“A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, boy, choose learning. It works more of the time.

How did I get into this mess? Miles isn't even here. -Ivan

I have noticed a curious bifurcation in outcome in the way romances are written by women et written by men - Love Story, The Bridges of Madison County, every James Bond tale ever penned, even the film named above - end with the woman either lost or dead. And the man free to love, or at least to have sex, again. Romances (in the modern genre sense) written by women end with the couple alive, together, and in a committed and at least potentially fertile relationship, ready to turn to the work of their world. In other words, men's romances are about love and death; women's romances are about love and life.