I did work on my swordfighting WIP just a very little bit, and had a very small (perhaps pin-sized) epiphany about character in it, and all this did indeed take the edge off my bad mood. It was still a bad mood, but the work and the epiphany toned it down just a tad.

Today there was a bunch of stuff to do, and I got most of it done, then settled in to write by re-googling the Earl of Leicester and associated people like Essex and Lettice Knollys and Amy Robsart because it was suddenly imperative that I refresh my memory about them before I tried to write today, even though none of them have anything to do with my WIP. But then when I finished refreshing, a potential w-f-h project suddenly came in, so now I'm like, should I work on the WIP or get started thinking about this audition?

This business is insane. My widdle mind can't absorb all the facets of it. I was thinking the other day about how some of the up-and-coming agents are so clearly sales/management types, not book types. And agencies are melding with packagers, and publishers are becoming their own packagers behind closed doors. I've seen agents selling packaged books actually written by said agents using pseudonyms. And writers--man, I don't even know.

Where is the writing in all this? I'm thinking that you have to find it inside yourself and then find a way to hang onto it. The crazy part these days is that you've got to somehow locate it in a maelstrom of Other Stuff.

And in a rare fit of circumspection, that is all I'm going to say about that.