Progress at last, Scene 8 version 2 takes shape

Well, after the events of 14 January 1988 — oh, wait, no, we don't want to get into that lamentable tale from my past — I mean the more recent, sad tale from just over a week ago, 14 January 2009. On that day, I broke a month-long writer's block and started writing the second half of the Episode 4a script. After I finished the first part, Scene 8, I decided I should check my latest work into my Subversion repository for safe keeping. Before I check my update in, I wanted to do some final formatting which, long story short, caused all of what I had just written to disappear. (Stupid Aquamacs) So then I went for a walk outside in the cold without a coat to try and cool off because I was in shock that the technology could behave so abominably. As I completed my mile-long trek, I was treated to my body's propensity to bleed through the nose. Maybe one day I will have some surgery to get that fixed, but that's another story. Returning to my desk, I proceeded to add regret to injury by sending out a rueful message to an on-again, off-again, fair-weather friend, whom I ostensibly first met on 14 September 1987: another lamentable 14. This action caused this friend, my muse for the creative spurt, to promptly cease all association with myself. No doubt this was because of my tendency to come across as both needy and arrogant and my unfortunately regrettable habit of phrasing things passive-aggressively, even though I don't mean to. Some people smoke, I write passive-aggressively. Bugger, can someone please invent some passive-aggressivitol?

Anyway, so here I am, sick with another cold thanks to the walk my mother would have advised me not to take if my mother ever paid attention to whatever I was up to on any given day, and I have good news to report! No, my muse and I have not reconciled — that must wait until emotions are less flared and an apology worthy of the wrong can be conceived. No, after stumbling and blundering over what the new first line of Scene 8 should be and who would speak it, I had a breakthrough! I now have the first half of a new version of the lost Scene 8 crafted much to my satisfaction. It even has ideas that I would have added to the original had I though about it again, though I still have the sinking feeling that I may have lost some gems from the original in the retelling. There is still the rest of the scene to write from the part where they sneak past the mid-section of the Red Dragon, but progress is progress and progress has been made!

In some ways, writing is like recovering from an addiction: you can't say the productive streak will last forever, but you just have to take it one day at a time...