• Friday, in which Anna and Dara declare that 6:30am is not an actual time of day, in which a ferry is taken, in which the Royal BC Museum has HOLY SHIT MAMMOTH!, and in which Fernwood has a highly awesome open mic
• Saturday morning and afternoon, in which much wandering of downtown Victoria is done, in which Anna’s new mammoth is photographed having adventures, in which books in French are bought, and in which Anna acquires SURPRISE GUITAR!
• Saturday evening, in which Anna and Dara have a spectacular time seeing Le Vent du Nord, in which Anna’s mammoth meets a polar bear, and in which there is photographic evidence of fiddle players

On to the final leg of the Victoria adventure: Sunday!

Sunday morning:

The thing about the vast majority of my hotel stays is that they are associated with science fiction conventions. And the thing about those is, the vast majority of them are in fact Norwescon. At which Dara and I have been able to score a room in the hotel’s staff wing for years now, which means, among other things, that we get late checkout.

As awesome as our room at the Chateau Victoria was, late checkout was not one of the perks we had available to us. So we did actually have to vacate the premises by 11am. We got our stuff all rounded up, took it downstairs to leave with the concierge, and then headed out to go find something to eat before going on our tour to Butchart Gardens.

“Something to eat” wound up being at a little breakfast-y type diner place just around the corner from the hotel, with perfectly acceptable breakfast-y type food. I was amused to note that I could in fact read most of the French on the menus. (But then, the real test would be whether I could read French menus that didn’t have the equivalent English text right there.) And after that, we trotted back over to the Clipper Terminal, the very same terminal at which we’d arrived on Friday, to catch the bus to the gardens.

The Butchart Gardens tour:

We had a lovely comfortable bus that wasn’t terribly crowded at all, and a lively older gentleman as our driver who gave us a grand leisurely drive through some of downtown Victoria and then on out to the gardens, chatting up a storm about many things of interest we passed. He was generally great fun to listen to, and pointed out a few things about Chinatown in particular that Dara and I noted for checking out later: specifically, the little alleyways that threaded through the place, and how shops could be secreted away in them.

Once we got to the Gardens, we only had two hours to play with. Two hours was honestly not enough. The place was enormous, and beautiful, and we barely scratched the surface of everything there was to see there.

The first thing that greets you on your way into the place is the enormous Butchart Gardens sign. Our guide said it was traditional to have your picture taken in front of it. Given that I had in fact brought the mammoth, this picture was pretty much inevitable.

Mammoths Like the Gardens

So was this one, for that matter. I mean, what other tasks would mammoths be reading about?

Mammoths Like to Be Informed

Basically, what Dara and I had time to hit was the Sunken Garden section and the Japanese Garden section. Dara’s way, way better at taking floral pics than I am, but I got a few nice ones in the Sunken Garden:

Dara took this one of me. I totally keep wanting to see Totoro pop his head out of the bamboo.

Bamboo in the Rain

Some more of mine:

We finished up the visit to the Gardens with the obligatory visit to the gift shop, and wound up coming home with dark chocolate icewine truffles. Which were, I note, QUITE tasty.

On the way back to downtown Victoria we took a different route, and our guide gave us another entertaining lecture before finally dropping us off back at the Clipper Terminal. All too short a trip, as I mentioned–but at least the guide was very entertaining, and it’s an easy way to kill a few hours on a Victoria visit. For serious flower buffs, though, you’ll totally want to take longer.

The rest of the afternoon:

We got back early enough that we had at least a couple more hours to spend before we had to go retrieve our luggage from the hotel, and rendezvous with the flight that would be taking us home. So we opted to spend it wandering around a bit more of Chinatown, and in particular ducking through some of the more interesting alleys just to see where they went and what sorts of shops were tucked within them.

And just to say we did, we wandered along the main touristy row of shops on Government. I believe it was somewhere along there that we spotted these:

Tasty and CRANKY

We also spotted this, which if I do say so myself is some of the more entertaining graffiti I’ve ever seen:

You Didn’t See Us Alone in the South Passage

And I snapped a pic of Dara by a nice fountain in a little square:

Supervillain

Coming home:

Eventually though, we did finally go get our luggage and head over to the teeny tiny terminal where we had to catch our seaplane. Which turned out to be the best airplane trip I’d taken in some time, even though I had to spend the whole flight with my eyes closed because OMG turbulence. And our plane was tiny enough that we felt every little bump and skip.

Very noisy, too. The small number of passengers on board all wore earplugs, so I couldn’t even really do much on the flight except doze. But the sheer lack of hassle getting onto the plane and getting off again made it all worth it, really. Particularly when we finally landed in Seattle and going through customs pretty much amounted to showing my newly acquired guitar to two very bored-looking customs agents, who asked me how much the instrument had cost and if I had a receipt for it. Which they didn’t even ask to see!

But the really fun part was discovering that a couple on the plane with us were actually hitching a ride with the pilot back up to the terminal in Kenmore! They’d actually left their car at that terminal by mistake, and so the pilot was going to give them a lift back up there. So we said “HEY WE LIVE IN KENMORE”, and the pilot told us to come on, he’d give us a lift too, no charge.

Which meant we got to get right back on the plane we’d just gotten off of, lol. And another staffer came running after the pilot yelling, “But but but what are their NAMES?” because she needed to know for paperwork reasons. The pilot yelled back, “Smith and Jones!” And then asked us wryly what our actual names were, but only once we were getting back on board.

It took only about seven minutes and change for us to get from the Lake Union terminal back up to the Kenmore one. And the couple who were retrieving their car even kindly gave us a lift up the hill, so we didn’t even have to walk home with our luggage!

BEST. FLIGHT. EVER. And an awesome closer to the trip, getting us home super-early as well.

All in all: a glorious weekend. Victoria WILL be visited again!

Now, beta reading is not the same thing as editing, so I’m going to talk about each in turn.

