“Darn it, it’s after 5 pm, why isn’t there anything new to read on MGC?”
“Ah, maybe because it’s the first Friday of the month and you were supposed to write it?”
I may be pretty isolated these days, but at least I do have these entertaining conversations with myself.
Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It’s not much of an excuse, but I didn’t have anything to say anyway. I think I’m in trouble. Not writing. Not doing much of anything else either. It’s been a year since the second knee surgery, it still hurts to walk, and I’m beginning to think that immobility is freezing my brain.
For a while I was so ticked off at the waves of freedom-destroying, America-destroying executive orders coming out of the White House that I found the energy to write about them on my personal blog, but now I can’t even. Reading the news feels like hitting myself on the head with a hammer, and I think I need to take a prolonged vacation to preserve whatever sanity I’ve got left.
That probably also means a vacation from the current work-not-really-in-progress, where I was having some fun by saddling the paranormal working group with an office manager bent on inflicting Critical Race Theory workshops on them. It’s just not fun any longer.
I think I’m going to run off and hide in a fantasy very loosely based on Renaissance Italy. My online book group has been discussing The Prince and in an effort to improve my understanding of Machiavelli, I’ve been reading a lot of history and biography of the period, not to mention a few historical novels. And my goodness, the details are fun. Consider the episode where the Pope excommunicated all of Tuscany, whereupon the Tuscan bishops got together and excommunicated the Pope. (Can you even do that?) Or the Florentine attempt to divert the river Arno away from Pisa so that they would have a port they could control and leave the Pisans high and dry. This might have been a doomed attempt in any case, but it certainly didn’t help when some middle manager replaced Leonardo da Vinci’s original plan for a 32-foot canal with two canals, each 16 feet deep.
Anyway… this magically talented condottiere just strolled into my head. And I’m going to break all my own rules by abandoning the WIP and allowing Gian Galeazzo to tell me what he’s been up to lately. What the heck – I can hardly make less progress on the WIP than I’ve done this month, and just maybe this will develop into a story worth telling.
At a minimum, it’s an excuse to keep delving into the details of the Italian Renaissance, which has got to be a healthier preoccupation than Current Events.
Mad Genius Club 
At a minimum, it’s an excuse to keep delving into the details of the Italian Renaissance, which has got to be a healthier preoccupation than Current Events.
Amen.
Plus, perspective.
Humans have humaned for a long time, and we’re still around.
Ah… my refuge is always the past. I suspect that ’twas ever thus, for those of us who actually remember history…
At the moment, coming to the conclusion that I should hop to another work in progress, this one’s stuck.
Hard to tell when a work is stuck when you are generally out of sorts.
Watch out for the Renaissance popes! Some of the things they did made the Medicis and Borgias look almost civilized.
Great taste in art. Otherwise, well, I could see where the term “prince of the church” came from. (Which I first heard used for Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich of Salzburg, but he was a lack-of-spiritual brother of some of the Renaissance clerics. And also had great taste in architecture and art.)
Yep, and one of them was a Borgia. It’s actually hard to think of one that was worse than Alessandro VI; if I had a Pope do even half the things he did I’d probably be accused of just making stuff up.
Which, of course, I plan to do anyway, but I want it to be credible…
I’m blanking on the title right now, but I remember seeing at least one book that argued that much of the accusations made against Pope Alexander VI were the result of a propaganda campaign by the Italians. The Borgias were Spanish, and for centuries the Italians viewed the Papacy as being more or less their exclusive property. That and he became Pope when the Spanish ruled much of Italy and were accordingly hated.
You do what you need to do. . . And don’t forget we’re here for you. If you want or need to talk, give me a shout. I’m around.
Thank you, Amanda. I will probably take you up on that; I’m a bit intimidated by tackling a period I don’t know all that well. Oh well, lots of reading ahead.
I know you can do it. And do please give a shout if you want or need to talk.
I detest current events, and if given the option, I would retreat into history and stay there. And write fiction and go on my not-always-merry way. Alas, Day Job requires me to stay up to my elbows in political news. Blech!
Blech indeed! It is good not to have a Day Job. I hope you get to try it some day. (Not that I’ve ever had one requiring me to stay up to date on anything worse than hidden-line algorithms.)
You have convinced me. I need to study the Renaissance. (I’ve already stopped paying attention to any news that doesn’t directly impact me right now, like the weather.)
You shouldn’t “advertise” the reading of history. If I start, it will cut into SciFi reading time, which will cut into sales (not so much just me, but you might start a trend). I like the “future history” type stories. Not just what’s going on with a specific character, but the background against which that is happening. I was just thinking that this weekend: If you like this so much, why not read actual history?
The quote was (paraphrased): I don’t think waiting for humanity to get better is going to work. In ancient times, were people standing around waiting for a kindler, gentler Roman Empire?
Yes, I got sucked into the April universe, yet again; this time with Family Law.