especially compared to the rush I’ve been feeling about writing novels. Workshopping a Broadway show is an extended collaborative process made better by everyone involved. This show improved through iterations with various collaborators for well over a decade before blooming into the show it is today.

Source: Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

Writing is like gardening.

“You’re raking around in the dirt, pulling up weeds. Flowers you love and find beautiful die on you. But not for nothing; they go back into the soil, and they nourish it. It’s the act of raking that prepares the ground, and it’s the seeds of those dead beautiful flowers that replant themselves in it and eventually come up right. The “right” thing could not exist without the “wrong” ones.”

Source: Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

The wheel turns.

Some notes I found from reading The Wheel of Time.

Anne of Green Gables Manuscript

The entire, original handwritten manuscript of Anne of Green Gables is now available to page through online - thanks to a scholar from Duluth, Minnesota.

via Jay Gabler, News Tribune

Photo: Jean-Sébastien Duchesne

au·to·tel·ic

au·to·tel·ic

/ˌôdōˈtelik/

adjective

FORMAL

1. (of an activity or a creative work) having an end or purpose in itself.

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Rest

“the more time I spend resting instead of writing, the better a writer I’ve been able to become”

Hayley Dunlop, Becoming an Author

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