Beta reading, for those of you who don’t know already, is the act of handing your manuscript off to one or more trusted persons to read for you and find errors. Think of it as like a beta release of a software product–you’re handing it off to a select group of people who you trust to find the bugs in your product before it ships. Beta reading can be anything from a big-picture scan through of the manuscript to tell you “yes, this holds together” to an in-depth, line-by-line copy edit. How much you get out of a beta reader really depends upon that beta reader and how much you’re asking for. A really good beta reader, though, will approach editorial levels of commentary and be ready and willing to tell you if bits of your book don’t make sense. A truly phenomenal beta reader will in fact give you commentary that nudges you into the right direction to not only fix problems with the story, but ideally even make it stronger.

I absolutely, positively endorse getting your manuscript beta read at minimum before you send it out into the world. No matter how good a writer you are, somebody who is not you needs to see that story before you try to sell it. Nobody’s typing is a hundred percent perfect–somewhere in that manuscript, chances are that you’ve mistyped something. And chances are that you’ll miss it because you’re in a mindset of thinking you actually typed the correct thing, and your eyes will go right over the error. And if you can get a beta reader who can point out possible larger errors in your storyline, all the better. A good beta reader is gold, people.

How to find those beta readers? Ask anybody and everybody you know, but I’d recommend targeting friends or family who are passionate about reading–particularly if they are inclined to post reviews of things they’ve read recently. If you have friends who are fellow writers, they’ll be especially good beta readers. Yet at the same time, tread a little more lightly when approaching fellow writers who may not be able to spare time from working on their own work. Be willing to discuss swapping beta reading efforts. And if you do swap beta reading efforts, commit to doing so in a timely fashion (I’m guilty of falling over on this myself, so I’ll particularly stress this bit).

Once you do get your manuscript beta read, you also need to be prepared to accept good criticism. If you’re genuinely interested in improving your work, then listen to what your beta readers tell you, and remember that if they tell you that a particular aspect of your story just does not work, there’s very likely a reason for that that you need to think about. It’s vital to keep in mind as well that even if you get a lot of critiques in about your work, this doesn’t mean you are a failure as a writer. Nobody’s first draft is perfect, especially when they’re first starting out. It’s okay if your beta readers find things that need fixing. It’s all part of improving your craft.

Yet at the same time, don’t be afraid to reject a particular point from your betas if you genuinely feel that you need to keep it the way it is. Ultimately you are the writer, and it’s on you to make the final call about whether or not you’ll implement any given suggestion. But if you do turn down a particular suggestion, do so in a constructive fashion. Don’t be all “I’M THE WRITER AND WHAT I SAY GOES”, because that’s a fast track to never having beta readers again.

When should you get your story beta read? For my money, I’d say “once the first draft is finished”. However, as with almost everything in writing, your mileage may vary. For me, I find getting critiques on a chapter before I have a complete story is a good way to guarantee I’ll get way too focused on that chapter, and less on getting the actual story done. If you want somebody to sanity-check you before you have a complete story, I’d recommend at least having a complete outline as to what’s supposed to happen.

How many times should you get your story beta read? Again, your mileage may vary, but for me it’ll be a question of “how many drafts do I plan on doing?” I try to put out a call for beta readers after every major revision to a draft.

Be sure to be clear to your beta readers about your desired level of input (do you want just a proofread? Or do you want larger-structure feedback?), and how much time you’re able to give them. Be flexible if you can on how you hand out your manuscript to your readers–whether in a Word doc, over Dropbox, in differing formats, or what have you.

And once you have your manuscript beta read one or more times, what about professional editing? Should you do that too?

My answer on this: it depends. Commissioning a professional editor who knows what they’re doing can cost you several hundred dollars, so if you can’t budget for it, you can’t budget for it, and that’s that. Still, I’d encourage you to look into it if you can afford an indie editor’s rates. And here’s why: no matter how good a group of beta readers you may be fortunate enough to find, somebody with actual experience in publishing is going to bring a whole different level of attention to your manuscript. Ideally, any editor you commission should be someone who can not only proofread your work, not only give you larger-picture input on the story structure, but even help you polish your writing style and make you come across as professionally as possible.

And if you’re going to self-publish your work, people, trust me: you want to come across as professionally as possible. If you were publishing your work via traditional means, you’d be edited. Don’t do yourself the disservice of skipping that step if you’re choosing to go self-pub instead.

So yes, find an editor if you can. The trick will be finding someone with actual experience. With the explosion of self-published works, there are a lot more people out there than there used to be, promoting themselves as independent editors. There are also services that will offer you editorial input as part of the overall package of publishing your work for you. But ultimately, no matter who you hire, find out in advance what work they’ve edited beforehand so that you can see what their work looks like. Post to writer forums (like Absolute Write’s Water Cooler) and ask for recommendations. Ask your fellow writers. Look in the dedications or acknowledgements of other people’s work and see if they’ve credited their editors, especially if you know those works to be self-published. And if you go to conventions appropriate to your genre of work, chances are good you’ll find people at those conventions offering editorial services.

Long story short: whether you can afford a professional editor or not, make sure that somebody who isn’t you sees your book before you ship it.

Next post: What happens once you have a book ready to go? How do you turn it into an ebook?

Let’s get right down to the dragon-y goodness, shall we?

General notes:

Of course, right out of the gate with this chapter we get Thorin pontificating about how it’s basically time for Bilbo to go into the secret door first. Which doesn’t go over well with the hobbit, and in some ways doesn’t really go over well with me. Particularly when the narrative goes into this:

There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.

Stereotypical, much? Also rather racist, even aside from any question of whether Tolkien took inspiration for the dwarves from real-life Jews. It’s disappointing to see the same author providing us a heroic figure from the hobbits unilaterally dismissing another of his races as being able to engage in heroic actions, and it doesn’t help to get that half-assed addendum of Thorin’s company being “decent enough people”.

On the other hand, we do also get some awesome description of Bilbo heading down into the tunnel:

He was trembling with fear, but his little face was set and grim. Already he was a very different hobbit from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago. He had not had a pocket-handkerchief for ages.

