Saturday, December 28, 2002

• Ah, the mad posting rush to beat the deadline before the Xanga Clock says it's tomorrow!

  Today was spent writing, and writing, and writing. I have been chopping three draft chapters into two slightly less-draft chapters, to meet a self imposed deadline of getting a new playtest draft completed and out the door by tomorrow evening. I'm also falling behind on another project, and 'Secret Project A', which has no deadline per se but which would be one of the biggest triumphs of my career, is taking the brunt of the overload, meaning, I have barely touched it in two weeks.

  'Secret Project B' is starting to take shape. There's a wonderful feeling as mountains of random words begin to form coherence, as the project as a whole comes together. Part of it is illusion -- when you're actively working on something, you don't see the flaws which are painfully evident after you've come back to it a week later.

  Beth has been a bit moody today, but I suspect it's mostly the weather, which has been wretched.

  In other news, I am deeply ashamed to admit I have become extremely hooked on a totally shoujo anime series called "Princess 9". It has no robots, no guns, no psychic powers, no magic spells, no talking animals, no transformations, no cyberware, no non-human characters, and no weird shadow girls commenting on the action inscrutably. It's about nothing more than a private girl's high school trying to put together a baseball team, but it's extremely compelling for some unknown reason. I mean, I *hate* sports with a passion, but I'm eager to see what happens next.

  One thing I like about Japanese, and, for that matter, English (Dr. Who) programs is that they take the time to tell the story, rather than forcing everything into single hour or half-hour blocks which must be self contained. We're on the fifth episode of a series about a girl's baseball team, and there are only five players so far -- never mind actually playing a game. The very best American TV -- Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- strains the bounds of the episodic format, but rarely dares to tell the viewer, in effect, "If you weren't with us from the beginning, you're SOL. Watch some reruns and catch up."

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