Revisions, revisions

[la_marquise]

Still trotting on with the revisions on Grass King. I'm a little in love with it again, a year or more after the final lines were written. We'll see how long that lasts: I've passed the big revision of the start but have yet to hit the next major rewrites, which begin from the chapter after the one I'm currently working through. But mostly I like to rewrite. It's soothing, I have a map, I can see the other shore.
One casualty of this current process is in the names, though. I'm pretty good, usually, about letting go of character names when I have to. Gracielis, Thiercelin, Yvelliane -- all are renamed from the early drafts. This time, it's the turn of my five cadre, the elemental warriors. Sujhien, Hsirei, Lienye, Qiaqia, Tsai, as currently written.
Hard to read, harder to pronounce, said Nice Editor, and she has a point. I've seen people struggle with them. I know how they're said, of course I do, but they aren't spelled to fit standard English pronunciation and that really is a bit much of me. (For anyone who wonders, it's Soo-gee-en, Shear-ay, Lee-en-ee, Chee-a Chee-a, Tsigh.) A couple of them are hard to respell by English rules, annoyingly, and so there are changes on hand. Sujien, Shiray, Chiachia, Sai. I can live with those. But my heart bleeds a little over the last one. There's no sensible way to spell Lienye in English, so he's Liyan (or possibly Lyan: I'm not sure). He doesn't mind, but I do, a little.
I'll get used to it. I always do.

Skirt of the day: still jeans.
(The photos will return when I have a chance to take some. It's been busy round here this week.)

Comments

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Uh? A lot of these sound and read fine to me. Guess there's no accounting for taste (one thing I did learn of writing the Aztec books was that English-speakers can only deal with a very limited number of phonemes. Most diphtongs are out; and double consonants are pretty rare. Coming from French, which has more flexibility in that department, this feels strange).

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Also, yay on liking the revision process!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I like your Aztec names, but I recognise the problem. The cadre are spelled according to a fudge of Pinyin and Wade-Giles, because that was what worked. But, of course, I forgot that most people don;t work with 6 Chinese dictionaries on a shelf over their desks.