And he’s still not quite over the habit of whinging to himself. But again, at least, whinging to himself, and he is in fact heading down the tunnel. So go you, Bilbo!

And, SMAUG:

There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his lumbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.

(I note with interest that Smaug is described as red-golden, and the glimpses of dragon we got in the movie were more blue. It’ll be interesting to see if that holds true when The Desolation of Smaug drops at the end of this year.)

Bilbo makes off with a cup, the dwarves are all HELL YEAH ALL HAIL THE BURGLAR… and then OH SHIT THE DRAGON WAKES UP. I gotta admit, it does thrill to read “… when suddenly a vast rumbling woke in the mountain underneath as if it was an old volcano that had made up its mind to start erupting once again.” And, “up the long tunnel came the dreadful echoes, from far down in the depths, of a bellowing and a trampling that made the ground beneath them tremble.”

And the scramble to recover Bofur and Bombur from further down the mountain while Smaug has taken to the air in rage… oh yeah, lovely tension in those paragraphs, too. This should make for exciting shots in the next movie, that’s for sure!

Here too we see the dwarves really showing how they’ve taken to Bilbo as a leading figure here in the party, just as much as Thorin. Thorin in fact asks his advice quite politely, and the narrative indeed calls out the dwarves’ changed opinion of him: “Already they had come to respect little Bilbo. Now he had become the real leader in their adventure.”

And hee hee hee “you have nice manners for a thief and a liar”. Many lovely lines here in the exchange between Bilbo and Smaug, and I can’t wait to hear Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch bandying this dialogue back and forth. Also, I totally envision him scampering back up the corridor going “woo woo woo woo!” just like Curly in the Three Stooges, or Zoidberg in Futurama!

Here we have a reference to what I’m sure is supposed to be mithril, before Tolkien had actually named it: “a coat of dwarf-linked rings the like of which had never been made before, for it was wrought of pure silver to the power and strength of triple steel.”

The chapter ends with Smaug deciding to assault Lake-town, since he’s half-certain that the unseen thief has come to the Mountain with their support.

French notes:

When Thorin pontificates about it being time for Bilbo to step up to the plate, the French translator clarifies this a bit, thus: “Maintenant est venu le moment d’intervenir pour notre estimé M. Baggins…” Which is more or less “Now is come the moment to intervene for our esteemed M. Baggins…” Compare to “Now is the time for our esteemed Mr. Baggins…” in the original.

While Thorin’s in pontificate mode, we get a verb that’s recently come up for me in SuperMemo, i.e., “ressentir”: “… mais Bilbo ressentit quelque impatience.” (“But Bilbo felt some impatience” is the direct translation of that, though the original is “But Bilbo felt impatient.”) And looking it up online tells me that the English verb “resent” is in fact related to “ressentir”. The general impression I have of the French verb, though, is that it’s just general “feeling”, as opposed to “negative feeling”.

I didn’t catch this going through the English chapter, but Bilbo does throw off the phrase “third time pays for all”. I wonder if this is related to “third time’s the charm”? In French, it’s rendered as “la troisième fois rapporte pour toutes”, and if I understand “rapporter” correctly, it’s “bring back/return”.

The description of how Bilbo wasn’t expecting a chorus of volunteers (“un chœur de volontaires”) and therefore was not disappointed gives us “déçu”, the past participle of “décevoir”, “to disappoint”. Another interesting verb just for its similar to the English “deceive”, though it’s not clear to me whether that definition also applies to “décevoir”. French.about.com thinks not, and neither does dictionary.reverso.net. Google Translate however offers it as a possible definition.

Ha! The description of Fili and Kili looking embarrassed when Bilbo asks the dwarves who’s going into the tunnel with him gives me a vocabulary word I recognize from a song: “gêné”! This means “embarrassed”, and I know it from the song “Quand on est gêné”, one of the more charming songs off my copy of Éric and Simon Beaudry’s album “Le sort des amoureux”. The context in which it appears is thus: “Fili et Kili se tenaient sur une jambe, l’air gêné…” And yeah, I am totally seeing the dwarves from the movie looking sheepish here.

“En catimini”, as observed in previous chapters, appears again here. Noting it again for meaning “on the sly”, and because I like the sound of it!

Here’s a nice crunchy word that appears when Balin’s refusing to go down the tunnel any further with Bilbo: “chuchotaient”, “whispering”. Imperfect tense of “chuchoter”, “to whisper”.

This bit has a lovely rhythm to it: “il descendit, descendit, descendit silencieusement dans le noir.” Compare to Tolkien’s original “he crept noiselessly down, down, down into the dark”. Good job on capturing the cadences there, translator!

And here’s Bilbo looking all grim-like in French: “Il tremblait de peur, mais son petit visage était rigide et sévère.” Somehow this makes Bilbo come across as even tinier and more adorable.

“The least Tookish part of him” comes across a little more strident in French, too: “s’écria son côté le moins Took”. This translates to “cried the least Tookish side of him”, if I read it right.

I have to call “indubitablement” out as just having awesome rhythm, as French verbs go! It means, of course, “indubitably”. Which anybody who grew up on Schoolhouse Rock totally has imprinted in their brains. Context of where it appears: “Et il faisait indubitablement chaud à présent dans le tunnel.” (“And it was now undoubtedly hot in the tunnel.”)

Ooh, new verb: “vrombir”, which means “to hum/to whirr/to roar”. It appears here: “Un son commença aussi à vrombir à ses oreilles”. Dictionary.com doesn’t think “vrombir” is related to the English “vroom”, but one does wonder whether the onomatopoeia independently developed here.

