Thursday Thoughts

I've had an extremely slow start to Nanowrimo. I'm having new tile floors put in, and combined with lingering fall allergies, I was so ill yesterday I couldn't function ... and I have company, so social time has devoured writing time. That said, I'm not calling it off yet: I can produce a prodigious amount in a sitting / weekend.

That said, if I do bow out, I don't look at it as losing or failing. Rather, I will be making a conscious choice to divide my time more evenly among other activities. I devote enough time and discipline to writing that I don't feel as if I'm giving it short shrift.

The title settled in as Unnatural Causes for now. It was Supernatural Causes, but I decided the word had a modern-paranormal / ghost-story vibe I didn't care for. Since I'm very definitely trying to avoid the overdone (to me) concept of the contemporary world detective investigating paranormal events, it seemed important to make the distinction.

So I'm going to veer and use the old pre-modern concept of natural versus unnatural within the framework of the story. Since sorcery in this setting is performed by thought-machines, and the category of the unnatural, in medieval thought, encompassed anything being made to act outside its nature - that is, an arrow shot would be unnatural because the natural quality of wood is to obey gravity - this seems doubly appropriate.