A Summer Fairy Tale Writing Project

After yesterday's 5-hour German examination, another attempt to prove to the satisfaction of the University to which I have already been accepted that I can in fact write, speak, and read German at a student level, today has been less active.

It was 34°C hot yesterday, and today perhaps only 1 degree cooler, and I decided not to go out of doors at all.

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For over a week I have been working on an old story, which I wrote out at great length on an old desktop computer that we don't use any more, in my twenties. It was a fairy tale vaguely set in a version of Italy. But I haven't seen it for ages, and I doubt I'd find it good if I did.

So I am writing it again, with new characters, character names, kingdoms, scenery, and plotlines.

Ideally I'd finish it, rather than getting lost in another meandering writing journey that ends up nowhere. These failures tend to diminish my confidence that I'd someday be able to complete a writing project that is important.

Either way, once or twice hours passed before I looked at the clock and saw that it is, say, 5 a.m.. It's also a luxury I can more or less afford before the university semester begins. Or, if the university admissions go to pot, before I commit myself to full-time work. That said, I still need to be careful to get enough sleep because of the lurking risk of anaemia.

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One problem with the story is that I become too caught up in the details, or perhaps the wrong details. So it begins to read like a paragraph of a Wikipedia article has slipped into the text.

It's as if I were to write a pirate story like this:

As the sky grew mottled in bruised reds, greens, yellows and blues in the evening sun, and in the foreground of his galleon's deck the small craft that were at anchor in the remote Caribbean harbour began to turn into mere shadowy sketches of skinny masts and spindly jibs, Pirate Jack felt foreboding about the journey ahead. He looked up from the pipe that he was filling with twisted black tobacco, to yell at his cook.

"Are you certain that we have enough lard for this journey?" he asked skeptically.

"Aye, aye, captain!" the cook shouted back, optimistically. "Twenty-five barrels we have! It'll last us until we ship into Madeira."

"I seem to remember that when we were last on a journey of that length, we bought five pounds of inferior butter off a peasant in Portugal because our lard stock was insufficient. Shall we not buy another barrel?"

"Nay, it will be fine! That said, I have been looking at the flour and I've spotted many a weevil. We needn't toss all of this, but I'd say we get another 25 pounds."

"25 pounds of flour? Here? I think that will cost us 12 shillings and fivepence! What will the purser think?"

"Would ye rather be gnawing at mouldy carrots?"

"Speaking of mouldy carrots," Jack returned, conceding the argument, "are we carrying carrots or parsnips on this journey?" 

"Carrots! I don't never want to see another parsnip again." 

But at that point, an enraged navy officer ran pounding up the pier toward the ship, in riding boots and flying coattails, his wig bouncing behind him in the breeze. "I know you are that blackguard, Pirate Jack!" he bellowed, waving a musket frantically. "You shall never leave this island alive!"

Pirate Jack turned to his first mate. 'How many bullets do we have? If it's more than 157, which I hope it is, I will trouble you for two ounces of gunpowder, so that I can be rid of this fellow.'

And, recalling that the wind was gusting from the landward in a 53° south-southeasterly direction, he began to calculate the angle at which to hold his gun barrel so that he could best hit the minion of the law.

He laid his tobacco aside with a sigh, reaching for his notebook and pencil to do the math. 

Then he thanked his first mate as the latter brought him a pewter tin full of ammunition and a bag of gunpowder. A moment later, however, he realized that before loading his gun, he still needed to clean the barrel. 

The pirate shouted for his cabin boy. "Bring me a rag and gun-oil, lad! I must clean this pistol."

...And so on and so forth.