Teh beginning of the edn

It's been a long time. It's been a L O N G time! (that looks like "alongtime"). And that after I promised me, you, everyone else that I would blog regularly. Every time I write an entry, it is apparently not often enough to warrant an "every time" kind of memory - because it always seems to be sitting at six entries. Six!

I hope everyone's just waiting to spring on this entry. The strange thing about blogging is that people care, more than I expect them to - sometimes a whole lot. People read lots of blogs. I already spend more time on the internet than I want to, and I don't visit *anything* much of note except Homestarrunner.com. But some people do. They phish for a living or for a hobby. Some of my own friends do this. And the strangest of strangers. When I search for my own name (an enlightening and frequent passtime) I've found pieces of my "The Fugue Code" blog on other people's blogs. Somewhere out there is an unofficial fan page for this blog, I'm sure of it, with candid photos of my blog blogging, and the latest Alex's blog updates. Blog to star in blog! Blog fans all bloggy about The Blog!

So why the delay? I have fans, even if some of them are meta-weird. And I really enjoy the act of blogging - it's good end-of-day therapy, it's a great venue to get my thoughts out without needing to worry about ever being able to control copyright on them. I guess it's because I can't hear. Off and on. I've had a hot-cold with a sinus infection since the first half of March. Six weeks! Nothing much really happens except my ears close up in the evening and I feel adrift, a veil between me and the universe. And it doesn't make me want to do much. The evening is supposed to be my business time: webby work, bloggy blorg, great big jorbs that are supposed to help me unwind from writing mode. Instead, my ears fuzz over, my brain feels fat and insecure, my mind slows to the repetition of a single word, my typing is reduced to msuh, and I watch Strong Bad win "the mile" over and over again...

Also, I'm just not there yet. Not feeling it. Just like, I WILL share the enormous repertoire of walk-around magic that I'm working up for "Old Growth" on-the-Fringe-grounds publicity, it's just, I've gotta write, all I wanna do is write!

And oh, I'm writing! I'm on what I suspect is the draft-of-drafts - the last go-through for structure, tone, character arc, flow, image, consistency etc. before I focus my blorggy eyes on one thing and one thing's one thing only: cutting 60 pages into 35. I've done it before. WOOL was a stately 100 before it became 26. The Fugue Code was sumpin' similar. The Bible is at least a frumptillion pages, but they're pretty thin. Just like that - see- the ears plugging, the brain stares in the mirror, the mind fuzzing, fuzzing, fuzzing, and "Ow, hot soup is on my eye!" Teh fin is meh commencement