Spacey Monday

My day did not get off to an auspicious start. For the past several weeks, my Monday therapy appointment has been at 8 a.m. This morning, I got up, had breakfast, got dressed and rushed out of the house to make an 8 a.m. appointment, a little later than I should have. It takes a bit longer to get there for an 8 a.m. appointment because there's more traffic and because the traffic lights are evil. The lights in my neighborhood are triggered rather than timed, so if there's a lot of traffic coming from the cross streets, it's possible to hit a red light at each intersection. The system doesn't seem to have a way to deal with right turns on red, so a car pulling up to the intersection will trigger the light to change, even if the car that triggered it has already turned, so the cars on the main road are stuck sitting at a light for no good reason. So, anyway, I was a little late for that time of morning, and then I had a nagging thought. What time was that appointment? I checked the appointment card, and it was 8:30. So I went back inside and checked e-mail, then managed to leave in plenty of time. There was something else I spaced on today, but I've already forgotten what it was. Fortunately, I've taken care of everything that needs to be dealt with today outside the house, so I can limit my spaciness to the home.

Perhaps I'm recovering from a busy weekend. My birthday was Saturday, and I spent the afternoon with friends, hitting a library book sale, then going out to lunch. Then in the evening we went to the theater. There's a theater company in Dallas that does old-fashioned melodrama-type productions, complete with the audience booing, hissing, cheering, shouting at the players and hurling popcorn at the stage. Only, instead of the Snidely Whiplash kind of thing, this production was a Star Trek parody that was both spot-on accurate and deliciously different (the Spock character was a complete idiot, but in a perfect deadly serious Vulcan kind of way). I think I hurt myself laughing so hard. I didn't get to do much popcorn hurling because were were in the back and I wouldn't have hit anyone other than the people in front of us, but that also meant I didn't get pelted with popcorn. There were popcorn fights in some parts of the audience. Then on Sunday my parents came over for lunch after church.

I'm getting really close to being ready to start writing the new project. I don't feel like I know everything I need to know from research, but I've just about exhausted the resources available to me. The areas where I feel weakest are the areas that don't seem to have inspired much scholarly research and writing. I keep reminding myself that I'm writing fantasy, and that if I'm going to have magic in the mix, that's going to change things, which means I have a little more leeway, but I do like to ground as much as possible in reality because if everything's weird and magical, then nothing is.

I'm still missing that teeny, tiny little detail of a main plot. I have the first few scenes more or less mentally written (at least, I've watched the mental movie a few times over. I haven't entirely put it into words in my head) and know what happens in the next few scenes. After doing a little more prep work the next couple of days, I think I'll just write what I've got in mind, and then maybe formally meeting the characters and entering that world will spark an idea of what their tangible goal will be. I know the big-picture, overarching goal that's too big for one book, and I know the characters' individual personal goals. I just need something they want to achieve that will generate the big, climactic scene for this book. We're not yet ready to overthrow the Empire, but I need to find a Death Star for them to blow up.