"We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do it." -- Winston Churchill, Speech at Harrow School, October 29, 1941

"The story of the human race is War. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world" -- Winston Churchill, 1932,Thoughts and Adventures (US: Amid These Storms)

"There is only one thing certain about war: that it is full of disappointments and also full of mistakes." -- Winston Churchill, 27 April 1941

"Dictatorship nurses within itself the canker that must destroy it. The dictators wear out their countries. They demand permanently what men and women are only willing to give in an emergency. And in the end they kill those very qualities of leadership that make them redoubtable." -- Winston Churchill, 1938, Colliers

"It is the English-Speaking nations who, almost alone, keep alight the torch of Freedom." -- Winston Churchill, 1938, News of The World

"now, if you can only turn toward producing something akin to a narrative" saith the sage.

Yes, I realize that an episodic stream-of-consciousness doth not ipso facto a compelling narrative make, but:
-- developing the habit of writing anything frequently [other than overtly commercial marcomm prose] feels like a positive
-- the exceptionally convenient mechanism for capturing continual snippets of expression and compiling them in this way is clearly exhilarating; thousands of people have been taken by it (I'm just very very late to the party)
-- and I can use some exhilaration right now
-- one can set up multiple Blogs, for free, so one (or more) can be dedicated to The Compelling Narrative
-- each posting could be a chapter or other episodic element
-- I like that each "chunk" remains as a discrete editable entity

What's appealing is of course the friction-free instant link between the acts of composition and publication. This has the immediacy of email, with the intrinsic narrative power of the simple passage of time.

After all this enthusiasm, I haven't quite figured out how the dynamics of the built-in archiving system impacts my picture of this process, and won't until the first week has passed -- though in truth I could go surf to figure that out faster.

Well, the morning's tasks beckon -- going to the accountant's for a 10am tax return appointment, and finishing the Final Books for BigWake and turning them in to Ater Wyne.

Short, profusely-hyperlinked notes:
A happy trip to Powell's. First, to the Technical Book store, to get this book, "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. Then, off to the main book store to get this book, "The Headless Ghost" by consummate pot-boiler R.L. Stine, for Alexandra. And then we trotted back hand-in-hand to the Technical Book store again, to get Space Mucus. In all this sidewalking twixt bookstores, Alex ordered that we were to stomp decisively on all the fallen autumn leaves afoot. On the last block she got tired of that, and instructed that while I should continue on leaf-squashing duty, she would switch back to her standard practice of Not Treading On Cracks. One block short of our destination, I'd caught the eye of a large chap coming towards us -- he smiled at us in a completely warm and natural way, and I smiled back likewise. It struck me that he was very likely jealous.

Quick lunch, then a trip solo across town to go See a Man About a Dog. On the way home this evening, a great chat with Jane and Bill Campbell.