Feels like there is less and less sun, and we have about a month until the solstice. Felt so ebullient yesterday, today there’s just tons of material concerns. Still, she plows on. Last night left off at 36,252, so 13.75K or so words to go in a matter of a few days. The “Lydia” situation flares up, she gets another proposal, may also throw in a trip to Asia.
Snippet from Chapter 4: Beer and Chocolate, RC and Liz having dinner, discussing her travel plans:
“Oh you should get on that. We have Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, and Beijing. The Beijing one is probably going to be the easiest to see you since it’s actually not quite that busy, mostly a figurehead, diplomatic relations, maintaining a presence and everything.”
Liz got a similar tingly feeling that she got back in London when she was considering this very trip. “I’ll send her an email. Speaking of, this is an issue with the chateau, and no disrespect to your grandmother.” She lowered her voice. “They keep you off the internet.”
“What do you mean?” He took a blackberry from his pocket. She had to admit that she didn’t even know he had one, and he hadn’t looked at it all day. Compared to Paul, who checked it every five minutes. And Paul wasn’t the acting head of a billion dollar corporation.
1AM Update: managed to finish my goal in the wee hours, and today, I wrote 5,000 words. That is nice for many reasons, most importantly it takes off the pressure the next 3 days, and, I got through the “Lydia freakout” that I was kinda sorta not really well YES … dreading. Talked the entire plot through with my Mom, who was visiting, and it took about 10 blocks up a hill on the way to dinner. We discussed a plot point- whether Elizabeth Bennet knows Wickham’s bad reputation before Darcy tells her in the letter. She had a good point that Elizabeth has an inkling, from a visiting aunt. There’s a funny quote from that scene. Elizabeth and her aunt are discussing Wickham’s attentions to a young 10,000 lb/year heiress, Miss King. In discussing Wickham’s horrible ways, her aunt says:
“… I should be sorry, you know, to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire.”
“Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not much better.
You know, Derbyshire, it’s like the ghetto of idyllic English countrysides. Austen’s Lizzie is pretty sarcastic. And nice use of punctuation- she uses dashes, semicolons, the whole 9 yards.