I prefer to look at unexpected events as life happening, rather than "shit happens." So lots of life has happened over the last five days. Judith has been in limbo, or at least halfway up the long slave road between her home and the center of the Assyrian encamment.
Living people I love have needed my help more than my character, her friends and enemies.
Today (I'm whispering this in case the universe decides to laugh) I'm tiptoeing up to Judith, holding out my hand and saying, "Let's get back to work, shall we?"
Though in truth, I've been at work. There is an Emily Dickinson fantasy/nightmare that a writer's life as a life of isolation. Solitude, where I've retreated at least for this moment is not the same thing. Like Judith my life touches many others. Sometimes that means an uphill climb to give them a helping hand. That helping hand gets extended to me at other times, too.