![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
finished reading Troublesome Things
Dec. 12th, 2011 09:16 pmTook a while to get through it, and will take a while longer to digest, but am glad I did go ahead and get a new copy. I needed to re-read it to firm up where I was going with the story.
This is in part because I actually started writing this novel back in May 2007. As noted in my LiveJournal at the time, I got mugged by the first 10,000 words just before Baycon, then dived into the copy of Troublesome Things which I'd bought some months earlier but not yet read, and then waved my arms at various people during Baycon. (Definitely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ritaxis and I think also blakefancier.) And while I did a bit more after that, I was then distracted by the process of getting ready to move back to the UK, then doing so, and then job-hunting. At which point I started working on the Lord and Master shorts that became Volume 2 and a freebie on my website. Then I turned out another 15 or 20 kwords in the L&M universe -- and then pretty much stopped writing for a couple of years owing to a bad case of Life.
So although I had a rough outline of Taxman in my head, and had poked at it in a desultory fashion on and off, I hadn't seriously worked on it for four years. I was surprised by how freely it flowed when I did start writing again, in fact. I could probably have kept going with it, but I'd always intended it to be grounded firmly in the existing body of British fairy lore, and wanted to refresh my thoughts on that which I'd developed from reading the Purkiss book.
I suspect it's still going to take me at least a year to get a submission-quality draft though, even if I manage to keep up the pace I was hitting just before I stopped to sit down and re-read my research materials.
This is in part because I actually started writing this novel back in May 2007. As noted in my LiveJournal at the time, I got mugged by the first 10,000 words just before Baycon, then dived into the copy of Troublesome Things which I'd bought some months earlier but not yet read, and then waved my arms at various people during Baycon. (Definitely
ritaxis and I think also blakefancier.) And while I did a bit more after that, I was then distracted by the process of getting ready to move back to the UK, then doing so, and then job-hunting. At which point I started working on the Lord and Master shorts that became Volume 2 and a freebie on my website. Then I turned out another 15 or 20 kwords in the L&M universe -- and then pretty much stopped writing for a couple of years owing to a bad case of Life.So although I had a rough outline of Taxman in my head, and had poked at it in a desultory fashion on and off, I hadn't seriously worked on it for four years. I was surprised by how freely it flowed when I did start writing again, in fact. I could probably have kept going with it, but I'd always intended it to be grounded firmly in the existing body of British fairy lore, and wanted to refresh my thoughts on that which I'd developed from reading the Purkiss book.
I suspect it's still going to take me at least a year to get a submission-quality draft though, even if I manage to keep up the pace I was hitting just before I stopped to sit down and re-read my research materials.
in Oxfam last year, because it was there and it looked as if it might come in handy as a writing reference, but hadn't started to read it until now. I've only got a couple of chapters in, but it's proving interesting.
