It’s just been… it’s been, friends. It’s not even a big deal. Why am I not blogging? I don’t know. Why am I not doing a lot of things? Because I take on what’s in front of me, or what’s nagging at me, and those are the Must Do things, not the This Is What My Life Is About things. So I deal with the broken dishwasher instead of writing a blog post. I help the child (so helpless!!) figure out the super-complicated (not) creation of a Roku account so she can watch stuff on her TV.
Last month it occurred to me why I like to write characters on journeys–because then they (and I) don’t have to deal with the daily minutiae. There may be more to it than that, but I feel like that’s a big one– we both get to avoid the little crap. The stuff that’s very important (if you don’t want to wash dishes by hand, and I don’t!) but that just feels wasteful to have to spend an amount of your life on.
But I am not one of those who complains in entertaining fashion, so I’m gonna just not.
I won NaNo! On November 29th, I blew past 50,000 in a sprint with friends. Now to turn this big heaving mess of words into a novel… Luckily that kind of cleanup I love, and it’s exactly what I want to be doing with my time. Still working on finding the time—I mean, making the time.
The plan last Friday—no, the Friday before that, oh geez! Not on Christmas Eve, but the Friday night before, was to have accomplished a number of things, and then after groceries take the evening off to start watching The Wheel of Time. But due to the Great Roku Incident, I did not accomplish things. So I kept trying to accomplish things, and I did not start The Wheel of Time.
Sigh. I’d been saying for weeks I was going to watch The Wheel of Time. (Trailer here–I’m so excited AAAHHH!!) And read the rest of the books! I even plan to go back and start at the first book, because I stopped re-reading the series (that’s how you have to go, you know) on about book…eight? Nine…?
You know how it goes. You read The Eye of the World (782 pages) and then you wait. Then The Great Hunt (706 pages) comes out! And you re-read The Eye of the World, because it’s been too long and you don’t remember, and then you read The Great Hunt, and it’s great! And then you wait. And then The Dragon Reborn (624 pages) comes out, and you start back at The Eye of the World, then The Great Hunt, then The Dragon Reborn, and then you wait.
The Shadow Rising (1007 pages) comes out! You re-read from the beginning and …then you wait. The Fires of Heaven (991,) Lord of Chaos (1007 pages,) A Crown of Swords (881 pages,) The Path of Daggers (687 pages,) Winter’s Heart (781 pages)…then Crossroads of Twilight (847 pages) came out and I just couldn’t face it.
Thirty-six thousand, eight hundred seventy-seven pages…I had been reading The Wheel of Time forever. There had never been a time I wasn’t reading The Wheel of Time, there never would be a time I wasn’t reading The Wheel of Time. I was stuck in a Wheel of Time loop.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
Prologue, The Eye of the World
So I stopped, to wait for the rest to come out. Then I would start, one more time, from the beginning, and read to the end.
Even end to end with no re-reads, that is a lot of reading.
A LOT.
Now the book series has been complete for eight years, and I have still not picked up—not even The Eye of the World, there’s a prequel now, A New Spring*? I have it, I need to read it—I just haven’t yet. And now there’s a TV series!
I did, eventually, manage to start watching the TV series. Moraine is as marvelously badass and mysterious as she should be. Lan is a treat for the eyes. From the books, I was expecting someone who looked like Curly from City Slickers and instead we got—
So far I find their Rand to be fabulously boring; Matt (who I guess the actor will change for the second season, sigh?) is a wonderful scoundrel. Nynaeve—I’m excited. I love her so much. Egwene, same. I very much look forward to seeing more of them. Perrin—I think Perrin is well-cast, but I hate a stupid thing they did with his character in the first episode. Which is as far as I got, because the second episode features Whitecloaks and I loathe the Whitecloaks. I decided watching that before bed was a bad plan, and noped my way out.
I’ll get back to it in the new year. I swear I will. I mean…
*A quick look shows me that people familiar with The Wheel of Time suggest reading A New Spring after the main series, though the events occur before The Eye of the World. Who am I to argue with people who actually made it through all the books?