the desktop

Yes, it's a beautiful spring day outside, I know.  But I am determined - jaw-clenched determined - to have a first draft of this book completed by the time I leave for the airport, and LA, on Wednesday evening.  For the last month, I've been tapping out 1,300-1,500 words a day, like a little demonic writing machine.  Even if, like today, there seem to be too many of the wrong words, that will certainly be compressed and changed, they are words.  (The reason that this is a strangely truncated picture on the right-hand side is that the words on the screen, at that very moment, were definitely not ready for reading.  I should have scrolled down and displayed an image, instead).  What's more, the NHC is a curiously noisy place during the week, and at the weekend it's blissfully quiet, apart from the crack crack cracking of the glass.  So here I've been sitting, coffee machine just out of view over my right shoulder, trying to squeeze far, far, far too much about "The aesthetics of flash" - or whatever the last chapter ends up being called - into too little space.   Oh, and in case you wondered, the whole thing will clock in around 145, 000 words.  That's the length that my internal word measuring device always seems to write books.   Today, at least, I seem to have solved the problem of how to represent Work In Progress.