![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ah, that's more like it!
Jun. 22nd, 2010 08:50 pm2k words on Word of the Chosen tonight, and I think I'm done for the night.
I am strongly suspecting that there aren't 50k more words yet to go in this book. I'd rather forgotten that I'd intended this one to come in at about 70k, and chapters 1-6 have about 32.5k or so already. We'll see; I may get inspired and add a subplot.
Excerpt from tonight:
They arrived in Tehran, and parted at the edge of town after turning their horses out in the pasture with the rest of the Nizari horses. The Nizari had contacts among the merchants, and Amin arranged with a pot seller to take some of his wares and one of his small sons and go set up a blanket in a spot where he could see Naim’s door. There was very little cover near the house, and so hiding in plain sight was going to have to do.
Amin called out to passersby, flirting with the women and flattering the men, telling them all about the wonderful qualities of his pots. This was a disguise he used often, often enough that he was occasionally recognized as “that pot-selling boy who’s sometimes around” by several people. They seemed to assume that he had a route he worked through the city, which is why they only saw him once in a while. Amin even made a few sales.
He wondered if his parents had been merchants, if this were the life he would have had had he not been born what he was. If he’d been born male instead of female, if he’d been born without the power, would every day of his life be spent in the baking sun, telling all who went by that his pots were the best to be had in the city? Would he be one of the water sellers who trudged past with their huge clay jars on wagons? A drover, beating a stick over the back of a lowing ox?
Or would he instead have been she, locked within strong walls until a husband was found for her? Would she be silly, and perhaps a bit weak? Or would she have been like Isra, using her beauty and her body as a weapon?
Such were the thoughts that occupied him as he called out and watched Naim’s door.
I am strongly suspecting that there aren't 50k more words yet to go in this book. I'd rather forgotten that I'd intended this one to come in at about 70k, and chapters 1-6 have about 32.5k or so already. We'll see; I may get inspired and add a subplot.
Excerpt from tonight:
They arrived in Tehran, and parted at the edge of town after turning their horses out in the pasture with the rest of the Nizari horses. The Nizari had contacts among the merchants, and Amin arranged with a pot seller to take some of his wares and one of his small sons and go set up a blanket in a spot where he could see Naim’s door. There was very little cover near the house, and so hiding in plain sight was going to have to do.
Amin called out to passersby, flirting with the women and flattering the men, telling them all about the wonderful qualities of his pots. This was a disguise he used often, often enough that he was occasionally recognized as “that pot-selling boy who’s sometimes around” by several people. They seemed to assume that he had a route he worked through the city, which is why they only saw him once in a while. Amin even made a few sales.
He wondered if his parents had been merchants, if this were the life he would have had had he not been born what he was. If he’d been born male instead of female, if he’d been born without the power, would every day of his life be spent in the baking sun, telling all who went by that his pots were the best to be had in the city? Would he be one of the water sellers who trudged past with their huge clay jars on wagons? A drover, beating a stick over the back of a lowing ox?
Or would he instead have been she, locked within strong walls until a husband was found for her? Would she be silly, and perhaps a bit weak? Or would she have been like Isra, using her beauty and her body as a weapon?
Such were the thoughts that occupied him as he called out and watched Naim’s door.
