Maria Edgeworth pt. 1

Yesterday I started in on the first of the two scenes I had been working on, intending to get through it. Instead I went to google something, and got sidetracked into looking through Maria Edgeworth's The Parent's Assistant.* I read "Simple Susan," which is about the evil family of a greedy lawyer who are mean to an poor, loyal, obedient, unselfish, patient, hardworking girl. They try to take her chicken, her lamb, her money, her father's land, and get her father sent off in the military, thus nearly killing her poor sick mother. But Susan is so good that everyone loves her, and her virtues not only save all her animals, land, and her family, they get her even more than she had to begin with.

I skimmed this story, and another one called "Lazy Laurence" (lazy boy ends up stealing and is sent to reform school, while industrious boy gets everything he ever wanted and more), and thought I had the whole book pegged. But then I read "Waste Not, Want Not," and "The Barring-Out." Both are also moral tales, but the difference is that the bad guy MCs aren't as evil as they were in the Susan and Lazy stories. It's almost as if Maria Edgeworth had a secret sympathy for these bad boys. For example, in WNWN, which is about not wasting things and being economical, the bad guy MC is a kid who is too impatient to untie the string around a package and cuts it instead, thus making it unusable. His morally upright cousin takes the time to untie his own package-string, and saves it for later. Other stuff happens--it was sort of like watching an anime series for the first time, because something happens out of left field and you're like, WTF?--for example, there's a one-eyed boy whose mother has limbs missing but somehow makes bouncey balls out of worsted and meanwhile the impatient kid gets in an archery contest, blah blah blah. But all the time, I was totally in sympathy with the impatient kid. Edgeworth seemed to like him, too, because she made a point of showing over and over again that he wasn't bad or really all that selfish. He kept wanting to help people, but after he'd already spent his money on himself. But the stuff he wanted to buy made utter sense to me. Like he was pining for a green-and-white uniform for the archery contest, so he chose not to spend money on an overcoat, but to get the uniform instead, and hope he could get his mom to send him some more money later for a coat. And he saw some kind of sweet buns that looked good, so he got a bunch and ate them till he was nearly sick, and was going to throw the rest away, but his annoyingly frugal cousin put them in his pocket.

I guess he sounds selfish and bad, but I liked the kid. He was so proud, marching in a parade with the other archers in their green-and-white uniforms, but then various things happened because he hadn't saved his package-string earlier, and he ended up falling in the mud and ruining the uniform. Did he let this ruin his day, as well? Hell no! He brushed the mud off as best he could and was still excited and happy about getting to shoot in the contest. You know his poncey cousin would have skulked off in shame about having a dirty uniform. Except that kid was so perfect he would never have fallen in the mud in the first place.

I thought maybe my liking for the bad kid was just me not caring for the author's message, but then the same thing happened in "The Barring-Out." There was a morally upright hero MC, and then a "bad" MC who the story was really about, and he turned out to be likable and to have some depth to him. In both these stories the out-and-out-villain was a minor character; in the waste-not story, it was a family of stupid rich people, and in the barring-out story it was, I kid you not, a "dunce":

"...there was a great tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He used to torment everybody with--'Do pray help me! I can't make out this one word.'"

His duncery wasn't what made him bad, though. That was just a clue to the reader that he was rotten to the core. Heh.

I saw that Maria Edgeworth's father edited some of her stories/books--not sure which ones. Why is there such a difference among these stories as far as depth of character? In the first two I read, the MC is the heroic moral good guy--but in the next two I read, the MC turns out to be a human being, with the moral hero sort of falling to the wayside in terms of storyline, and certainly in terms of reader interest.

Hey! I know what it feels like! It feels like Jane Austen and Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park! It feels like Maria Edgeworth liked these bad boys and they took off from her pen and came to life on their own--just like Henry Crawford. Jane Austen manhandled Henry Crawford into submission (she had to do it off-camera, because he surely would not have cooperated in person), but Maria Edgeworth was lucky enough to be writing short stories, so she could just cut the story off with a lesson learned.



*http://www.online-literature.com/maria-edgeworth/parents-assistant/

Worked on first of two slightly related scenes (same ones from yesterday). It was hard going at first, but by the end it felt like I was getting a grip on it. Lately, though, I can't count on that lasting. I could pick up tomorrow right where I left off tonight, and sit there gaping at it, utterly clueless. I'm having trouble getting any momentum going.

