I don't have many kind words about the month of May.
Yes, the sun shined plenty, temperatures bounced between the high sixties and low eighties (Fahrenheit, of course), and the days are thankfully growing long. Unfortunately, I work in a brutal, unstable industry, and this is the second time in as many years that I've seen that wretched instability wreck the lives of friends and coworkers that I care about.
In the aftermath, I've asked 'why' a lot. Why us? Why now?
I've been trying to write more this year, and May made for a great excuse to retreat away from the rest of my life and focus on just that. The why.
It is perhaps the most important question a storyteller can ask. A slick plot and well-rounded characters are little better than ornamentation if the tapestry underlying the story fails to answer that question. Why is the world of the story ripe for trouble? Why is the antagonist causing this conflict? Why is this the protagonist's problem? On and on it goes.
So I spent the latter half of May reinforcing that all-important tapestry throughout the new pages I've written this year.
Why isn't Ampherus the paradise it was foretold to be?
Why do the factions within the city-stations foment rebellion?
Why are Edred Starling and Zhang Fan stuck in the middle?
As an author, I have those answers, and I swear they'll make it into the manuscript. That's a gift I can give to my characters. Real life is seldom so generous.