The Hydra

[prog]

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.