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rt_morelove might now understand why I've spent most of my spare time lately googling information about reindeer and random locations in Norway – because I'm writing an adaptation of The Snow Queen!
Yes, after giving over 2 or 3 months of my life to stage managing a play version of The Snow Queen, I'm now also writing a version of it... I actually think I'd enjoy someday writing an entirely "original" adaptation (for example like Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs) – it's such an endlessly fun story to play with; it's usually kept as a children's story more or less in line with the original, but I think it would be interesting to give it adult characters, and maybe two female protagonists instead of a girl and a boy – f/f romance maybe? Anyway, who knows, someday I may also write a full-length original novel version, but first, right now, I needed something to write for rt_morelove and stumbled on this idea of doing a Snow Queen fusion (Harry Potter characters and universe + Snow Queen plot) and it's SUPER FUN to write. Whee!
So, yeah, I spend lots of my time lately looking at pictures like this:
(Photo from Wikipedia.)
That's the town of Honningsvåg, very near to the very, very northern tip of Norway. I was gazing soulfully at this picture at work the other day, and showed it to my colleague when he happened to pass by my desk, and thus learned an interesting difference between the two of us: When I look at this picture, I think, WANT, whereas his response was, "If that's the sky that's coming at me, I think I'll run the other way."
Anyway: looking at pictures of far northern landscapes = always the best, writing a fusion of Harry Potter and The Snow Queen = SO FUN, and best of all having this project (and a deadline attached to it) has kicked me back into writing regularly for the first time in ages. As a direct result of all this writing-ness, today, too, I finally got unstuck on another fic that's been sitting here for ages: It's going to be four chapters total, and I've been stalled on the very last (but crucial) bit of Chapter 3 for months. Tonight, just now, I figured out and wrote that last bit, and finished the chapter. Wheeeeee!
I didn't do NaNoWriMo in November, partly because I didn't have time and partly because the friends here in town who'd wanted to do it together ended up not doing it. Then I didn't do NaNoWriMo in January for the same reasons (still didn't really have enough time, and the group of friends who'd said they didn't have time in November but would totally do it in January...didn't end up doing it in January). But partway through this Snow Queen/Snow Wolf writing process, during a week when I was pushing myself to write at least 1000 words each day to keep up toward the rt_morelove deadline, I decided to aim for a "mini" NaNo this month, see if I can get my writing by the end of January to average out, at the very minimum, to 500 words/day. Doing well so far! (Average of over 600 words/day, and that's only because I didn't really start writing in earnest until partway through the month.)
Writing mojo reclaimed, or at least once again visible to the naked eye, after a long disappearing act.
rt_morelove might now understand why I've spent most of my spare time lately googling information about reindeer and random locations in Norway – because I'm writing an adaptation of The Snow Queen!Yes, after giving over 2 or 3 months of my life to stage managing a play version of The Snow Queen, I'm now also writing a version of it... I actually think I'd enjoy someday writing an entirely "original" adaptation (for example like Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs) – it's such an endlessly fun story to play with; it's usually kept as a children's story more or less in line with the original, but I think it would be interesting to give it adult characters, and maybe two female protagonists instead of a girl and a boy – f/f romance maybe? Anyway, who knows, someday I may also write a full-length original novel version, but first, right now, I needed something to write for rt_morelove and stumbled on this idea of doing a Snow Queen fusion (Harry Potter characters and universe + Snow Queen plot) and it's SUPER FUN to write. Whee!
So, yeah, I spend lots of my time lately looking at pictures like this:
(Photo from Wikipedia.)
That's the town of Honningsvåg, very near to the very, very northern tip of Norway. I was gazing soulfully at this picture at work the other day, and showed it to my colleague when he happened to pass by my desk, and thus learned an interesting difference between the two of us: When I look at this picture, I think, WANT, whereas his response was, "If that's the sky that's coming at me, I think I'll run the other way."
Anyway: looking at pictures of far northern landscapes = always the best, writing a fusion of Harry Potter and The Snow Queen = SO FUN, and best of all having this project (and a deadline attached to it) has kicked me back into writing regularly for the first time in ages. As a direct result of all this writing-ness, today, too, I finally got unstuck on another fic that's been sitting here for ages: It's going to be four chapters total, and I've been stalled on the very last (but crucial) bit of Chapter 3 for months. Tonight, just now, I figured out and wrote that last bit, and finished the chapter. Wheeeeee!
I didn't do NaNoWriMo in November, partly because I didn't have time and partly because the friends here in town who'd wanted to do it together ended up not doing it. Then I didn't do NaNoWriMo in January for the same reasons (still didn't really have enough time, and the group of friends who'd said they didn't have time in November but would totally do it in January...didn't end up doing it in January). But partway through this Snow Queen/Snow Wolf writing process, during a week when I was pushing myself to write at least 1000 words each day to keep up toward the rt_morelove deadline, I decided to aim for a "mini" NaNo this month, see if I can get my writing by the end of January to average out, at the very minimum, to 500 words/day. Doing well so far! (Average of over 600 words/day, and that's only because I didn't really start writing in earnest until partway through the month.)
