Thursday Thoughts

Yep, I finally figured out what it should be called.

I just realized that today is the free-write day for a writers' group I'm part of ... so depending on circumstances, may be updates on that as well. Not today, however, as it's not for another five hours or so.

Further world-work: I discovered that my initial concepts of the matriarchs as a small elite fell apart when I tried to "do the numbers" as to how many of them would be required to have the kind of small-focus rule I wanted. Instead, I end up with a population around seven million - still small in a civilization of a few billion, but much larger in the scheme of things.

Also, reading my Buddhism research has made me focus the discipline to psions particularly. Which means I have a psion who isn't a practicioner ... investigating why he feels uncomfortable with it (as I've decided is a good way to go) suggests some interesting things about his character and the dynamic with my main character.

However, I'm also doing a heavy rewrite of an old story. Some years back, I did research for a humorous fantasy story around beauty pageants. However, this research also produced a tongue-in-cheek science fiction story about a galactic pageant - one of my earliest stories that I submitted. It met with some good reactions for editors, but ultimately didn't sell - and just as well, because I wasn't totally happy with it.

Now, the macro elements of the plot still seem solid to me; it's just a matter of changing some details. There are also some good lines I wanted to recapture, while cutting the clunkers (a considerable population thereof) and fixing the dialogue. Wow. I've always thought dialogue was my strong suit, but there are some terrible bits. On the other hand, what they actually say isn't bad: it's the logic behind it. It doesn't make a great deal of sense.

So what I'm doing is starting from scratch with a printed copy of the old story at my elbow. This gives me plenty of freedom to drop things, move them around - and use the gems verbatim. We'll see how it goes.