Chapter 6, still good.

Don't know if it is a homerun, but it is at least a triple.

The next chapter is tricky. I know what characters I want to introduce, but I need something significant to happen in the chapter, and I can't pull out the poisonous sea snakes yet.

But that's the thing -- I'm sure that my subconscious will come up with something. I give myself instructions and let the subconscious work on it, and something always comes through.

This waiting until the full chapter is assembled in my head before I write it is obviously the way to go. I worry that I'll miss or drop stuff, but it doesn't feel like I do. Sometimes I'll remember something later and add it in. But mostly, it all seems to come out on the page.

Went walking yesterday. Again, ran into a bunch of people. and dammit, it's my Badlands! Drove to another part of the area, but didn't like it as much and ran into snowy hillsides pretty fast. But I also assembled the chapter to my satisfaction and wrote most of it down.

A pattern is emerging. I write the beginning of the chapter at home, usually a page or two, then go on my walk, (thinking it through on the drive out also), then write another 3 or 4 pages, then drive home and write the last 2 or 3 pages.

Working like a charm.

I really like this book so far. It is an awful lot like the way I wrote Tuskers. I just seem to have an unexpected talent for writing up a bunch of characters in an almost soap opera way and then subjecting them to outside disaster. It's fun and it seems to work.