27 March 2004

Dead in committee, hurray for the Minnesota Senate! What a relief. I feel like I'm on the verge of threatening people: oh, no, don't you make me be an activist. You would not like the result if you did. No no. (The replacement amendment seems like it's not really workable, frankly. How could there be a law that says courts can't interpret a certain class of law? That's not going to pass muster.)

Mark is home safe and sound, although we have to be flexible about his next trip, which I thought might mean it was Holy Week/the week of MiniCon. And it might. It might also mean next week. Yikes. We'll just have to see what they ask him for. They're flexible enough with us that we can be flexible with them once in awhile.

I finished "Michael Banks, Home from the War" yesterday, and I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the umbrella bit, but it was hard. I mean, excuse my whining, but really it was. Umbrellas and dogfights. Not the easiest thing. But we'll see. I may yet pick at it more, but I've got something to it. And it can be done and out of my hair for now. I also worked on the Not The Moose a bit more, yay. This morning I'm picking at a terrifying scene -- not a scary scene for the reader, mind you, just...one that goes further than I expected it to go. In time, I mean: it implies an additional book later than I had known I would be writing a book with these characters. It started like this:
"Heroes do not go living to Valhalla," said Odin.
Thrand looked at him steadily. "I know."
Which to some of you means nothing, but those of you who have read Dwarf's Blood Mead know Thrand, semi-feckless third brother, wolf brother, and you know how well Soldrun and especially Lisved will take it that he's volunteering to die to accomplish what needs doing in Valhalla.

The nice thing about a scene like this is that I can put it down on paper and then go away. This is clearly not the next book I'm writing. As achronologically as I write, I am not fool enough to skip books to write a whole book that won't be publishable until I've written three more. So I'll finish this one scene, and then I'll have it firm when I need it, an island in the sea of more-book-to-write. It's very comforting. I like the feeling that the pieces of book I need will not be lost when I need them. This one is only a scenelet, even, a page long. That's all it needs to be to be where it needs to go. I am content.

I blame Jo Walton for this: her Gangrader is very clearly not my Odin, but also very clearly drawn from the same place, so The King's Name nudges me to think of my own characters. This makes me fear the new GGK book a bit, but it'll be worth it.

Jo Walton is one of those authors I trust. So when she changes bits of things around in The King's Name, I assume that she knows the standard Arthurian or Norse myth or what have you and has chosen not to do things the standard way. Which is a valid choice -- sometimes even a good choice. So I don't have to waste time picking at nits of who did what when they died, because she knows, she just made it be somebody different. Does that make any sense? She knows enough to improvise; she doesn't have to play the piece straight up and unornamented.

And now I'm on to John M. Ford's The Last Hot Time. Library books, library books. Such an embarrassment of riches, these library books. I also finished one of the sets of crits I owe, so I've just got one left to do. For now, of course. The plan for today involves spending time with Mark, working, reading, getting potstickers from Stella (!), and finding something relaxing to do this evening. I've had a hankering to watch "Galaxy Quest," and C.J. hasn't seen it before, so that's maybe a good bet. We'll see. The lawn is starting to turn green, a little tentatively, and it's hitting me once again that this is mine, that we need to buy a grill and a lawnmower and all those domestic things, that we need to figure out what to do with all sorts of things, where we could possibly put tomatoes for me to eat this summer, what it's all about, this land ownership stuff. Well. We've got a bit of time yet; there may still be snow; we shall see.