Hmn ...

So much for blogging consistently.

To be fair, I shouldn't be blogging right now, because it's getting to that stage where the abstract, 'yeah, that's what I'll do' thesis needs to be an actual, tangible, written, 'this is it' type thesis.

Which it's not.

At the moment, I am undertaking what I like to term the 'word-vomit' stage of writing, which involves a manic stream-of-consciousness type ejaculation onto a page while the ideas are still swimming about in my head. Which they are, and for that I'll be thankful.

I'm still excited about it, to the point that I'm seriously considering a PhD. Fingers crossed, my marks should be good enough. If they're not, I have no idea what I'm going to do.

But at the moment my head is too full of nuns and convents and gendered norms and Aphra Behn to really care.

Which means that my Alinya novel has fallen by the wayside. After a brief, frantic period of re-writing the chapters I had as a first-person narrative (which I am liking much, much better), Alinya and her world has been temporarily laid aside for the more pressing thesis.

At least, I hope it's only temporary. I have invested a lot in Alinya and her story. I want it to keep going and be completed.

I am more than half way through George R.R. Martin's latest novel, A Dance with Dragons. Like all Martin's writing, it is astonishing, heart-breaking, gasp-worthy, and utterly delicious. I almost want to drag out the reading, because I have a deep-seated fear that the next novel in the series will also take seven years to see publication.

Here is a poem I wrote.

My little bird does sing, sing, sing

All day - and then, upon a whim

I open up its little cage and

Watch it Fly in to the haze of Sun -

It quivers - lost, confused -

And all the while, my little Muse

Is gone, gone, gone:

And I (the one who made it so)

Must reconcile its absence -