So I didn't have a lot of reading to get through today, so I didn't dump a bunch of stuff to the blog in response. Just the nature of the beast, really. I've got a bunch of last year's reading that I'm thinking about working through, all the fiction at least. Especially for the short fiction, it might be a good exercise to help me remember them distinctly.

And it'll make it a lot easier when I see a good story mentioned, and my brain goes "hmm, now do I remember that one or not?". One may hope, at least.

The current story, Motivated Reasons, is up to about 2000 words after today's work. It feels slower than the last few, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm not seeing the end logic yet, or if it's because I know there's a novel waiting for the same characters, so my brain has a setup it's working on without bothering to tell me about. Trust the process, right?

Though there's also a gameplay aspect to the story. There's an element of conversational rhythm in this one that I haven't tracked for a whole story yet. It's one thing to have a page or so of good rhythmic conversation in any one story, or here and there in a novel, but an entire story wrapped around it takes the thing to a slightly different level, the difference between a marathon and a sprint.

It does make me further appreciate His Girl Friday, though. That sort of conversational interplay has its own rhythm, its own rules, it's fencing with yourself and your characters, on a tightrope over the gorge, while giving the Erryl Flynn smile and daring Basil Rathbone to do his worst.

Yeah, oh yeah is it fun though.