just an update ~

[lookingland]

Day Sixteen: Goodie Proctor's got my Poppet
character building and endlessly more reseach.

i hoped i would find more uses for Mr. Mad, but he's not around as much as i thought he would be. meanwhile, Mr. Ew and Mr. Pebblehead are looking to be chatty regulars. i feel comfortable talking about Mr. NastyOwlFace, but i'm not sure yet how i feel about actually depicting him in a scene (or the drunk for that matter).

Mr. Eck now has a friend I'm nicknaming Scully but i don't think i'll use either of them as much as i had originally planned. Mr. Bing, Mr. Burn, and Mr. (oh heck, I can't remember the third guy's name: we'll call him Mr. Dolt) seem like they'll get lots of play and i'm adding to that unholy trio Mr. Auggie and Mr. Pew as commentators/chorus types.

and speaking of holy, Father Mitty joins the cast (for at least three scenes worth noting), and it's clear to me that i can't not include Looey. i don't want to include Looey because he annoys me, but it may be worth it to include him just to have someone say: That Looey is such an annoyance. i was up until midnight reading Looey's whining. that man could go on!

still no word on Mr. Hanty's letterbooks. i'm starting to get nervous.

i also reread Mr. Poppet's memoirs ~ refreshed my mind on some of his more harrowing descriptions of his experience in the war. i think i have a good handle on his personality even though i still don't know much about him. the burning question for me at the moment is: who paid his bill? the government? did he do the work pro bono? far as i know he was already mustered out of the army and a private citizen again. i'd reeeally love to know (and if i can't find out, i'm totally writing a great scene about it anyway).

the outline is sorta half-formed. it still needs a lot of work, but innerliberry loan is dragging on the materials, so i may have to leap without a lifeline and worry about resolving the chronology later. i don't want to just stall here.

and still no inkling of an idea for a title. but i haven't read Mr. Poppet's closing more carefully since i last said i would (to see if something in it strikes me).

oh, and my newspaper guy, Gat (the names are getting weaker by the character here) was very nearly cut from the story until i actually sat down and read his personal account. he is a deliciously victorian (i.e. purpler than a eggplant) writer. his descriptions of the proceedings are almost hilarious (man, those guys must have been bored out of their gourds day after day with nothing to do but sit in the interminable heat and listen to the likes of Mr. Dolt go on and on). journalistically it's about as unobjective as an el-jay rant, but the colors shine ~ so out of respect for the delightful rendering he made for the sake of posterity, i am putting him back into the story and will likely be stealing liberally from his work.

lucky for me, he wrote some other pertinent sketchbooks from which i'm hoping to extract logistical information about Willards and the like. oops, i guess that means more reading.

my newsman Gat (on the left, i believe),
hanging out with mark twain circa 1871.

Comments

[gwyn-hwyfar.livejournal.com]

*perks up out of a dead sleep*

Gat? I haven't been paying attention to your Goody Proctor chronicles (sorry to say) but that name leaped out at me...
He wouldn't happen to be George Alfred Townsend, would he?

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

okay that just made my day.

[beams]

(told you the names were getting less creative).

hahahahahahahaha ~

: D

[gwyn-hwyfar.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. He has been following me around all my life since early childhood when we had a creepy old copy of The Entailed Hat at home. I would ramble on about reading and research criss-crossing and coincidences but that would be too boring.

(oh, btw, he briefly attended the college at which I currently sit NOT working at my desk!)

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

that's pretty hilarious (though i am not familiar with the entailed hat ~ but now i'm curious).

reading and research criss-crossing and coincidences are never boring! fie on that sort of blasphemy!

i never met Gat 'til now. but i'm vastly amused at some of his newswriting. i think we may get to be good friends.

: D

[gwyn-hwyfar.livejournal.com]

Well, you mentioned how 'purple' his writing is, and The Entailed Hat is a perfect example of it. It's about a very strange man living in a weird town down in the part of Maryland that my grandfather is from...and here's where the criss-crossing comes in...today I have been researching my grandfather's grandfather, who lived in NYC in the years between 1857 and 1880...and it LOOKS like there's a good chance he lived in one of the lower wards near the waterfront or Five Points or City Hall with which I have lately been so fascinated (according to the census records I've been poring over):D We don't know much about him which is what makes him so fascinating.

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

oooo ~ a real life mystery! those are the best kind! i have another friend who does genealogy stuff and i find all of that so fascinating (my people didna come from this country, so i find my own family sorta not in my radar of interests at the moment). so i have to live vicariously through other people's ~ hahahahahaha.

and now i've gotta track down that hat book (of course).