Is it wrong that I don't want to be challenged when I read? I want to be entertained.

Nope. Not wrong at all. I think that's what most people want out of reading and why genre fiction is actually enjoying a surge in sales right now. I know I get so freakin' sick and tired of people who equate "good" literature with books that you have to work to read and that leave you wanting to slit your wrists.

I read to lose myself in another world-- same reason I write.

Guess that makes me cheap and commercial-- I'm good with that.

But Typo, she wasn't saying that she'd read McCarthy because he was a better writer than Rowling, just simply because he wrote books for adults and she was an adult.

Sure that is why my note was a side note. No disagreement on the main point. Dissing whole genre's is assholeness. Her reasons for preferring McCarthy to Rowling were assholeish. Just was making a side observation peripheral to the main discussion that I don't enjoy Rowling as much as I enjoy a lot of other writers.

I know I get so freakin' sick and tired of people who equate "good" literature with books that you have to work to read and that leave you wanting to slit your wrists.

Kat calls these books "broccoli." Like, they're good for you, but a hot fudge sundae is way yummier.

Almost knocked out chapter 4 this weekend. It is taking longer than action packed chapter 3, but there is a lot of important set up stuff. Stuff that will become important much, much later in the story.

Hmmm... So far with four chapters my chapter length has remained bizarrely consistent even though I haven't trying to do that. Interpolating the various story events to chapters gives me about thirty chapters. Taking the average of the first four chapters and multiplying that by 30 gives me about 500 word processor pages. Gulp. I've got about 64 pages right now.

It always helps me to break it down that way, Gud, but if it seems intimidating, just forget that part! Also, it might not work that way, in practice, so.

Excellent progress, though!

It's not really all that intimidating, it's just one part at a time. Breaking it up into guesstimated chapters actually helped make it all seem more doable. I have a pretty good idea of what generally happens in each of my guesstimated chapters, so I don't feel like I'm going to get stuck anywhere.

Breaking it up into guesstimated chapters actually helped make it all seem more doable.

That's the way it always works for me.

There still is one idea I'm toying with that would change things pretty dramatically toward the end, but I can't figure out how to make it work with later events. It would be cool if I could get it work though.

Chapter 4 is done. Now for Chapter 5 wherein I need to fake some knowledge of sword fighting.