The noise Bilbo begins to hear of Smaug in his sleep is described in French thusly: “une sorte de bouillonnement semblable au bruit d’une grande marmite sur le feu, mêlé d’un grondement qui faisait penser au ronronnement de quelque gigantesque matou.” What Tolkien actually wrote was: “a sort of bubbling like the noise of a large pot galloping on the fire, mixed with a rumble as of a gigantic tom-cat purring.” But I like the description a bit more in French, just for the words “bouillonnement” (bubbling) and “ronronnement” (purring). And the word “matou” (tomcat) is new to me, too.

“Il était étendu là, le grand dragon rouge doré, profondément endormi…” (“He lay there, the great red golden dragon, sound asleep…”) Yeah, rather shiver-enducing in French, too.

This is a good word: “éblouissement”. It means “dazzlement”, as near as I can tell, though Tolkien used “staggerment” to describe Bilbo’s reaction to Smaug’s hoard. Interesting as well to see this word and the ones I mentioned above used as nouns, rather than adverbs; it’s important to note that words that end in -ment, in French, can be either.

“Au voleur ! Au feu ! Au meurtre !”–this is Smaug waking to discover the cup has been stolen. It interests me that “Thieves! Fire! Murder” takes on “au” in the French, here.

“Aiguillonnés”–this means “roused” or “spurred”, and it appears where Bilbo is urging the dwarves to take shelter behind the door of the tunnel once Smaug takes to the air in his rage. Good word.

Thorin saying “Nonsense!” translates thus in French: “— Ne dites pas de bétises ! s’écria Thorïn.” Roughly, “do not say silly things!”

BWAHAHAHA! I just found a typo!

Pretty Sure This Isn’t Right

Here’s a bit I understood more or less straight through: “Girion, Seigneur de Dale, est mort, et j’ai mangé ses gens comme un loup parmi les moutons, et où sont les fils de ses fils qui oseraient m’approcher ?” (“Girion, Lord of Dale, is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among the sheep, and where are the sons of his sons who dare approach me?”) Smaug does, I admit, make a valid point here about his awesomeness.

And here he of course winds up to the big finish in the middle of that same pontification: “Mon armure vaut dix boucliers, mes crocs sont des épées, mes griffes des lances, le choc de ma queue est semblable à la foudre, mes ailes à un ouragan et mon souffle est mortel !” (“My armor is worth ten shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is like lightning, my wings a hurricane and my breath is deadly!” Pretty close translation to what Tolkien actually wrote.) Sounds even more pompous in French, though I can’t help but snicker at those last few words. This is “souffle”, NOT “soufflé”, but I still can’t help but read this as “MY SOUFFLÉ IS DEADLY!” Don’t let Smaug in your kitchen, people. For your own safety.

Bilbo’s last shot at Smaug gives us the phrase “en flèche du Parthe”, which is more or less the translation of “a parting shot”. The amusing part of this, though, is that there’s a different phrase, “Parthian shot”–and the French actually appears to be a translation of that! According to this Wikipedia article, “parting shot” and “Parthian shot” developed separately, even though they mean more or less the same thing. And this article on the French wiktionary site more or less says the same, if I understand it correctly. Very cool.

The Arkenstone is of course referred to as “L’Arkenstone”–and oh hey, is this really actually the first reference to the Arkenstone in the entire text? It does seem to be, based on my search of my ebook of the English edition! Noting “L’Arkenstone” here though since it did appear in the movie, and it did in fact get referred to as “L’Arkenstone” in the movie’s French language track!

More bits I understood more or less straight, where Bilbo begs the dwarves to shut the door before Smaug fries them all: “Fermez la porte ! Je crains ce dragon jusqu’à la moelle de mes os. Je déteste encore bien plus ce silence que tout la vacarme d’hier soir. Fermez la porte avant qu’il ne soit trop tard !” (“Close the door! I fear that dragon to the marrow of my bones. I hate the silence even more than all the noise of last night. Close the door before it’s too late!”) The only bit of this I didn’t more or less recognize was the word “vacarme”, which is “noise/din/racket”.

German notes:

And right out of the gate, I spot a word I’ve had in the first German vocabulary lesson I’m doing in SuperMemo: “Gesellschaft”, which means “company” or “society”. It appears when Thorin’s pontificating about it being time for Bilbo to step up to the plate: “… um dessentwillen er in unsere Gesellschaft aufgenommen wurde.” (“… for the sake of which he was accepted into our company.”)

“Jetzt ist die Zeit gekommen…” This is “Now the time has come”, a bit that I actually understood.

Bilbo crossly calls Thorin “o Thorin Thrainssohn Eichenschild” in the German edition, hich has a neat rhythm to it. And “Thrainssohn” looks rather Nordic, which is rather generally fitting for Tolkien, I expect.

Here’s another bit that has nice rhythm to it: “unserem ursprünglichen Vertrag”, which means “our original contract”. I quite like the word “ursprünglichen”.

This sentence has another good crunchy word in it: “Er meinte den vergangen Frühling, ehe er sein Haus verließ; doch das schien ihm Jahrhunderte zurückzuliegen.” (“He meant the previous spring, before he left his house; but that seemed to him to lie centuries back.”) How’s “züruckzuliegen” for crunchiness? Two z’s AND an umlaut. I had to break this one down into compononent words to get “to lie back”, though.

Another one: “Gewissensbisse”, “remorse”. What Fili and Kili look like they’re having when Bilbo pointedly asks the company who’s coming into the tunnel with him, and nobody volunteers except Balin.

The German translator seems to have decided that this bit is a bit too idiomatic for direct translation:

“Now you are in for it at last, Bilbo Baggins,” he said to himself. “You went and put your foot right in it that night of the party, and now you have got to pull it out and pay for it! Dear me, what a fool I was and am!” said the least Tookish part of him.

In German, this comes through like this:

Jetzt bist du ganz und gar hineingerasselt, Bilbo Beutlin, sagte er zu sich selbst. Du hast dich damals in der Nacht, als die Gesellschaft bei dir zusammenkam, auf dieses Abenteuer eingelassen, und nun sieh zu, wie du wieder herauskommst. Du liebe Zeit! Für so viel Dummheit muss man bestraft werden! So sagte diejenige Seite in ihm, die mit den Tuks am wenigsten zu schaffen hatte.

