Boring

And I was doing so well. Did a quick revision of "batman or superman" (which brought it up to 2,000 words) and got 400 words into the UX scene that leads off the whole "Apache" sequence.

And then found a better way to do it. I almost didn't do it. But every chapter has either one of the doggerel clues or (more frequently) some pithy quote from the same imaginary book. I danced around doing something with trains, or about the "little bullfighter" starting to sign his name as Picasso, but realized there was a better way to proceed.

I've been building up various plot threads throughout and the upcoming small climax is where several of them come together. Except I didn't build enough of them far enough, and I just don't want more "empty" scenes that don't have actual emotional beats happening in them. That's the big problem with this book, really. There's lots of material, but there isn't enough emotional plot, not enough confrontations, changes, other interactions. Just a sort of plodding discovery of each new step in a mystery that I gave away long ago isn't actually leading to anywhere.

Anyhow, the best way to bring in some of the material I want for the crux scenes (Apaches, the steampunk garden party, and the climb of Notre Dame de Paris) is to do one more dual-time narrative. To go into Huxley's voice and tell the full story of the death of Carles Casagemas.

And I probably should make sure that Huxley pére could have been wounded in Hartbeesfontein, but I can always look that up later. The date is just so very convenient, though...

***

And I just drafted the Casagemas scene. A mere four paragraphs. After all the reading up I did -- including some extremely detailed opinions on the inspirations behind his small but notable oevure, and a quite pungent review of the "Genius" series available on Prime -- I didn't find the need to say very much more about Carles, Genevieve, and the Hippodrome Cafe.

One of the things I say over and over when I am answering questions from novice writers over on Quora (I'm a novice myself, but at least a well-read one) is how much you don't know until you put it down on paper. Turns out I was able to put in much more about why Jonathan Huxley needs to return to England than I thought I would. And I also discovered I can lay in all that I really need about the Casagemas suicide without actually having to name Picasso.

It is probably terribly obvious. I'll have to be satisfied that I snuck Suzanne Valadon into a different scene and that's gonna take a sharper eye to spot. And I am so sorry there's just not the appropriate space for a little story going on about her and the kid that grew up as an Utrillo.