I seem to have hit upon a workable method for writing the Tiresias pov scenes.

Talk to people about dreams and madness. Come up with core concepts for two of the four that need to be written (the other two I’m still uncertain about). Let these compost for a while. Late at night, put Tiresias’ music on loop. Make sure there will be no interruptions (this includes closing e-mail, of course). Turn off all the lights; leave about three small candles burning. Reset the computer display so Wordperfect gives you white text on a black background; this minimizes the light from the screen. Turn the screen off and lie on the floor for a while, thinking about Tiresias as if preparing to role-play him. When the scene starts to take shape, get up, write the scene longhand on the backs of random scraps of paper. Write hunching over the paper to see in the candlelight. Don’t worry about mispellings or other mistakes. Let your handwriting go to hell. (Bonus points for using the black-and-silver fountain pen you already and will forever associate with this novel.) Toss the sheets aside the instant they’re done and grab a fresh one; stream of consciousness is important. When you have one completed, turn the monitor back on, type it in. Go back a few steps and start on another one.

I had one done already; did two more tonight, for just shy of nine hundred words of present-tense madman point-of-view. I haven’t yet decided what the other two will be about, but I think — not that I have any distance on them at the moment — that I like the two I’ve done. (And the progenitor of them all, the original Tiresias scene, which I did ages ago.)

Drop that on top of 1556 words of forward progress on Act Five, and it’s a good day’s night’s work.

Authorial sadism: Calling in favors.

LBR quota: I loves me some bloody rhetoric.