This space is primarily a tool for myself to archive reference material and document my creative process.
If you don’t mind the mess you are welcome to rummage around.
Sometimes I start pulling on a thread and see where it leads me. This rabbit hole is brought to you by Tumblr.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri, May 20, 1908
The headline of policing clothing for being too glamorous of course reminded me of Alok.
I wanted to know more so I googled the headline and found this source with the full news story.
Looking up the names in the article I found an image!
Did the revolt occur?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Guillermo del Toro on Hayao Miyazaki's THE BOY AND THE HERON | TIFF 2023
Apparently capers are the buds of this beautiful flower. 🤯
There’s a metaphor here, but I’m not awake enough to find the words yet.
Source Wiki Commons
Neil Gaiman’s Radical Vision for the Future of the Internet, November 27, 2023
via Austin Kleon
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.
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?! 😡
Love when Hank describes pursing the work that is “spicy for my brain.”
I am also not motivated by earning money so this is actually really similar to the aha moment I felt when I started Neurokind.
Also very excited the Good Store has a single identity now. It will be so much easier to share and tell people about it. (For anyone browsing 100% of the profits go to charity. Just like Newman’s Own.)
Philip Ball, How Life Really Works
https://nautil.us/how-life-really-works-435813/
via Austin Kleon
https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/spend-it-all-every-time
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
“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
A collection of images from my trip. I also wrote about it here.
