In the airport. My right ear is ringing like a sunuvabitch. Deafness awaits.
Outlined the novel yesterday on fake digital index cards in the Storyist app. It feels so good to have those ideas gathered in a form I can act on. I also made some more edits to Chapter One based on the character work I’d done the day before.
It’s taken me so long to reach this point, but there’s something neat about allowing a story to percolate for so long. Ultimately, I figure it doesn’t matter when I finish it; it’s more important that I have fun being in the story, telling it, shaping it.
Normally, I outline then write a chapter and consider it finished. This time I see this being more of a layering process, adding in detail and (hopefully) humour, rather than feeling it all has to be there in the first draft.
I spent much of yesterday evening in the hotel last night looking for my Canadian passport after repacking my messenger bag for the flight. (Down the other side of the desk, under the curtain.)
Then I tried to watch an Australian film about a secret gay cabal who placed eligible young men into positions of power. It was awful, and deeply offensive; every scene of contact between men was clearly meant to evoke “Eew! Isn’t that eewy?”, like that was a shortcut for evil and depravity. I deleted it rather than subject myself to the rest. (And yes, I feel I can offer comment without seeing it all.)
A thoughtless afternoon coffee made for a terribly restless night, and it was compounded by the steady rumble of the (apparent) battleship engine installed behind the hall cupboard.
Then this morning I turned on the shower this morning, which blasted hot rain everywhere in the bathroom before I could shove it toward the wall.
Now here I am at the airport, actually in fine spirits despite how cranky the above must sound. I kind of like being in travellimbo. It’s raining, not snowing as forecast, so that eliminates a hurdle. Now I’ll just hope for, as my friend Kirsten wished me, “a bearable flight.” That’s as high as the bar goes nowadays.