I lost my character (457 words, though I'm not nearly done)

[ritaxis]

Somehow, Sister Marieka, the director of the refugee camp where the first chapter takes place and the eminence grise behind the best events of the now-third chapter (formerly second chapter), has diminished in the writing. I will have to fix that: the good bureaucrat has had a crush on her for years, and has a thing for the Sisters of the Dove in the first place, which he sublimates and represes to a faretheewell. The Sisters of the Dove have been landscape, and maybe I should develop them more. In my mind they're formidable: they are both activists for the peace, during the war, and providers of relief to the victims of war. I think they're celibate, but I also think there might not be a hard rule about it. Women in this world wear salwar kameez and headscarves, sort of in general, but for a lot of women the headscarf is more like a gossamer headdress or otherwise a hair ribbon, and the salwar kameez sometimes looks like a midriff-length baby doll shirt and filmy culottes. Professional women tend to wear a couple of layers of subtly-colored kameez and a headscarf that matches the pants part. The Sisters wear these elaborate outfits of many translucent layers of pastel salwar kameez which add up to shifting shimmery colors, but opaque to the skin: the clothes are shapeless but not bulky enough to snag on anything. They also wear layered headscarves. The clothes, though I have a hard time describing them that way, are practical: they don't snag, they insulate against heat and cold, and the top layer sheds dirt. Also, the layers go on as a unit, unless you decide otherwise.

So these aren't mortify the flesh and efface the self nuns. They are more like feminist separatists who engage with the world on their own terms. I suspect that they may be lesbians in general, though I don't think that's a characteristic.

I don't even know if they are religious! -- I think maybe they're not. I think maybe they're dialectical-materialist mystics, which my father assures me exists, and he says I'm one, though ick.

I'm not sure how to bring Sister Marieka back into the prominence she needs to have: I think at some point I'll go through and insert a few sentences and lines of dialog -- I think that's how I lost her, was forgetting those, because in my mind she's still doing all the things she always did and the good bureaucrat still adores her.

Edit -- now I'm at 1200 words, and I've already started to address this. But: go to my particulars and check it out! I have a picture! I had an interesting experience getting it there, rather like building a skyscraper of toilet paper. But there it is. It's the best picture of me in years and years. And now I'm hearing Sacred Harp again.

Comments

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Those sisters sound cool. Remind me a liitle bit of the kick-ass women of Darkover; or maybe a good branch of the Bene Gesserit.