The Potential Pile

Rain. Rain, rain, rain, and I get to go running in it. Miss B is extremely excited, and doesn’t understand why I have to run the dryer before we leave. My running jacket just went through the wash, and I want to make it as dry as possible before I go out and…get rained on. I also just had to tell B to calm her multiple teats, since a neighbor is running a chainsaw in the back yard and B is Defending the Household with a bonus of Making Sure Mum Knows There Are Things Going On.

Speaking of the back yard, we’re going to have to keep the Mad Tortie in. She used to be an inside cat, but when we moved she darted out through the back door and has managed, by hook or crook, to be an outside cat ever since. She’s killing too many birds for that to continue, though, and she’s also getting older. Which means we’re going to have to get serious about blocking her escape-artist habits. Safer for her, and definitely safer for the feathered and furred denizens of Backyard.1

I got a grand total of a thousand words in yesterday, all layering in a scene that isn’t very sexy but is extremely important. I’m juggling umpty-scrump character arcs in the doorstop epic fantasy, and while I don’t personally like or get excited about all of them, they’re necessary for the book to have any depth. It’s also fun–for a certain value of fun–to stretch my narrative skills. You keep swimming or you suffocate.

So the warlord-turned-Emperor is facing his own mortality, his sons are jostling in the succession, his wives and concubines are afraid for their children and themselves, the foreign princess bartered to the Crown Prince in return for a peace deal is nervous, her lady in waiting keeps having to fend off assassins, that one prince is being a dick, the general-turned-prince-by-adoption is having tricky feelings, and then there’s the assassins and the court ladies and and and.

Man, I love this book. I’m in the slough in the middle where it feels like it’ll never get done, but I still love the shit out of it.

I also meant to do some Robin Hood in Space last night, but I got sucked into piano practice and also watching the Blade Runner sequel. I didn’t finish it–leftover exhaustion from the weekend rose up and laid me flat–and I have…thoughts about the whole thing. Like, I’m really tired of female bodies being disposable things for spec-fic “hero” characters to transact through. So tired. And the Dickensian workhouse as a hallmark of dystopia and shorthand for “here is a morally grey character running this place” is just…come on, people, stop with the shortcuts, let’s do something new or at least change up the visual shorthand.

As usual, if I want something like that, I’m going to have to create it myself. At this point I’m just adding it to the list of potential projects, and telling myself that the gods can’t take me yet, I have too much work to do.2

There’s no shortage of work, and I’ve taken on a short-term editing project as well as some comic book scripts. Because of course I’m not happy unless I’ve got a glut of work to get through. There’s also a break in the rain coming, so it’s time to lace up and drag my laundry out of the dryer.

*narrator voice* And so, Tuesday begins…

  1. She is a Mighty Hunter, and the amount of feathers strewn in her usual hide-the-prey-and-rot-it places is truly prodigious.
  2. This is also how I justify my TBR pile. Surely the gods will not take me until I have finished my assigned reading.