To work. I've done so all morning so far. I'm going better at the "not writing at the office" thing this week. (Okay, it's 9:15 on Monday morning, and I'm blogging about writing, but I haven't written, so I count that as an improvement.)

For anyone interested, we're now at 60 pages and the SEN is becoming a behemoth. I mean, I figured it would be longish. I thought, you know, 50-60 pages.

Hah. My elaborately conceived outline is 33 index cards. So far, the 60 pages of output I've produced covers 11 of those. I may not live long enough to finish this one.

Remind me again...what was it I thought was wrong with PWPs? I gave up on them...why?

(I mean, what's wrong with the PWP? You can write it in an afternoon and be done with it. They yak , they have sex, they fall asleep, you go off and get your laundry done or maybe clean the bathroom.) (I have an idea for a PWP right now, in fact.) (Well, not so much an idea as a concept.) (Okay, a title. But that's as much as I used to start with.) (I mean, I finally convinced the guys that they are, in fact, interested in doing the horizontal tango with each other and now, big surprise, they've lost interest in the case. I'm considering the theory that if I let them have at it in a PWP, they'll settle down and investigate the case in the SEN.)

Yesterday was a gorgeous, sunny, warm, late summer day here in Colorado. Naturally I spent 99% of the day writing and editing.

I told a friend I'd probably someday regret wasting my (comparative) youth this way. She doesn't think so but I know that I have few memories of the years I spent writing obsessively. The years from about 1996 to 2000 are just a blur to me. I have nothing but vague memories of sitting at the keyboard, typing furiously and hoping like heck not to be interrupted before the fragile and fleeting thoughts disappeared. And of cursing silently at every interruption that inevitably occurred.

These are not kinds of memories a person needs to recall themselves from the brink of senility when they're 87 years old, sitting in a squeaky porch swing, and throwing empty beer bottles at passing schoolchildren, are they?

No...the 1% of yesterday I didn't spend writing, that's what I'll remember. Walking the quarter mile over to my current favorite Mexican restaurant, eating a deliciously spiced and gloriously legal (on the diet) piece of grilled chicken topped with some luscious concoction called an "avocado relish" and then strolling home again through the late-afternoon sun. That’s the sort of thing you remember years later, not the agonizing hours you spend pondering the plot potential of pigeons.

It's been a month since I since put myself on hiatus from political blogging and I have to say I don't miss it that much. I mean, first I started using those hours to write fiction again, which may turn out to be a good thing. Second, I hadn't realized until I checked my credit card bills just how much money I've been spending on political-history books. It's a bit scary. Writing fiction is a much cheaper hobby.

I have dear friends living in the southeast for whom I'd like to offer a moment of sympathy and support. Four hurricanes...one after the other. No one should have to endure that. (I feel even more sympathy for the island people whose already poor lives have been devastated by these storms.)

Also, to the Moving Mole, I offer warm wishes and a highway full of Safe Driving Karma.

And, in closing, why didn't I realize the lottery was up to $128,000,000? I should really buy a ticket.

You never know. It could happen.