icon. titles.
Dec. 9th, 2002 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakfastofchampionsdo you like my new writing journal icon? it's meeeeeeee! [please, don't laugh....]
now for the stories of the titles of my two major current novel projects.
orange pekoe:
originally called orange pekoe, black pekoe, until i realized that didn't make much sense, strictly speaking. the title was chosen mainly because i liked the sound of it. that was when orange pekoe was supposed to be a comic, and i thought it had a sound that was both exotic and mundane, if that makes any sense. ha ha, i'm having trouble finishing it just in prose form, it's so massive! ah-- the titular tea does appear in the novel, and symbolizes those small-seeming things which are actually of the utmost importance.
omigosh, orange pekoe is so long! more than 220,000 words and counting. it has so many characters, that's the trouble. plus, i don't know how to get it to go where i want it to go. i'm just going to plunge into the flow of the story and hope it gets somewhere... help!
angora fix:
this is a really really old project. it began as a comic (another one!) called andré one. i still have this comic, and it is surprisingly long and makes surprisingly little sense. it concerned an asexual android named andré, a hermaphroditic person, peter/petra, who could change at from male to female and back again (amusingly, petra looked like me, and peter looked like peter o'toole!). andré one went through a million revisions, and peter and petra were split into separate entities with a strange connection. at one point there were pirates in the story! andré disappeared, and eventually constantine showed up and demanded that i change the title. so-- i did a random point-at-a-page-in-the-dictionary search, and of the words i got, "angora fix" seemed the most likely and likeable combination. angora fix was still a comic, though, and i finished one and a half issues of it (issue one is still available! the unfinished issue two, however, has never seen daylight). finally i realized my comic book making skills were not up to what i wanted to accomplish, and angora fix became the novel it is today. completely independent of the comic book and very different in many ways. i tried to change the title to china green (to match orange pekoe), but the af characters were having none of it. "why should we have to change for the sake of that hulking newcomer?" they demanded biterly-- until i gave in to their demands.
now at 22,000 words and eleven chapters, angora fix is growing fast. but fortunately, it's not going to be as damned long as pekoe. ah, the short novel form. how i love thee!
oh yes-- a note for those who are familiar with a lot of my stuff (i don't know if anyone who fits that description reads this?): the nineteen year old constantine in af may or not be the same person as the twelve year old constantine in the novella "constantine" (22,662 words). but-- if they are the same, they are the same person existing in alternate universes, because angora fix connie had a very different family life than "constantine" connie. heh-- the truth is probably that i just really like the name constantine.
you know, i really like the novella "constantine"! hm, i ought to revise that soon. if anyone wants to read it, let me know... and i shalt love thee like fresh tofu loves salt.
now for the stories of the titles of my two major current novel projects.
orange pekoe:
originally called orange pekoe, black pekoe, until i realized that didn't make much sense, strictly speaking. the title was chosen mainly because i liked the sound of it. that was when orange pekoe was supposed to be a comic, and i thought it had a sound that was both exotic and mundane, if that makes any sense. ha ha, i'm having trouble finishing it just in prose form, it's so massive! ah-- the titular tea does appear in the novel, and symbolizes those small-seeming things which are actually of the utmost importance.
omigosh, orange pekoe is so long! more than 220,000 words and counting. it has so many characters, that's the trouble. plus, i don't know how to get it to go where i want it to go. i'm just going to plunge into the flow of the story and hope it gets somewhere... help!
angora fix:
this is a really really old project. it began as a comic (another one!) called andré one. i still have this comic, and it is surprisingly long and makes surprisingly little sense. it concerned an asexual android named andré, a hermaphroditic person, peter/petra, who could change at from male to female and back again (amusingly, petra looked like me, and peter looked like peter o'toole!). andré one went through a million revisions, and peter and petra were split into separate entities with a strange connection. at one point there were pirates in the story! andré disappeared, and eventually constantine showed up and demanded that i change the title. so-- i did a random point-at-a-page-in-the-dictionary search, and of the words i got, "angora fix" seemed the most likely and likeable combination. angora fix was still a comic, though, and i finished one and a half issues of it (issue one is still available! the unfinished issue two, however, has never seen daylight). finally i realized my comic book making skills were not up to what i wanted to accomplish, and angora fix became the novel it is today. completely independent of the comic book and very different in many ways. i tried to change the title to china green (to match orange pekoe), but the af characters were having none of it. "why should we have to change for the sake of that hulking newcomer?" they demanded biterly-- until i gave in to their demands.
now at 22,000 words and eleven chapters, angora fix is growing fast. but fortunately, it's not going to be as damned long as pekoe. ah, the short novel form. how i love thee!
oh yes-- a note for those who are familiar with a lot of my stuff (i don't know if anyone who fits that description reads this?): the nineteen year old constantine in af may or not be the same person as the twelve year old constantine in the novella "constantine" (22,662 words). but-- if they are the same, they are the same person existing in alternate universes, because angora fix connie had a very different family life than "constantine" connie. heh-- the truth is probably that i just really like the name constantine.
you know, i really like the novella "constantine"! hm, i ought to revise that soon. if anyone wants to read it, let me know... and i shalt love thee like fresh tofu loves salt.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2002-12-09 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-12-09 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-12-24 08:59 am (UTC)query:
do you prefer typing or longhand?
Re:
Date: 2002-12-26 02:20 pm (UTC)oh, i definitely prefer typing-- although i used to write out everything... but when i use longhand, i have to type it up again to send it out to publishers, and though i've nothing against "typing", "typing up" is rather grueling for me. i have multiple novellas lying about from my "writing out" phase which still need to be typed....
and you? which do you prefer?
Re:
Date: 2002-12-26 11:29 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-12-27 09:25 pm (UTC)i can definitely, definitely sympathize with what you say about a grand scope that overwhelms you-- urgh, i do that all the time. i need to learn to stick with things i have a hope of accomplishing. but-- where's the fun in that?
i do like the little of your prose i have read.
Re:
Date: 2002-12-28 02:20 pm (UTC)i'm beginning to think that maybe i pay too much attention to mechanics and not enough to what i would want to read, were i to find the story somewhere, someday.
Re:
Date: 2002-12-28 04:57 pm (UTC)ah-- i know what you mean. i sometimes have trouble knowing where to go with plots myself. i'm much better with character development. sometimes my characters just don't know where to go.
that's true-- you can always fix up the mechanics in revisions. sometimes they can get in the way. i try to write things that i'd actually be interested in reading... i think i do fairly well-- i have to be somewhat interested in it to write it, after all. whether anyone else would be interested in reading it-- well, that's another story.