Notes in the middle of a conference, i.e. what can I actually do while waiting for the rubber chicken and the a.v. issues to be resolved for the speakers...

... and never underestimate the power of boredom. I almost didn't bring my laptop with me, I figured there was no way on earth I'd be getting any writing done today. Too quiet, too sleepy, the call of the nap in the seminar chair...

And then I fired up the laptop, just to read what I've done so far on Peace Offer (Peace Offering? I've got one thing in the file, another thing that I've written here, I'm not sure yet and it's not enough of a difference to nail down until I'm finished and going on to the nuts and bolts of it.) and so I ended up putting in another 1500 words or so.

The story's up to about 18000 words total, and taking the time to read back through the whole thing at once helped me, as it usually does. I forget the heavy lifting, the days the words dragged and the days when I wondered how badly I was just screwing everything up, and just wind myself in the flow of it.

It did confirm to me that I'd reached the right point, what I talked about yesterday with the change/intro of new characters. One of the characters I've already introduced shows a different face to everyone he interacts with. The two new characters have their own stories, and their own path, and where it intersects here, their view of the others matters a great deal. I'm going to very interested in finding out just where they're going, how they get there, and what they see of the others as they go.