In Which I Am Rambly and Reflective

Today and yesterday I walked to work; not all the way, but around an hour's walk both days. I'd estimate it was three and a half miles yesterday, two and a half today. When I think I'm about twenty minutes ahead of the train (or twenty minutes ahead of when the train would get me to where I'm at) I stop at the nearest cafe for a cup of tea and to read or scribble notes for a bit, then get on the train at the nearest station. It's nice. I've missed starting out the day with exercise, but it's hard for me to motivate to do exercise for the sole purpose of exercise.

So, walking. My feet are sore, but less so today. The best thing about walking through Chicago; getting a noseful of the city's many smells. Stinks. Stenches. I keep thinking I've stepped in something. God knows where it's coming from. I tell myself I'm being healthy and I keep on walking.

Second best thing; lots o' time to think about novel and story thingies. I'm two chapters into the novel and I'm already having to reshape things. Pruning out a character here, a subplot there. What I'm trying to do, really, is write a 19th-century novel with 21st-century pacing. When I figure out exactly what that means I'll let you know. I'm superstitious about talking too much about works in progress, but it's a bit of War and Peace, a bit of Swordspoint, and equal parts Cuban and French Revolutions. Plus I'm reading The Pickwick Papers so there will probably be some silliness as well. It has chapter headings, have I mentioned that? In Which an Ambassador Returns, and a Gift Takes Its Liberty is the first one. Another tidbit: there is an elephant in this novel, but this is not the elephant novel.

I'm also trying to figure out a short story for an anthology, and it turns out this means I have to research the Turkish War of Independence and Kemal Ataturk and Abdul Hamid and Gallipoli and all sorts of stuff. It's absurd to me sometimes, the amount of work that can go into one little story. But I need to know what I'm talking about. Besides, there's a terrifying fascination in having the realization brought home of just how badly the European powers screwed up the world when they partitioned the Ottoman Empire into a bunch of colonial protectorates, and to realize the parallels to what we're doing right now. History, repeat, doom. Doom, I tells ya.

To Hannah: I get the Bones thing now. To pretty much everyone else: House, too. Although I have to admit that when Hugh Laurie isn't talking I tend to zone out. Unless Lisa Edelstein is onscreen. Mm, Lisa Edelstein.