The Hydra

Before the weekend I turned my focus 100 percent toward Macnut. It will likely stick there for the next few months. Yesterday I hit some sort of stride where I dug in during the early afternoon, and then found myself annoyed at the onset of hunger, at the same time I discovered it was 7pm. Hunger is useful for socializing, but it's just annoying when I'm by myself trying to get stuff done. Wish I could turn it off.

I don't feel at all like I'm pulling teeth, as happened so often while composing the last book. A more apt metaphor now might involve moving a beach using tweezers. No, it's not so tedious... how about writing a colorful, blow-by-blow account of a fight between a mythical, regenerating hydra and an especially dense hero? For, lo, no sooner do I check off one section from my outline, than I see two things I forgot to add my last time through. And every third pass, I start to think a topic is getting too heavy and needs to be spun out into its own chapter.

In the most pessimistic view I've been stuck on chapter 1 for weeks, but in reality I've been writing what will probably turn into the first several chapters. I am really trying to chew my way as fast as I can through all the topics in this bloody outline of chapter 1 (in its original shape) so Chuck can look at my draft and give me a sense of how close to the mark I am with my style -- beyond the sheer amount of information to cover, the other killer factor is that fact that I'm so far working without any feedback. Gotta fix that.

I take occasionaly breaks by playing Super Mario World on a SNES emulator. I can't clear the Donut Plains. It's terrible.

Finally, after I worked maybe 8 hours, M called, and we played Lost Cities at the 1369 until the staff gave us subtle cues by stacking chairs around us. They're pretty cool like that.

Our work is never over

Daft Punk, River City Ransom-style

Creak

Today, whilst showering and looking at my face in the showery mirror, I observed that my default LJ picture, which is from a 1998 photograph, has become subtly out of date; I have lines all around my eyes when I smile like that, now.

Doo dee doo

I think about The Gus, again, who defined "crow's feet" in the Big Fun glossary as the things that let you know he was 28 and not 18, like some of the people he lived with. His entry for himself deadpanned that he was a 53-year-old hippie who lived with children, so he was aware of the vague strangeness of his housing situation.

I am heading into a somewhat The Gus-like housing situation in a couple months, cohabitating with people 4-8 years younger than me. We're all still young enough so that the math makes this difference somewhat significant, but we're comfortable enough around each other that the only time we're reminded of it is when someone brings up some point in our pasts: "Right, I remember that, That happened right as I was starting college." "Huh. I was in fifth grade."