travel and writing

Tomorrow I catch an 11:42 flight to DC by way of Philadelphia, in order to attend my uncle's memorial service on Saturday morning. There will also be family gatherings of various sorts on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. (I want to speak during the memorial service, but I am unsure exactly what to say, or how carefully to prepare my speech beforehand. Probably I should write it out so even if I get choked up, I can hand the page to the person my aunt will have standing by to read people's pre-written memories.) Then I fly back Sunday morning.

So this evening is for preparations.

Tonight is also for working on my Femgenficathon story, which has finally clicked and is just waiting for me to put words on its bones, so to speak. It is not either of the stories I was trying to write, though it may end up incorporating most of the one about Jadis and the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Basically, it's an exercise in world-building and character exploration; I am taking every gap and lack of denial Lewis left me between MN and LWW, and swinging for the hills to put Jadis behind as many things in the Narnian world as I can get away with -- partly because I like tidy explanations, but mostly because I can and because it's fun. I love playing with fantastical geography, with politics, with religions, with systems of magic, and so on and so forth.

Anyway, it's currently planned as a story in five sections, of which I have the first (North) done in complete rough draft, the second (East) done in ragged/compressed rough draft, and the next three (South, West, and Center) sketch-outlined. The working title is "The Corners of the World," though that may well change by the time I have a finished draft.

But before I do any of that, I am going to take a brief nap. Then laundry and packing, because while I can write anywhere in a pinch, I can't pack my bags after I get onto the airplane.