I finished the renders and layout for the Easter story tonight. I had deliberately not been keeping track of how many pages it was -- this was one of those stories where I didn't really plot it in detail, I just let it freewheel wherever it wanted to go. Having finished the layout, I now know it's eighteen pages long.

I have filled in dialogue for one of those pages. ONE.

If you don't understand this, you need to know that the dialogue is written ... more or less ... it's just all living in my head. And when it's only in my head, if I try to keep too much of it there, the plumbing backs up and causes me all kinds of problems. (Among other things, it affects my sleep. No joke. My brain loops, rehearsing dialogue over and over. I think it's trying to ensure via repetition that I don't lose any of it until I can get it written down.)

Four pages of backlog is usually the furthest I want to take a story. That's reaching critical mass. That tells me I need to stop and go back and fill in the blanks before I do any more renders.

Seventeen pages of backlog is unprecedented. And not good.

The problem is, I haven't wanted to make words. Right now, just contemplating making words depresses me. I suspect this is a reaction to The World -- all words seem good for right now is conveying horrible news, and why bother to write any other kind of words when everyone's too busy drowning in horrible news to read them?

But, y'know, gotta persevere. Making these weird-ass stories is my way of coping with the horrors; I can't stop, that'd be worse.

Besides, I'm on a schedule this year. The Easter story comes out on the first of April, and I wouldn't mind having the latter half of March to squeeze in a different story that isn't on the timetable. I don't know which one yet. There are a lot of ideas waiting for their turn.