Answer: Yes, the Super Bowl

12:42: I suppose if by "up" you mean dressed and groomed, I've been up since 10:50 a.m.  By that measure I haven't wasted that much time.  Today is the day I should really get to the end of Hengist.  So far, though, I've been catching up on forums and comics and blogs and all the other things that are easy to do when my laptop is open.  When I've finished reading this last post I'll get to it.  That's the goal.  And when I need a break I'll come back here and let you know how it's going.

1:50: An hour later, mostly of work, I seem to have ganged aglay, as a stray click while looking at Wordnik.com brought up the latest news from Egypt.  It was nothing particularly new.  The wheels seem to have come off some time ago, and now the country is just skidding... like calls for Mubarak's immediate resignation, this metaphor doesn't appear to be going anywhere.

There are two things in particular outstanding before I'll have finished this book.  The first is a scene in which a character more or less sorts out her problems so that the story can move on to its climax.  The second is the end.

In order to make sure that that first scene makes sense, what I've been doing the last couple editing sessions is going over all of her scenes to remember what she was thinking in them.  It's slower going than I had guessed before, and I can't help but wondering if I'm procrastinating.  The End, after all, is a scary thing, in its own way.

I just got through touching up a scene that elicited a strong negative reaction in at least one beta reader.  The challenge is in having a character be wrong, and not correcting him immediately, without the reader thinking that the book (and the author) must think that he is right.  I'm not sure yet whether I have a handle on that.

Enough of that.  Back to work.

2:38: Slow going.  The house is becoming livelier.

3:14: Maybe because the middle of the book is more event-driven than character-driven, maybe because I remember it better, maybe because I was bored, I started skimming and skipping what I knew I wouldn't change, and got as far as the big scene I wanted to edit.  On second glance, it is about 600 words of navel gazing.  I'm going to see if I can improve it by introducing another character and making it a conversation.

3:18: Taking a break.

8:54: A long break.  Getting back to it now.  I'm amending my goal for the day: if I can get this scene done tonight, I will be in good shape to finish my draft tomorrow.

9:40: Except I didn't get back to it just then, because 1) people were in the house and talking, 2) the television was on, 3) Hark! A Vagrant is a funny comic, 4) I have ADHD.  Finally did what I should have done earlier: retreated to my girlfriend's room.  Getting back to it now.

10:38: The scene is done, and I think it has its strengths.  My only worry is that when I did the last version, and the one before that, I had been pretty satisfied with the result, only to have my beta readers point out fairly glaring flaws.  So we will see.  But I think that this is neater, as I have it now, at least.  Her emotions are less muddied, and frankly, less autobiographical.  There's a danger in borrowing from life, and it's that you run the risk of assuming (erroneously) that things you thought must make sense.

I shared my concerns with my girlfriend.  She reassured me that, come what may, I write women better than Robert Jordan did.

10:44: That's it for me tonight.  More writing tomorrow.  There's nothing happening tomorrow that might distract me, right?