ext_472 ([identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] picowrimo2009-11-21 09:06 pm

Day 21

Here's today's prompt for you to post your updates and any excerpts and thoughts etc in comments.

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-21 05:54 pm (UTC)(link)
I determined that this weekend I would not leave writing until after everything else, and a solid session this afternoon has given me 618 words. A bit tough, because I wasn't quite sure what I was doing with the section, but they've turned out OK. I feel the story's definitely heading home now.

*

[Harriet] felt oddly lacklustre, in a way that she vaguely remembered feeling after she had won her Oxford scholarship, as if with so much new life in prospect one didn’t quite know what to do with it. The clock struck the quarter hour. The dons would be assembling for dinner, and though the prospect was rather daunting, no doubt over the initial shock it would not be too bad. They ought at least to be relied upon, after the shocks of recent days, to keep curiosity tolerably restrained, and even Miss Hillyard would be practice for facing Peter’s family. She put her book in her bag and marched boldly into the quad.

[identity profile] stevie-carroll.livejournal.com 2009-11-21 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Great Harriet there. Bravo on the word count.

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:08 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks! I confess, I love writing Harriet.

[identity profile] azdak.livejournal.com 2009-11-21 06:30 pm (UTC)(link)
No wonder Helen was a pushover after practising on Miss Hillyard. Helen may be nasty, but she's not borderline potty.

I like the description of the lacklustre feeling after a big achievement - I've felt exactly that way myself.

Well done on the word count!

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:12 am (UTC)(link)
I hope for Harriet's sake that it is easier to feel that Helen simply doesn't matter.

I virtuously wrote instead of taking the easy option of assembling an Ikea chest of drawers, and it paid off! And I did the chest of drawers in the evening, too.

[identity profile] azdak.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Virtue is truly its own reward, but sometimes you also get a story and an assembled IKEA chest of drawers out of it as well.

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:15 am (UTC)(link)
It's not even her own book - it's a novel (but Harriet has a bad hangover, so we'll let her off work for the day).

The failure to acknowledge the class element is one of the things that really annoys me about the Paton-Walsh continuations. You don't make it better by pretending it wasn't there. Surely the proof of being in love is that it makes Harriet able to face meeting Peter's mother on her own!

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not doing the DD on this occasion - the fic ends before H or P speaks to her.

The icon is a bit of an illustration from the Observer newspaper, which as I posted here (http://nineveh-uk.livejournal.com/98361.html?) managed to do a rather glorious inadvertent bit of Sayers fan-art.
ext_422737: uncle hallway (Default)

[identity profile] elmey.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 04:29 am (UTC)(link)
What a nice sketch of Harriet's feelings--and heading home must feel pretty good.

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:17 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks - this fic's been a long time waiting, so it's great to feel that it is very definitely getting there.