Writing mojo reclaimed, or at least once again visible to the naked eye, after a long disappearing act.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-24 06:33 pm (UTC)Speaking of names in this part of the world... There's also a lighthouse on the northern coast of Nordkapp called Helnes fyr... please tell me "Helnes" really does mean what it looks like, "hell peninsula"?? (Even if you tell me it doesn't mean that, I'm probably going to want to keep imagining that it does...)
Btw, when my colleague came by as I was looking at these pictures, I went on a long tangent to him about how the word "hell" actually comes from Finnish. ;-)
And I'm going to put in a vote for Squirrel Peninsula. Aw! (I really kind of love Icelandic place names...they're so, so, so unbelievably literal-minded, but there's something quite appealing about it – and very helpful to language learners! Until I took a language class, most of the vocabulary I knew consisted of geographical features, gleaned from names of places I traveled, because pretty much every place name is literally a description of that place.)
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Date: 2017-01-25 08:02 am (UTC)oh! i don't know for sure, but that's what my money'd be on. i can't really think of what else it'd be, unless it's hel as in whole, or maybe it's a variation/evolution of hella which is a kind of plateau/something very flat, at any rate.
yes, educate the masses about strange language exchanges :D
right??? SQUIRREL PENINSULA. how could i not? tbh the best way of finding placenames is to just zoom in on remote areas and look for local placenames. chances that anyone would know it's a real place are slim, and gems turn up that way! i also always write down interesting names i see on street signs. down where my mum lives (lolland-falster) there's all sorts of odd little placenames. Uglemose! owl swamp! isn't that just the BEST? i get the impression that for the nordic countries (finland too) literal descriptions are standard for placenames. even the really weird 'makes no sense' placenames are that too, only the language/the placename has evolved over time to make them look weird. Horsens in denmark for example, is just? really weird? it doesn't look danish at all. but then i spoke to one of the place name researchers at uni, and she said "ah no, see, that's actually a conservative name that's barely changed - and yes, it comes from horse. the english didn't change that word much." so horsens was originally (as much as we know) horsanæs - horse pensinsula, horsa being a sort of plural genitive of hors. (in modern danish horse is hest.). here's some of the spelling forms from oldest to newest: hors (1146), horsahnet (1150, arabic map), horsenes (1157), horsnæs (1231), hrossanes (flateyjarbók, 14th century), horsenize (1340), horsenes & horsness in the same (german) text (1439), horszens (1525) and then in 1664 the modern form, horsens, shows up.
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Date: 2017-01-26 02:12 pm (UTC)Thank you, then I will continue to believe in Hell Peninsula Lighthouse. Excellent. (It's probably just "flat peninsula," but...)
So interesting about the Danish place name that doesn't sound Danish - but is actually an older form. Funny that English would have the more conservative form of the word, especially since I usually think of Icelandic as preserving older word forms. (I was looking up a lot of Old Norse names for the story I'm writing, and Old Norse...pretty much just looks like Icelandic, with slight spelling differences!)
I also love how a lot of places in the north of Scotland (especially Shetland and Orkney) retain Scandinavian elements in their names, because of the long Norwegian presence there. "Vik" becomes "Wick" etc. I could pore over that stuff endlessly. :-)
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Date: 2017-01-30 07:51 am (UTC)hors* does exist in icelandic - as hross. :D it's pretty conservative. (it's very common in both english and icelandic that some words have letters/sounds trading places. e.g. what vs hvað, where the latter is the more conservative form.) that word doesn't exist in danish anymore that i know of, the modern hest (icelandic hestur) has a different root. still an old word, but for some reason the other word fell out of use in danish while this one persisted, and icelandic kept both words.
there is really a great number of norse placenames in the uk! some dialects even preserve some norse vocab that isn't used in the standard language. i'd love to visit shetland and the orkneys one day - i've only ever sailed past on the norrøna :(
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Date: 2017-01-30 06:10 pm (UTC)Oh, that's interesting; you know what, German retained that word too: as "Ross," an older/poetic word for horse. (In addition to the everyday word "Pferd.")
I was so disappointed that by the (one) time I took the Norröna ferry (and I know I can never do it again because I was soooo seasick the whole time), they'd already discontinued the Shetland stopover. How amazing if I could have stopped in the Shetlands! I did get to do the 2 1/2 day stopover in the Faroes, though. That was marvelous.
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Date: 2017-01-30 06:42 pm (UTC)ohh! i didn't know that, thanks :D
yeah, they'd discontinued it the last time i was on it (2012) which was sad :( i'd have loved to get to stop there even if for just a few hours. did get 6 hours in tórshavn instead, though. (yes to the seasickness, omg. i've been on it three times (two round trips and one single trip) and i've been SO sick all times.)