Yes, in spite of my determination to abandon that monster to its fate, I found myself wasting spending half of Sunday on yet another re-write. (At least it wasn't a glorious day this time. It was all cold and gray and snowy.

Inspired by the Latest Writing Guru, I undertook yet another rewrite of the full text. This latest book is a good one. By page 9, I was grabbing for scratch paper to write myself a note covering the character motivation stuff I hadn't been able to identify before. By page 16, I'd accepted that the lacks in the story were to be expected and that the stuff that frustrates me by its absence is usually the stuff that gets written last, so it's not automatically that I suck is the reason the first two or three drafts didn't have any of it.

I think it's an age then. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I could learn by being told something. Nowadays, I have to be told six or seven times before it seems to sink it.

The good news is that the DS and the Sentinel stories are moving. Slowly, but they're moving.

The bad news is that I haven't figured out how to rid my brain of this SpikeObsession, so I can actually focus on writing at least one of them. I combed out the ideas a bit last night but my brain wasn't really focused.

Actually, what I did last night was have a snit.

Yesterday was...one of those inexplicable days when everything just seems ten times as hard as it ought to be. To the point where, at 4:00, I packed up my stuff, including my laptop (I'd brought it in to load some work-related software) and took myself across the street to Starbucks for a couple of hours.

I dabbled with my story ideas, drank a latte and brooded on how aggravating it can be not to be independently wealthy.

Sadly, one of the DS stories already promises to be longer than I had hoped. I was thinking, you know, 20-25 pages. Short stuff. Easy to toss off, not much pressure, that kind of thing.

I'm determined to keep the others short. Any of them start to develop complicated story lines and I'll have a nervous breakdown.

On the down side, I just did a demo of Hell's Own Software for someone so dumb she didn't understand the difference between creating a list of options and selecting an option. Shoot. Me. Okay, I've given it an obnoxious nickname, but seriously. This program is simple to use. "This is where you decide which options you want to appear on the page. This is the page where you select which option you want for that record." We did that about six times before she sort of got it. (Can't be an age thing. She sounded about 20.)

I contemplated a mini nervous breakdown earlier today, but then I ate some chocolate and the feeling passed. Temporarily.

OTOH, on the happy side of the street, I got a feedback e-mail on some of my XF stories! I can't remember the last time that happened. Years.