“When approaching a scene with a particularly complex character, try free-writing from the point-of-view of your character after reading your scene once, twice, and so forth. See who and what you discover outside the bounds of your scene.”

The only thing standing in the way of Queen is a King.

I served my time as wife and mother. So what if I wanted Queen all for myself. But like every opportunity for a woman, the first harbinger of any happening is in his wants. His greedy eyes and whispered words. His desperation. Is it depressing that my life has been navigated on the tides of a man’s desires? Is it embittering?

A poor woman I would be if I didn’t know how to bridle a man by his desires. They may be my prison, but they are his strings–in each jerking motion he lashes out precisely where I direct.

I am not made sexless, for I cannot be torn apart from the resentments that have become my gender. And he could not be a man–or perhaps could only be a man, and could not do a woman’s work.

Let them think I’m mad. In their eyes a woman is only a step away from madness anyways.

Let them think I’m dead. Wasted, lifeless and bereft. After all, what else could there possibly be for a woman with no hearth, no husband, no child, no beating breast?

Let them see my end, so I may be free to begin.