2001-03-07 - 20:18:36
Utilities, epics, and long-distance phone calls

*stretching* Utility bills, utility bills, utility bills. It's a good thing I learned 10-key at some point during my school career; even so, it's taken me three days to type three months' worth of figures, building by meter by area light, one at a time. *sigh*

I tried to explain my novel's plot to Jocasta yesterday. *laughter* It was twenty minutes of sidetracking, trying to explain the various roots of all the different things that happen to the heroine, from her parents to the country she's in to the political movements to the enemies she's made, to the man she's going to marry and HIS family/country/etc., and so on and so forth; she informs me that it's now Sufficiently Complex for novel-length.

You know, I really shouldn't read epic fantasy when I'm writing. Azash loaned me Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy last week, and now I'm deep in The Stone of Farewell wondering how I ever thought I could compete in the same category.

Over the years, I've felt the same way about JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy, David Eddings' Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuliseries, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, Melanie Rawn's six Dragon Prince books, Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, Ru Emerson's Nedao trilogy, and countless other epic fantasy series and standalone novels. No wonder it's taken me so long to seriously start putting my stories on paper. *grin*

For some reason, other favories like Patricia Wrede, Christopher Stasheff, and Anne McCaffrey have never intimidated me on the same scale. Perhaps it's because they're written in a more accessible tone, and sound less like they just dropped from the pen of some scholarly genius. That's not to say they didn't, just that they sound more like a comfortable story-telling friend sitting down with me to tea over their latest tale.

Speaking of friends, the exiled one called me on Sunday from 300 miles away; unfortunately, I was soaking in the tub with a migraine at the time, and didn't hear the phone. She thought I wasn't home. I just got the message yesterday, and I've been fretting ever since. She didn't sound happy. She might have just been tired; but she didn't sound happy, and now I have this ominous feeling that something else has gone wrong. I hope not. She's been through enough unhappiness for any ten ordinary people, and she's stuck where she is right now as thoroughly as if she'd fallen into quicksand.

It's easy to say she should just pack up and move. That's because she really should. But that doesn't take into account the web of history, family, obligation, expectation, and inertia that has spread to cover her life. I know what it feels like to SHOULD but CAN'T, so I know it will take something miraculous now to spur her into motion -- either on the wonderful or the hideous side. But understanding doesn't stop me from worrying.

Well, that's enough sighing expended for one day. I SHOULD get back to work, and that's something I CAN do, so I'd better. =)