So let me see if I can break this down. “Hineingerasselt” if I’m parsing it right seems to be a conjugation of a legitimate verb, “hineinrasseln”, but damned if I can figure out what it actually means aside from a vague guess that it more or less means what Tolkien wrote, i.e., that Bilbo is “in for it”.

The notion of Bilbo putting his foot in it and having to pull it back out and pay for it comes out completely differently, too. If I’m translating this right, Bilbo’s more or less saying he was in for it the night the company convened for the adventure, and now they’re watching him pull out of it again… maybe? This is a big enough chunk of German that it’s kind of beyond me, and I’m doing well to realize that it doesn’t really match up with what Tolkien wrote, I think.

It’s more obvious though that German!Bilbo is lamenting that “for such stupidity one must be punished”, whereas English!Bilbo’s just ragging on himself for being a fool. Not quite the same thing.

Ooh, I like this word, though: “drachengehüteten”. Dragon-kept? Dragon-guarded? It’s used with “Schätzen”, in the general sense of “dragon-guarded treasures”, in which Bilbo is firmly telling himself he has no interest.

Ah, and here we have the German edition getting into describing the noises of Smaug:

Auch drang ein Geräusch in seine Ohren, eine Art Blubbern, wie von einem riesigen Topf, der auf einem Feuer rüttelte. Und dazwischen rumorte es wie das Schnurren eines gigantischen Katers.

“Blubbern” amuses me; it’s “bubbling”, though of course it looks like the English word “blubber”. Which gives an entirely different connotation to the noises Smaug is making! Dictionary.com says the English word is related to the German word, but it’s less certain about the English word “bubble”.

First contender for Longest Word in the Chapter: “unmissverständlichen”, which took up a good half of an entire line of print all by itself. It apparently means “unequivocal”. 21 total characters.

And, cue the description of Smaug: “Da lag er, der rotgoldene Drache, und war fest eingeschlafen.” Ha, I more or less actually understood all of that: “There he lay, the red-golden dragon, and was fast asleep.”

Second contender for Longest Word in the Chapter: “zusammengefalteten”, which means “collapsed”! But only 18 characters!

I’m seeing a lot of extra paragraph breaks in this chapter, even more so than usual–possibly because the narrative does periodically jump back and forth between Bilbo’s POV and that of Smaug. The translator’s breaking pretty much any time this happens. Which does help if you’re used to breaks between POV switches, but it also definitely changes the flow of things somewhat.

Here’s Smaug’s rousing anger at discovering the theft: “Diebe! Feuer! Mord!” (“Thieves! Fire! Murder!”)

And here’s Smaug’s opening line to Bilbo: “Dieb! Ich rieche dich, ich spüre deinen Luftzug. Ich höre deinen Atem. Komm! Bedien dich, hier ist genug!” (“Thief! I smell you, I feel your draft. I hear your breath. Come! Help yourself, here is enough!”) A bit more literal than what Tolkien actually wrote, but still gets the point across.

Bilbo calls Smaug “Fürchterlicher” out of the gate, which Google Translate thinks is “Hideous”, but I’m not sure I buy that. Tolkien’s original word there is “Tremendous”. Googling around a bit gives me more the idea of “terrible/awful”, though hrmm, I suppose “hideous” works there too. It’s a tonal shift from the English, definitely.

Ooh, important and interesting note: Bilbo is addressing Smaug as _du_, not as _Sie_. The translator’s choosing a different course of action here than the French one did!

“Chiefest and greatest of calamities” becomes “größtes und schrecklichstes aller Unglücke”. Which is neat to read but hard to say!

And OMG you guys, behold this pic of how Smaug was drawn in the illustrations! THIS is supposed to be the destroyer of Dale? The bane of the Lonely Mountain? The aforementioned Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities? Somehow I can’t really see Benedict Cumberbatch voicing this critter. And yet, he’s oddly adorable! I really want to skitch him on his big ol’ chin and tell him WHOSSA BIG FIERCE DRAGGIN YES YOU ARE.

Chiefest and Most Adorable of Calamities

Some of Bilbo’s self-appointed titles in German: “der Spurfinder” (track finder?), “der Netzschlitzer” (web slicer), “die stechende Fliege” (the stinging fly). And of course, “Ringfinder”, which is self-evident, and “Glücksträger” (luck carrier).

I actually understood this tiny bit, woo: “Laut lachte Smaug”. (“Loud laughed Smaug.”) Which is a bit of a scary image, when you think about it, something as big as a dragon laughing.

Smaug’s defiance of Girion is thus: “Girion, Fürst auf Dal, ist tot. Und wie ein Wolf unter den Schafen habe ich sein Volk gefressen. Wo sind seine Enkelsöhne, die es wagen, mir zu nahen?” Pretty much a straight translation, though I observe that the German translator broke the original English sentence up a bit.

And this is Smaug’s enumeration of his various mighty attributes, as described above: “Meine Rüstung ist ein zehnfacher Schild, meine Zähne sind Schwerter, meine Klauen Speere, das Aufschlagen meines Schwanzes ist ein Donnerkeil, meine Schwingen sind Wirbelstürme und mein Atem bringt den Tod!” Again, pretty much straight-up translation, give or take a few words!

Bilbo calls Smaug “du Undurchdringlicher”, “the Impenetrable”, when he gets a look at his armored underbelly.

Interesting–the German translator actually uses two words for the Arkenstone, “Der Arkenjuwel” and “Der Arkenstein”.

Bilbo’s begging the dwarves to close the door: “Schließt die Tür! Ich fürchte diesen Drachen bis ins Mark. Die Stille gefällt mir viel weniger als der Aufruhr in der letzten Nacht. Schließt die Tür, ehe es zu spät ist!” I like “Aufruhr” as a word–”uproar”. And I note with interest that the translator uses “I fear this dragon to the core” rather than the notion of “to the marrow of my bones”.

