Writerly Inquistion

I really, truly, desperately want to know what I'm going to do with this project that is bubbling in my brain. The research fascinates me--I love learning new things--but I'm also finding it overwhelming. When I think of writing certain scenes (perhaps more aptly: certain time periods) with an eye to historic detail, I'm not at all excited. At all. In fact, the emotion I would ascribe to myself is dread. I believe that most of the dread comes from still not knowing what in the blazes is going on. If I knew that, maybe the other aspects wouldn't be so daunting.

Don't misunderstand me; plenty of things interest me about the project. It is just that I fear my interest is going to start fading soon if I don't start writing and concretizing these characters and their desires even more. But in the style of vicious cycles, I feel I can't write without knowing more. With my first-ever project, I knew the ending, more or less, but I didn't know any of the in-between, or the beginning for that matter. In this case, I know the beginning and nothing else. Because TTD took me 6 years of wandering around and bumping into corners, I'm loath to repeat the same, "Here I go on a jolly journey of discovery" scenario, as appealing as I find the notion of discovering things at the same time as the characters.

I can whine about what-to-do? what-to-do? but I think the answer is simply: Sit down and submit the story idea to a Writerly Inquistion. The primordial question being: What kind of story do I want to tell?* When I have the answer to that, I can figure out the elements that need to be in there and how many of them are going to be thorny historical problems.

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* It isn't as if I haven't already asked this question; I just stopped digging before I got to the correct answer.

DST is killing me, aka Why I'm not getting enough sleep

Last night, I went to bed for a reason that will be revealed shortly. I was tired but couldn't fall asleep because I'd missed my window. Around 1:30, I was drifting off when mana_triniwoke me up by tugging on the sheet I'd been using as an extra pillow.  Naturally, I lay there another 30 minutes before falling asleep. Then, J's alarm went off at 4am. I let him get his stuff together and lazed in bed until I could hear he was ready to go. Go where, you ask?  To the Banc de Geyser, a reef five hours by boat off the Mayotte coast, about halfway to Madagascar, in fact. To do what, you ask? Do you really need to ask?  To spearfish, of course.

Because of the high theft risk, we aren't comfy leaving our car at the port overnight, so I had to drive him and bring the car back home. I also had to stay to pick up a surprise for a friend and couldn't leave until it arrived. I stood outside the car, yawning my head off and watching the eastern sky go from black to deep purple bordered by blue-green. The scene would have been lovely and peaceful if not for the drunken idiots who had just come out of a nearby nightclub. One girl kept asking a young man, "Tu es beau? Tu es riche?" Um, hon, I think if you are so far gone you need to ask the guy in question if he is handsome, you need to just drop it. When she wasn't inquiring after his looks and wealth or his nationality, she kept shouting at him to (and I'll put it nicely) sodomize his grandmother, sodomize his littler brother, his big brother, his mother, his sister, his grandfather. I think the only one she left out of her incestous insults was the guy's father. Finally, he and his friend left, telling me in passing that the girls were "completely out of their minds." Yeah, I realized that after 30 seconds. Why'd you hang around chatting them up for an additional five minutes?

I was back in bed around 5am, but what with all the roosters crowing and dogs barking, I didn't fall asleep until after 6. It's too hot to sleep much past 9, so I got up only to have my nap at 4 countered by the thunderous pounding of rain on the terrace roof. I couldn't try to nap later than 4:30 because of the first of the day's rugby matches. See, I knew if I mentioned rugby at the first of this entry, I would have already lost you. :P

 "Day 4" of the H Cup (and the European Challenge Cup), started last night at 9 in France, but that's 11pm here in Mayotte. With halftime and additional minutes, a game lasts between one and a half/two hours.

Friday Night 
Biarritz vs Glasgow : 21 to 14 for Biarritz. 

They seriously deserved to win that game. I don't think I had ever seen such a match where the dominating team was losing, but that's how much of the game went. They finally got it together at the end and stopped handing silly penalty points to Glasgow, so way to go Pays Basque. (By the way, keep the new uniforms. Melikey mucho.)

Saturday:
Cardiff vs Stade Francais : Don't even ask.

SF, shame on you. That was one ugly match. Messy, messy, messy.

Perpignan vs London Irish: WOOT, les catalans!

In a word: Beautiful. Yes, there were lots of things they could have done better, but after the way SF played, the match looked like magic to me.

Clermont Ferrand vs London Wasps: 25 to 24 for the Wasps

Another good game, but not without its messiness, too. Good thing CF beat the Wasps last week. The two CF tries where they players devoured the pitch were things of beauty.

Up next: Dax vs Castres, two French teams. J comes from a village just 15 km from Castres, so I guess I'll root for them. They seem to be having a tough time of it this season. There's a stupid football (soccer) game running late, so they are biting into the rugby match. Talk about idiotic planning. (ETA:  Castres won; 16-15)

Tomorrow: Toulouse vs Leicester.  I'm looking forward to this one. Last week, Leicester beat Toulouse 14 - 9. Toulouse is probably my favorite French team...

As you can see, an alternative title for this entry could have been: My Weekends Belong to Rugby.

And that, rabiagale, is why I'm not around in the evenings.