Stuck on a scene that feels like it has no momentum...

Why must I overcome the urge to flee my desk or open up a game or anime window every time I sit down at my computer to write?  Is writing such a terrible thing?  Why are those first minutes of writing so hard?

Revising and rewriting is hard.  T_T  I have to remember what was working before and keep it, only everything else around it has been changed, so I have to change the good stuff too, but find a way to keep the essence the same.  Aaargh.

Need to get to work...Focus!  20 pages in 3 days!

Making sense of a cut and paste mess = revising.

Asakawa's a tough egg to crack.

Oh boy.  Met with advisor this morning, and the pressure's on.  No more slacking off and spending all day watching Star Trek/anime/other things.  But let's worry about the little things first: how to summarize the end of the Sengoku period and the early Tokugawa period in about two lines for my readers who know nothing about J-history.  Hah.

Write write write write write.  Too lazy this summer.  Need to get back on track during these last few weeks before the semester starts.  Right now I'm revising Chapter 1.  Every so often I feel uninterested in revising, and I want to jump ahead and write something in Part II, but then as I'm trying to decide just what to write in Part II, I review my outline and notes and feel completely overwhelmed.  Then I decide it's easier to keep things straight if I just go back and revise from Ch. 1.  Before school starts though, I want to at least finish revising everything I wrote last semester, and finish Part I as much as possible.  Ganbaru zo!

Writing a rough draft of my history paper due tomorrow...Thank you for reminding me why I don't want to do a PhD in history.  Hate writing papers of any kind.

Something about the pitch of the original AsaHina farewell scene was perfect.  The narrow worldview of an eleven-year-old, perhaps.  But now there's a new Ch. 2 with a different tone, and I will have to see what meager things I can salvage from the previous version.  Oh, revision, you cruel, heart-rending process.

YES.  I thought of a way to tie my scant knowledge of early modern Japanese infanticide into the story.

Rereading the five pages I wrote in a haze of delirium last night/this morning, I cannot see that it is any good.  I read it and cannot get into it.

Dear Chapter 2,
Please just friggin' end already.  How hard is it to get this girl out of the apartment?
Very hard, clearly.

Why is Japan all about nostalgia?  When I look at pictures of other people visiting Japan, I inevitably feel a deep sense of nostalgia.

11 hours of writing and all I have to show for it is 1.5 pages of writing, plus a couple pages of scribbled plans for the chapter.  Writing is hard!  T_T

In which I discover the shogun wanted to have the emperor exiled

Dorking it out at 1 a.m., high on black tea and juicy historical details from Art and Palace Politics in Early Modern Japan.  Best book ever.  Also learned the date of Meisho's accession, happily.