And on that note, with Smaug heading off to raze Lake-town, we end Chapter 12!

As I reported earlier this week, session folks are encouraging me to learn Genticorum’s lovely little ditty “Valse de poeles” (Waltz of the Stoves). It was played at session this past Wednesday, and I do have it on my Genticorum Favorites playlist, so I’ve heard it several times now. This morning, I caught myself whistling it. And I realized, “Wait a minute. Now it’s in my BRAIN.”

Because, O Internets, if a tune actually makes it into my brain well enough that I can reproduce it by whistling, chances are very, VERY good that I can reproduce it on the flute.

So this afternoon I picked up Norouet and promptly started trying to reproduce the tune. I got the entire A part pretty much without trying–though I quickly also realized, after checking against the recording, that dammit! The tune’s in A! Which means that I can’t really play it on Norouet, due to previously lamented issues with G sharp. So I had to jump over to Shine instead.

But with the help of Tempo Slow, gunning the tune down to about 65 percent speed, I worked out the B part in fairly short order. As with Le Vent du Nord’s “Manteau d’hiver”, “Valse de poeles” is very simple in structure. There’s just an A part and a B part, and Genticorum does several passes through each before they vary it up some with harmony and a few differences in rhythm on the final iterations. So with this tune, too, the challenge for me will be to figure out whether I can work out the harmony along with the melody, or to make up something of my own to vary it up.

Here’s the really fun part though: unlike with “Manteau d’hiver”, where the melody is complex enough that I had to actually transcribe it note by note, I got all of “Valse de poeles” by ear. I don’t have any sheet music for it at all, and I was just going entirely by the recording!

And this was the very first time I’ve ever been able to pull that off. I’m ridiculously excited by this! It means that yeah, maybe I can indeed progress towards the goal of being able to damn well learn tunes by ear like a real session player!

Check this out, too–Genticorum’s got the album in question streaming up on reverbnation.com, so you can hear the song thusly right over here! Ain’t that pretty?

(Streaming player widget behind the cut, since it breaks on LJ and Dreamwidth!)

Here now is my take on a translation of the lyrics that Marie-Andrée provided. So if you’re an Anglophone Great Big Sea fan, hope this helps! (Or, for that matter, if you’re a Francophone GBS fan and you have trouble parsing Alan’s accent. Since he does have a heavy Newfoundland accent and that influences his French. And if you look in the liner notes for the album, at least on the boxed set edition, it says that the band had a Francophone from New Brunswick giving them French coaching. So Alan’s take on French may well sound very strange to French-speaking Canadians outside of Newfoundland or New Brunswick!)

A few quick notes going in:

“Bon bon bon” is I believe just getting used here for rhythm and cadence as opposed to being part of the actual lyrics. “Bon” is of course “good”.

“Bis” means “repeat”. I see this a lot in Quebec trad music, as a way to notate when a line is done call and response style. Here, I’ve used it to signify the lines that are first sung by Alan and then sung back by the rest of the band.

“Le Bon Vin” is in fact a Quebecois trad song, from what I was seeing Googling around. I did find longer editions of the lyrics, here and here. (That second link has chords, too!) However, Great Big Sea’s take is much simplified. They’re only sorta kinda doing the usual Quebec song structure of having a repeated first line and a second line, which then rolls over into the next verse to become that verse’s first line. (And I think they’re probably losing a lot of the actual narrative and context of the song, too, simplified as it is. But!)

Not entirely sure of the translation of the last line, but from what I’m getting it’s generally the friend of the viewpoint character snarking on this girl’s mob of lovers, so one could presume the recounting of her lovers makes up the “la canaille”?)

Anyway, here you go!

Chorus:
Le bon vin m’endort, l’amour me réveille (Good wine puts me to sleep, love wakes me up)
Le bon vin m’endort, l’amour me réveille encore! (Good wine puts me to sleep, love wakes me up again)

En passant par Paris, caressant la bouteille (bis) (Passing by Paris, caressing the bottle)
Un de mes amis me dit à l’oreille, bon, bon, bon (One of my friends told me in the ear)

Un de mes amis me dit à l’oreille (bis) (One of my friends told me in the ear)
Prends bien garde à toi, allons poursuivre la belle, bon, bon, bon (Take good care of yourself, (let’s) go pursue the beauty!)

Poursuit qui la veut, moi, je me moque d’elle (bis) (… pursue (the one?) that wants it, I don’t care about her)
J’ai couché trois ans, la nuit avec elle bon, bon, bon (I spent the night three years with her)

Elle a eu trois garçons, tous trois capitaines (bis) (She had three boys, all three captains)
Un à Bordeaux, et l’autre à La Rochelle bon, bon, bon (One in Bordeaux, and another in La Rochelle)

Un à Bordeaux, et l’autre à La Rochelle (bis) (One in Bordeaux, and another in La Rochelle)
L’autre à Versailles, à faire la canaille bon, bon, bon (Another in Versailles, to make the riffraff?)

Which, for those of you who may just be joining in, is my very favorite instrumental by Le Vent du Nord, off of their current album Tromper le temps. I adore it to bits, as I have fangirlishly squealed about in previous posts. It’s lovely and evocative and upbeat and makes me think of snow showers and snowball fights and drinking hot chocolate by the fire after you come in from being outside.

I’ve been practicing trying to figure out tunes by ear and this was one of the ones I wanted to try, since having the awesome recording of it on hand is a fantastic motivator. I threw it through Tempo Slow on my iPhone, pulling the tempo down REALLY hard–we’re talking 40-50 percent of actual speed here–so that I could try to work out what the melody line was actually doing. And it WORKED.

The piece is deceptively simple in structure. There’s some opening ornamentation as an intro, and then the main tune kicks in with an A part and a B part. And that’s really all there is to it, except that as the piece progresses, they bring in the podorythmie on the second time through. And on the repetitions after that, they vary up the melody to make it more interesting. Harmony comes in, and rhythmic variations as well. And then at last you get the outro to wind it down.

