Post Dramatic Stress Syndrome

Day 4 of the Writing Marathon
Starting to tire today. I finding it once again to be true that when you employ more time (as in deep into the evening) on any given task, your motivation to do that exact same task the next day diminishes rapidly (a lesson for all you workaholics out there, who think your performance remains top notch after burning the midnight oil days in a row - it doesn't). So I escaped the house today, wearing baggy clothes and a 4 day beard (ouch... rough) and took a breather. This is what my day looked like:

• 6:00 Woke up, put Alex on schoolbus (well, not on the bus).
• 7:00 Crawled back into bed. Not exactly sure why, cuz I wasn't tired. Maybe cuz when I woke up it felt like I had just closed my eyes and was super awake. Have you ever had that? Strange. May have to lay off the sake I've been drinking lately.
• 10:30 Sat in my creaky chair (where is that WD-40?) and started on chapter 7. Oh right, now I remember why I finally started sleeping past midnight. I was still caught up examining my notes on the draft 3 plot I had printed out. OCD anyone? Granted though, the next few chapters need to be chopped up and sewn back together again as if it was Frankenstein's monster.
• 12:30 I'm going mad. I need a break. The bit that sent me over the edge was Zuul's first exposition. Zuul is the villain of the book and a multi-national CEO, who can only talk in business lingo. As if that wasn't hard enough, he is talking to someone I cannot reveal yet, about something I cannot be too specific about revealing emotions that have to be kept mysterious. Fudge on a stick! 
• 1:30 After lunch I decide my break is not long enough, so I decide to leave the house and go to nearby mega-mall Terminal 21. I walk around, air out my head, buy some bread and dark chocolate and enjoy a quick 30 minute back massage (for $10 !) before walking back home.
• 4:00 Crack knuckles. This sucker is going down! This is how my work space looks like (it's only slightly less complex than the material I'm trying to redraft):

So, there you have it.
If you zoom in enough you'll probably figure out a nugget or two of cool spoilers

but really... the way I'm redrafting now, don't bother;
chances are it might not end up in the final version. ^_^

• 5:45 Break for dinner. Tonight on the menu: old fashioned Dutch food. What is this you say? Ah, just boiled potatoes with gravy, chicken and brussel sprouts. Trust me, after 3 days of fried rice the kid was ready to eat something else. Besides, he gets chocolate pudding for desert.
• 7:30 Back again.
• 9:30 Wrapped up Chapter 7: Hideous Zuul and The Pumpkin Jail. So far so good. I managed to put in the right amount of 'mythology information' I wanted the reader to have, without overwhelming them or making it sound like a countdown of bullet points. This was Nancy's (my editor) main gripe. Simon, the lead character is shell shocked at this point, having been just introduced into his new magical world and also having blown up the entrance to the city by accident (you have to read it to believe it). So I hope many of the terms used are excused for the time being as Simon (and hopefully the reader) simply read past them in order to get to what comes next: the Trial of Simon.

I leave you with another few pieces of art:

What I picture my fairy tale city to look like.

Chicago as inspiration. Add the great Redwoods and voila.

Aufwiedersehen.