This morning I caught the last half* of Sword of Doom, and now must find a way to see the rest of it. Because I started it so late, I couldn't figure out who the MC was for a long time, but eventually saw that he was the bad guy, a cold, heartless killer. It was fascinating. His eyes were cold and dead, but there was this scene where he watched Toshiro Mifune foil the bad guy group's attempted ambush/assassination (of Toshiro Mifune), and you could see awe and self-doubt creeping in, just from the look on his (the bad guy MC's) face. But he didn't change, not for a second. His character remained consistent all the way to the very abrupt end of the movie. It looks fascinating--I'm still thinking about it, and I only saw half.

Plus, there's this great sword fight at the end, and I was watching it, and after a while I started thinking, Wow, is this all one take? I think it might have been, and if not it sure was a long one anyway. You could see the MC melting down both mentally and physically as it wore on and on. He was like an animal that's going to keep fighting with every last bit of energy it has, until the moment its heart stops beating. I need to see it again.


*Why, oh why, IFC, must you start Samurai Saturdays at 7:00 a.m.?

Backed up and worked on an earlier scene that informs character in the scene I was working on yesterday, that used to be the beginning but is now somewhere in the middle. I'm guessing I may work on these two scenes in tandem for a day or two, but who knows. I am not exactly blazing with inspiration at the moment.

Also today--played Mario Party with the household punks, and won even though I got soundly beat in all but two mini-games. This was because we ended up playing on Bowser's level (level isn't the right word; I forget what you call it) where you can steal stars from other players. Knowing that I suck at mini-games, I set myself to stealing other people's hard-earned stars, fully expecting that everyone else's superior game play would enable them to overtake me. It didn't. I'm not sure what the lesson here is, but I don't think I like it.

Yesterday, worked on a section in the tough part, but toward the end slipped into trying to make the characters' actions and words fit the plot. So today I skipped ahead to what used to be the first chapter, but now is about 80 pages in. There I have been trying to write what the characters would do, not what I need them to do. Thus I now see the entire middle slipping away, joining the end that already slipped away, leaving me with a ms that no longer has even a skeleton of a plot to follow.

Started pulling together another scene in the tough part--the same scene I was completely unable to visualize yesterday. For some reason, I pulled it up and thought, "Eh, I'll work on this." No idea why any of it suddenly made more sense than it did yesterday.

Unfortunately it's also time to hit the job-hunting trail. Past time, actually. Got one application in tonight. Blech. I don't know if I'll be able to keep writing this time around. I'm pretty sure I won't. This last round of trying to work and write at the same time really took it out of me.

That reminds me, I didn't mention that I'd decided to go ahead and stick in business-related posts anytime I feel like it. I realized that, in trying to avoid the topic, I'm aiding and abetting the implication that the only true, pure writers are those who hold themselves above the quest for filthy lucre. *&^%#! on that.

Had some trouble today because I tried to work on a chapter that's got a lot of dialog where people exchange information and come to decisions about what to do. I find this so stinkin' boring that I have difficulty making myself do it. I can't stay focused, I have trouble sitting still. I think I'm not going to push myself about it for the rest of today or tomorrow, but try to skip to something else that seems more interesting.

In fact, for the rest of today I might just scribble some notes to see if I can find something I'd enjoy working on tomorrow. I see a little part that might fit the bill, maybe. Must think about it.

It's weird, because in the part I was supposedly working on today, I couldn't even figure out where to start the scene or where it was happening or what needed to be real-time and what needed to be quick narrative overview. But I can look at this little wee bit that seems like it could be fun, and just glancing at it, I already know where it starts, where the characters are, how they're feeling, how they're going to treat each other, and how it ties into the scene that will come after.

Here's what I hope. I hope I've got enough writing chops to be able to pull together a scene that doesn't interest me but that needs to be there for story. I hope I have enough craft under my belt to be able to make it readable, clear, and interesting so that nobody can tell it was like pulling teeth for me to write it.

Tomorrow maybe I should think about why today's scene/chapter seemed so effing dull that I couldn't settle into it, and why this other wee bit might not be--what's different about them, and is there any way to make boring parts less boring for me? Because from where I sit right now it looks like they both have dialog with people exchanging information and coming to decisions.

Dug my way farther into the tough part. I actually fell into stride today, because angst, obsession, rage, grief and denial are more in my comfort zone than something like, say, walking from place to place or meeting a new character. If I'm lucky I can keep up the stride till the actual plot has to start up again, where things must be done and places must be gone to. However, that's not very far away--maybe a couple of scenes? I'm not sure.