Prehensile Brows are the Worst

I've decided not to start writing the next novel till I've finished the second draft of Giant Rats. I have two reasons for this decision:

1) It might mess things up, trying to concentrate on two sets of characters at once. I could get bits of Arthur in Horace*, and bits of Horace in Arthur. It simply wouldn't do.

2) The new idea needs more time to fester. I spent five hours developing it today, and ended up with ten possible sequences of events, and three possible versions of the main character. I have no idea which ones are best. With Giant Rats, I dove in at this stage, with a million loose ends sticking out. It got confusing. It left me painted into a corner. Characters wandered off on their own, getting up to all sorts of mischief. This time, I'm going to pin the bastards down.

Maybe I'll write some short stories, this week. Or maybe things'll fall into place overnight--maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, ready to write another novel.

In other news, I spent my weekend tidying up. I cleaned the birdcage, the ratcage, the floor, and the toilet. I still have to do the oven, the bathtub, the laundry, and the dusting. I hate dusting. Dust always gets up my nose. Why bother dusting, anyway? Twenty minutes later, the dust is settling again. You'd have to dust every day, to have any hope of keeping it at bay. Dusting is the worst.

LIST OF THINGS I HAVE, AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER, CONDEMNED AS "THE WORST"

1) Getting nonoxynol-9 (a spermicide commonly found on condoms) in your mouth;

2) Raita made with sweet yogurt;

3) That story Mother used to tell, where her sister went into a sweet shop and asked for "whorehouse" candy (she meant "horehound");

4) Phthalocyanine blue;

5) Otters;

6) Circus elephants that blow black mucus over your dress;

7) Rooms where the walls are all painted different colours;

8) Shepherds who hurry their sheep into the road when they see you coming;

9) French kissing;

10) People with body-part nicknames: Bones, Legs, et cetera.

Remember that spot on the wall, the one I complained about just before I started writing Giant Rats? Well, it's still there. Maybe it's the worst. It's certainly persistent.

Arthur followed more slowly, holding up the files with raised brows.

Gotta love those prehensile brows. (I wonder what I meant to write? Was Arthur holding up the files with some other, more logical part of his body? Was he following more slowly, brows raised? Is this one of those chimera sentences you get, where you write a new ending, but forget to delete the old one? Whatever happened, I'm glad it did. That's quite a mental image, right there.)

* Horace? Is that a good name for a dustman? Maybe Hamish would be better, or Fred. Or maybe he'd go by his last name, like The Busconductor Hines.