The Unread Map

For the first time since all of this life upheaval started, I felt today a glimmer of excitement about the fact that I don’t know what comes next. The map of my past is filled in, explored as thoroughly as I care to, and spreads out behind the X labeled “You are here.” Until now the lack of terrain features on the map ahead of me was creating anxiety and fear, not interest or excitement. But I am finally in a place where the lack of certainty is exciting and not frightening. I have hopes for what lies ahead, certainly, and I have things I am capable of actualizing to give me some sense of obstacles to come, but the actual landscape? Unknown. Unpredictable. And, at long last, Undaunting.

And To All A Good Night

Merry Christmas to all of you still reading!

View from the Air

At least, if I cry up here, it becomes rain.

The Other Shoe

A series of texts between me and my first reader, who has been getting sections of the new draft to read as I finish them.

Me: So I was skimming the next few chapters…I have this sinking feeling I’m gonna be rewriting more of this motherfucker than I thought.

Firstie: LOL, it won’t be so bad.

Me: Well, maybe it will at least be fun. That’s pretty much what was missing, any sense of fun. No wonder it was so hard to write the first time, LOL

Firstie: Yeah, and now you seem like you really know where you’re headed.

Me: Welllll…I WAS headed to the point I just reached. Only problem is I don’t like the look of the highway I thought I was gonna merge onto. So I think I’ll keep driving…but now I don’t know to where.

And that, ladies and gent’s, pretty much sums up the second shoe dropping. If I am not at a merge point but rather at a second divergence, and one that I haven’t really plotted out yet, then I have no real idea how much further I have to go on this book. If I have to write the entirety of Act II from scratch it’ll be another goddamned five months probably.

I dunno. It may only be a few more scenes than I originally thought that nee to be re-written versus tidied. But I just have this feeling….

Libertarian Thought for the Day

It’s another Friday the 13th, the day The Honest Courtesan asks vanilla people who believe it is morally wrong for sex work, up to and including prostitution, to be illegal to publicly say so. I am one of those people. I consider the criminalization of sex work an attempt to control female sexuality, agency, and self-ownership; an attempt to legislate morality; and an affront to both liberty and common sense to declare that an action undertaken for the motive of money is criminal when the same action undertaken for fun is not. It is a thought crime, in a very basic sense, and as such utterly indefensible.

No essay today; I had the natural follow up to my post on the last Friday 13, a defense of romance genre, 2/3 written. WordPress app ate it. I can’t recreate a thousand words of edited prose in 10 minutes at lunch, so I’m not trying. I am leaving today’s thought at the above.

Down with thought crimes.