Writing, procrastinating

Well, after a year, here I am again. It's national poetry month, and the month when I was birthed, so I have an idea.
It goes something like this-

Since I'm struggling with the challenge of writing a poem every day this month, I'm going to aim for just writing something. Even if it's a meaningless blog entry. At least my brain will have gotten a little word exercise. Is this productive, or procrastinating? Let's enjoy the mystery.

It's April 7th, good old World Health Day (I ate some arugula and am now sipping on a glass of plum wine- well, I was sipping on it, but now that the wine's gone I've deteriorated into gnawing on the alcoholic plum- so, fruits and veggie), anyway, April 7th, and I've written two poems and edited one. I'm a little behind the "poem a day" goal.

If only a paragraph added to the novel counted as a poem... and you know what, from now on it does. So I'm sitting with sticky plummy fingers in the orange Texas sunset, looking out the windows of my parents' house, and stuck on the same damn sentence of the novel that I've been stuck on for days.

It seems (and this is news to me, since this is my first novel) that there are some places in the story- innocent, innocuous seeming places- which present you with a turning point for a character or sequence of events. Or both. Or one that causes the other inadvertently. Anyway, I've been at such a point for the past couple days. The question is- does Simon approve, vaguely, of his son joining the East India Company? Or does he mistrust them at this point, and disapprove? All he has to do is answer his son's question "Do you think that a worthwile use of one's time?". And yet, with the response to this question he will either become a vague, scholarly father with only enough attention to the position of the East India Co. to know that the magicians involved in it (yes, magicians- the book is sent in an alternate 1840's England, full of fun things like alchemists) are quite skilled and knowledgeable, or- and this is a big "or"- is he quite quick witted and aware under all his vague exterior, and does he sense already that something isn't quite right with the EIC, be it their colonialisation policies or their shady magicians? Does he in some way approve of his son joining the EIC as a soldier, or does he think his son naive, and a fool? Does his son then join the Company as an act of rebellion to his father, or because he thinks to finally win his father's approval?

I wish Simon would just answer the damn question, so that I'd know.

Will hopefully have some movement in this scene by tomorrow, which is finally, blissfully, Friday.