So Cuban, Andy Garcia is playing on the TV. 90 Miles Cuban Cafe, Chicago, Nov. 2014 | Kenneth Lowe

I had a truly grueling writing experience last night, literally lying in bed with my eyes closed and composing 2,000 words I am truly surprised make any sense at all.

This was after a flurry of activity at work and a long train ride home. Those scenes were mainly filling in earlier parts that have only now come clear to me as the writing begins to shape this prolonged second act of the story. So the result was, I squeezed scenes into the middle rather than tacked more stuff onto the end. This lead to truly perilous situations where I was scrolling through past sections adding stuff that had never been there before. Somehow, it made sense when I opened my eyes to look at it.

I am now imperiling my 200-word goal lead, which I only won by writing above goal for three straight days, by going to a writer’s workshop. I have never been to it and know only one person there, and there is a long train ride ahead of me at the end of the evening and it sure would be nice to play Diablo III.

Sigh…