Fun things!

Over the weekend, I hit 50,000 words and an ending. Now I get to go back and restructure the novel so that there is the appropriate amount of story between beginning & ending. Exciting but bewildering, because it does not at all end where I thought it would. This "book" appears to be the trilogy that I had originally wanted to AVOID (because honestly, wouldn't it be nice to be able to read a book and have it be a stand-alone now and again?)

On another note, I'm sick. YAAAAY BRONCHITIS. Since I'm a resident student and have no doctor up here, and since our student health isn't super reliable about respiratory stuff, I had a two-hour wait in the afterhours clinic for a ten-minute appointment. I brought some Neil Gaiman with me to read, but there was a radio playing, so I couldn't concentrate. And I have this thing where I find offices/places-of-business weirdly inspiring to write? I dunno. Anyway, I started scribbling on the back of an envelope because it was what I had at hand, and I felt very writer-y about it. Have a snippet:

"How are you?"

The pause of someone deciding whether or not to admit how shitty he feels, and then Rinehart answered, "I'm all right."

"No, you're not," Sophie said matter-of-factly. "You're miserable. Why do we say that, anyway, how-are-you-i'm-all-right, when nobody cares if you're all right and you don't want them to know you're not?"

The next pause was the sort that always followed Sophie's being honest. "It's nice to know you're concerned," Rhinehart said at last, tartly.

"I didn't say I wasn't concerned." Sophie swung herself up onto a fallen trunk and sat by the roots, heels kicking. "When people say 'nobody cares,' they mean 'everybody-doesn't-care.' I'm not part of everybody, so I'm not part of nobody when nobody really means everybody-doesn't."

"I see." Rinehart's lips quirked up - despite his best efforts, Sophie was sure. "And if you're not part of everybody-doesn't, what are you part of?"

"Well, everybody-not, of course. But everybody-not isn't a thing you're part of -- either you're everybody-not, or you aren't. It's a title, not a group."

Rinehart was silent so long Sophie almost started to worry he was having a true sourpuss day. Then he said, "I can't imagine how you must confound your teachers at school."

"I am a very smart individual," Sophie quoted, "who consistently fails to apply my talents to the proper avenues of study."

Sophie is a very smart, very weird, and slightly obnoxious girl. She happens to be able to see fairies, but this is not what makes her smart, or weird, or obnoxious. She also happens to not give a shit about whether people understand her 90% of the time, and it is beautiful. She's going to have her turn in the spotlight whenever I finish Ker's story.