Surprise the former, Expect the latter

So I made the long-list for the BSFA, but totally didn't make the short list. Surprised, then not surprised. The opposite would have been silly.

It's been a slow month, writing-wise. I finally reloaded my pen last night and got a couple hundred words done. I keep going over the same chapter...I think I've written it five or six times now. I wanted to start writing non-sequentially, just hitting the stuff that interested me, but the fact is that this chapter is simpy too important to the rest of the book. How it happens, how the interactions between characters go now will dictate their relationships through the rest of the book. So I can't skip, not until I have this one piece solid. Stupid narrative flow.