I just focused on working out the basic melody, what appears in the first couple of repetitions. I’ve been trying to transcribe it using Finale Songwriter, but that’s proven to be surprisingly challenging–because it’s a crooked tune, and the time signature does some wacky things I haven’t figured out yet! So I’m not entirely sure how to notate it correctly.

I’ve been trying to get as close as I can by just writing it out in 4/4 and getting the notes in the right order and rhythm as best I can. But partway through the B part I flailed out on that hard, and tonight I opted instead to just try to listen very hard to the slowed-down track and see if I could get into the appropriate zen space of letting my fingers tell me where they needed to go.

I got the notes I was missing and ZOMG you guys, I think I can play this thing. Slowly, with some fumbling, but I can play it! And now that I have down the basic melody line, I can work on seriously practicing it so I can take it to session! This is going to be EIGHTY KINDS OF AWESOME.

And, amusingly enough, I’m working this out on Silver tonight–and realizing that for once, actually, the flute with the keys is striking me as the right instrument. Because Silver is metal, and tone-wise, that’s actually striking me kind of right for a piece whose title translates to “Winter coat”.

Want to actually hear what I’m babbling about? Behold, Bandcamp streaming goodness! (ETA: Adding in the direct link since LJ apparently eats the Bandcamp embed code. Sorry, LJ users who see this post!)

Or, here, here’s a live version!

For the record: I CAN’T do it that fast yet. But that will be coming. Oh my yes. It’s going to HAPPEN.

“Come What May”, by Ad Vielle Que Pourra: Mostly instrumental, but with a lot of hurdy-gurdy goodness. The hurdy-gurdy here isn’t nearly at the powerhouse level that Le Vent du Nord delivers, but that’s not a bad thing, given that I happen to like how the voice of the instrument lends itself to more delicate tunes. What vocals are here are almost choral in their quality, which fits in nicely overall with the understated instrumental performances.

“Eaux-de-vies”, by Les Batinses: I already had this group’s other album, so I fully expected to like this one too. I was not mistaken. More jazzy/bluesy in style than how I usually listen to my trad, but again, not a bad thing. Especially in the extended solos in track 2, “Vin Et Amour” (and how’s that title for a summary of two of the major topics of Quebec trad music, hmm?). Also: appears to be a live album! This was obvious at first only with the audience noise at the end of the tracks, but the last couple of tracks really get bouncy. So that makes it extra fun to listen to.

“Koru”, by Mauvais Sort: Another group I’d already sampled with an initial album, so yeah, I thought I’d pick up a couple more of theirs. Mauvais Sort are similar to Les Batinses in overall vocal style and instrumentation, with a few hints of Mes Aieux as well. General thumbs up for rocking up the trad, though it’s odd to hear a drum kit in the background. I wanted this album in particular though for their take of “Ziguezon”, which is imprinted on my brain with the La Bottine Souriante take sung by Andre Marchand. Fun to hear alternate versions of such things!

“Gront”, by Väsen: This being the group from Sweden I became aware of via their touring with Le Vent du Nord! I’d been meaning to find one of their albums, and when this one shot across my radar, I was happy to pick it up. Partway in on the first track of this album, which is from 1999, I’m thinkin’ yeah, these guys are totally compatible with my musical interests. The nyckelharpa sounds very cool, and they’ve got some viola goodness going on as well. Rhythm-wise, their percussion is very familiar-sounding to anybody familiar with Celtic music. Or Quebecois, for that matter, even though I’m hearing drums here and not feet. The album’s entirely instrumental, so I suspect this’ll mostly serve me as background music for writing code. Or writing prose, for that matter. Of particular amusement to my fellow Browncoats, though: the last track in particular struck me as something that would not be out of place AT ALL in the soundtrack of a Firefly episode.

More to come!

Tonight though was mostly about the hands. I did in fact play my actual flute in front of actual people! Since most of what I’ve been able to learn so far has been slower things friendlier to the flute and to my skill level at picking up stuff by ear (read: not happening in an active session, not yet), I’m still mostly hanging back and just trying to figure out the structures of tunes and get familiar with the style of how they’re played. But tonight, when asked to play something, I was able to more or less play through André Brunet’s “Ciel d’Automne”, and I only sorta kinda maybe messed it up in only a few places. *^_^*;; But everybody was very encouraging, and one of the gents at the session told me he liked my flute’s voice.

Also, I got to show off my new teeny guitar and let Dejah see that why yes, actually, for such a little guitar he actually does have a good voice on him, and surprisingly responsive strings. Courtesy of Dejah I also learned a new guitar term: parlor guitars, which are smaller-bodied guitars. Like Ti-Jéan, really! So that was all lovely.

Part of our session tonight was outside on a deck, which was also awesome. We were overlooking a bit of a nearby park, so joggers were going by and clapping as they saw us playing! I hung out out there until it got a little cold and pollen started irritating my throat; then, inside, I got to listen in on a lovely conversation about crankies. Then everybody else came in and Dejah showed off her shiny new cranky, telling a great little story about four French Canadian lumberjacks who want to go to a party in Montreal, and who make a bargain with the Devil to borrow his magic flying canoe (like ya DO) so they can get there. I was particularly charmed by the lumberjacks all having different colored caps and big beards, so of course where I go with this is the dwarves in The Hobbit, so I’m pointing at the cranky art and going “So this is Dori, Nori, Ori, and Jean-Baptiste?”

Dejah’s dad Louis also very, very kindly provided me a couple of PDFs of tunes that were played tonight, which I deeply appreciated. I overheard the names of three other tunes that were mentioned, and promptly discovered that I either had them immediately available in the store of tunes I’ve amassed so far, or that I could immediately find them on thesession.org.

Also deeply pleased by another reminder that why yes, I do in fact need to be learning Genticorum’s “Valse de poeles”, which was called out to me tonight as something that would be very friendly to me to learn. I do not actually have this tune in my store of tunes, so I’m going to have to do something ambitious and see if I can learn it by ear off the recording on the most excellent album Nagez Rameurs.

