I thought it was an MS exacerbation, but it turned out to be illness, exhaustion, and dehydration. And that's all I'm saying about the culmination of the last three weeks.

John and Dave, you got it: The two people I know who appeared in that episode of THE WIRE are Peter Linari and Laura Lippman. Not having HBO, I haven't actually seen it yet, but I'll get there. Send me your mailing addresses.

After being ejected from the house tonight during what's usually my watch, I wandered around for a while, bought a notebook at Rite Aid for no clear purpose, and tried to find someplace to eat dinner, but none of the local joints seemed conducive to getting anything done on the novel I vaguely remember having been... what's the word... griting... smiting... writing! That's it.

I know that when I go from sub-freezing cold into a restaurant with background noise and/or candles, and eat carbohydrates, I can't think. I eventually gave up on thinking and went to a coffeehouse for a cappuccino and a slab of cheesecake, and remembered I used to have this system for working on that thing that means what happens in a novel, what's it called... schmot...blot... Oh, I don't know, but it's just me asking obvious questions at the top of a page and then answering them as many ways as I can, with bullets, down the page, and eventually circling one that doesn't smell like socks. Which I did, and which led me to the rediscovery of the most important question a writer can ask about a schmot:



Which led me to an answer, and now I know why the entire center section of the story exists.

Which is not an exaggeration. A full decade's worth of people had this whole thing going for no reason I could tell.

Sometimes I think my entire process is set up just so I can go "Well, that's stupid. I could do better than that."