Belay that, keelhaul them, and make those blighters walk the bloody plank.

I've been spending Talk Like A Pirate day working on the SEN.

Not so much with the writing but the diagramming and plotting and a fair bit of cursing, piratical and otherwise.

On the one hand, no activity that requires three colors of pens, two colors of highlighers, and four colors of index cards upon which I can color-code the different scenes by action, romance, exposition, or plot point can be all bad, right? I've transferred all the notes from the five different pads of paper to index cards and thrown the other notes away under the theory that anything I didn't care enough about to transfer can't be important enough for the story.

On the other hand, it's a lot of work and in the end, you don't really have anything written, you know? Ten minutes after I started this morning, I found myself turning back to the story itself and scribbling bitter notes to myself about the ways I'd done it wrong on the first draft.

(Okay...so it did some good to diagram, but I was hoping to write more, not to get stuck in an endless loop of rewriting what I already have.)

By dint of an effort comparable to wading through hip-deep granite, I managed to get a linear idea of what scenes need to be included to develop the case and how the romance subplot, should the guys decide to cooperate on that point, should develop alongside the case. It's...feeble. At best. But at least I have an outline. I'm hoping that the act of turning it from an outline to an actual story will create a certain amount of magic.

I don't think diagramming stories is good for me. By the time I finish fighting out the details, I'm sick of the entire idea.

For instance, whatever it was I originally thought was fun about this particular story idea entirely escapes me now. I know there was something about it that enticed me to start writing again after a four or five year absence. but I no longer know what that was.

I'm pretty sure that a giant bowl of potato chips would solve the problem but I'm back on the diet today, so I don't have any potato chips in the house.

At the moment, I'm pretending that an apple can provide the same level of carbohydrate-fueled inspiration that half a bag of Fritos used to provide.

Argh.

Sigh.