(Because as I’ve previously lamented, I am NOT good at picking up stuff by ear quickly. However, I have learned that I can do it slowly. Alexandre of Genticorum helped me demonstrate this to myself, that if somebody sits me down and feeds me a tune in bits and pieces I can, in fact, pick it up. But I can’t do it quickly. This is why I have to slow stuff down in Tempo Slow, too, if I don’t have an actual live musician in front of me to learn from. I occasionally get bits and pieces just trying to listen in session, though. Kind of like bits and pieces of French firing off in my brain as I study, really. I’m hoping as I learn more tunes I’ll start getting more of these bits and pieces firing off faster and maybe eventually I will in fact be able to whip out a tune as I’m hearing it.)

And then I was very kindly offered a ride home so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. And “Maison de glacé” was played, and I got to go OH HEY AWESOME I KNOW THAT ONE, because yay tune by Réjean Brunet! \0/ So I played my actual flute in front of actual people TWICE! Go me! And the Sheepskin Reel was played, better known by me as BEST GODDAMN LA BOTTINE SOURIANTE TUNE EVER. And I overheard three other tunes identified, which I was able to immediately find either in my personal tunes store or on thesession.org: Valse des Petites Jeunes Filles, Valse des Jouets, and Reel à Toto.

Tonight’s session: definite success!

And yet. I have actually managed to run a Kickstarter, and I’ve still got Book 2 of that promised set of work on the way. I barely clear two digits of sales a month, but I am actually slowly selling books. Which seems to be enough for people to ask me for advice on what I’m doing. So this is the first of a series of posts about that.

So. You want to self-publish your work. What’s the very first thing you have to do?

Write the book. No, seriously. Write the book.

This sounds like it ought to be self-evident, doesn’t it? And yet, a lot of the time it’s not. This happens in traditional publishing all the time, where aspiring writers try to query before they actually have a book to show for it. Same deal with self-pub. If you want to put a book out there for people to buy, whether you’re going through a traditional publisher or whether you’re going to actually put it out there yourself, you really do have to put fingers to keyboard. You have to get the book out of your head and into a file you can ultimately turn into a sellable product.

Lots of writers with way, way more experience than I do have said lots of things about how to go about doing that. What I’m going to tell you though basically boils down to this: do whatever it takes to get that book written. It doesn’t really matter what tools or programs you use, or what methodologies. It doesn’t matter how many words a day you write, or whether you use outlines to map out everything in advance or write everything completely by the seat of your pants. Every writer writes their stuff differently.

But every single writer in the world has one thing in common: they do, in fact, write.

For me, Nanowrimo was a helpful way to get the novel that eventually became Faerie Blood out of my brain. It taught me what writing a set number of words a day felt like, what having a deadline felt like, and that it was in fact okay to write crap because it was more important to get the words out of my head than it was to make every single word perfect the first time. As a corollary, it also taught me to expect that actually, yeah, the first round of words that come out of my head probably will be crap.

Nanowrimo may or may not work for you. It’s just one example of a way to inspire yourself to get the words written; there are plenty of others, some social, some not so much. Like I said above, though, what way you choose to motivate yourself ultimately doesn’t matter as long as it works.

In no particular order, here are some things I’ve tried that work for me to get my writing done:

• If I’m blocked, have a couple other projects I can flip over to to throw words at until the main one unblocks in my mind
• Set my daily word count goal low, then when I shoot over it, I often feel inspired to keep going anyway
• Be aware that sometimes I will be too exhausted or too stressed to write (my medical history has certainly taught me this); be willing to forgive myself on the days I don’t write, as long as there continue to be days that I do
• Keep as many notes are necessary to sketch out plot structure, worldbuilding, and character development, but keep the organization of them simple so I don’t get lost in my file organization
• Keep old drafts, especially of cut material I may need later
• Track word counts for rough progress on how much progress I’ve made on a book

How about you, fellow writers? What’ve you tried that works for you to get the words out of your head? What doesn’t work for you? Share your tips on how you get there in the comments!

And in the next post in this series, I’ll talk about beta-reading and editing your book. ‘Cause yeah, getting those words out of your head is only the beginning.

Flattering, because, gosh, people seem to think I know what I’m doing. Startling, because wait, what, you people think I know what I’m doing? *^_^*;; When did that happen?

But, be that as it may, okay, yeah, I am starting to get asked questions often enough that I’m going to do a series of posts on the overall topic of self-publication, just so I can have something I can point people at in case they need advice. As y’all know I can blather with the best of ‘em, but it helps if I have to blather only once. So. Consider this an announcement of posts to come.

I’m thinking I’m going to break them down into these sub-topics:

1. Write the book. No, seriously, write the book
2. Get the book beta-read and edited
3. How to build your own ebooks
4. Where you should deploy your ebooks for sale
5. What sites you can employ if you don’t have your own skills for building ebooks and/or who will deploy your ebooks for sale for you
6. What to do if you want to self-pub in print
7. Commissioning cover art
8. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding services–should you use them?
9. You’ve deployed the book for sale–how do you help readers find it?
10. Should you also try to traditionally publish as well as self-publish?

Do also please keep in mind that I’m real small-fry in the overall publishing picture; I’m lucky if I sell a couple dozen copies of anything in a month. (By which I still mean, a couple dozen copies of Faerie Blood; Valor of the Healer is still too new to have any real, definable effect on my monthly sales yet.) So if you try to enact any of my advice, please understand that I am not going to hand you the path to fortune, glory, and becoming a Big-Time Author(TM). What works for me may not work for you. Or it may work way better for you. Or you may find something else that works way better for you. Your mileage may vary!

But all that said: does anybody have any general self-pub topics you’d like me to add to this list? Or any specific questions in any of these areas you’d like me to address in a forthcoming post? Please let me know!