Dilemma, Trilemma or Quandary? (Cecilia Peartree)

I had planned to write about the actual writing situation that led me to ask the above question, but instead I found myself wondering if ‘trilemma’ is a real word or not, as I imagined I had probably coined it myself. During my investigations in various online dictionaries, however, I’ve discovered that not only is it a real word but that the word has existed for a few centuries and the concept for a good deal longer.

In the middle of my trilemma search, I realised that ‘quandary’ was a more accurate term for my state of mind, as it would not restrict me to two or three options but was much more vague and open-ended than that - though looking at the structure of the word carefully I very much wanted it to mean a problem with exactly four possible solutions. In any case, it seems that a trilemma is often used in a very exact way, to refer to problems in economics or computing, so it would be quite unsuited to solving the less quantifiable question of what to do next. Anyway, I will leave the term here in case anyone else needs it.

My current question for myself is whether to press on with the novel I’m writing at the moment, which I’m almost halfway through, or to start another novel in one of my other series, in the hope that the half-finished story will magically become less difficult to write if I leave it alone for a month or two. Of course, I could do what I’ve occasionally done before, and I've sometimes regretted, which is to work on two novels at the same time. The last time this happened, I told myself never to do it again.

I've already created a possible cover for my current novel in the hope of fooling myself into thinking it must be nearly finished so I might as well get on and do it.

Possible cover for The Prussian Alternative

I could also have a break from novels and spend some time rearranging my short stories, which is where the search for ‘trilemma’ came in. I’ve written maybe 30 short stories I wouldn’t mind publishing and I occasionally get an idea for another one. At first I published some of them in short collections – ‘Five Short Stories’, ‘Five More Short Stories’ etc. In one case I published a few of my favourite short stories along with a novella I quite liked. The one with the novella is still available but I unpublished the rest some time ago with a view to creating a larger collection.

Unfortunately the task of tidying the short stories is the writing equivalent of de-cluttering our front room, and just as endless, since I write a few more every year. Though I must admit that since my son got some professional de-clutterers in, we have made some progress with the front room. There is actually some space in the middle and the cats have taken to sitting in there in the evenings, glaring at each other from opposite corners.

Having said all that, now that I’ve written it all down I can see that the rational choice would be to continue working at the current novel, since that's the only way it is really going to take shape. Part of the problem has been that I could foresee I’d have to write some sea scenes in the near future, and that would mean doing a lot more research, but just in the past few days I’ve thought of a work-around for that – a shipwreck! – so perhaps it isn’t quite as much of a dilemma/trilemma/quandary as it appeared.

In the meantime we’ve had our gas boiler replaced, a traumatic experience which has left the two cats and me completely exhausted, and I’ve suddenly realised that, as inevitably as a rainy June, two sets of distant family members are about to revisit Scotland in the next two weeks.