Getting stuck in an internet vortex is a mightily dangerous thing for an author.  I tend to surf the internet while waiting for my brain to come up with the next scene in my current work in progress, mostly to kill time and amuse myself, sometimes to research things, be they out of personal curiosity or related to what I’m writing.  The problem is that I’m easily caught in a whirlpool sucking me deeper into the data stream, such as when I visit a Wikipedia page for information, only to navigate from page to page without end (a phenomenon I call a wiki vortex), clicking on interesting links.  I’ll emerge hours later, wondering where the time went.

I usually come out of my voyages down the internet vortex somewhat smarter than when I started, but it sucks up a lot of time I should be devoting to advancing my own stories, especially when I’m either procrastinating or stuck after introducing a twist in the story that has me wondering why I did that.  Sometimes it takes me two or three days of desultory progress to finally figure out the reason.  When that happens, it’s about as close to a ‘Eureka’ moment as I’ll ever come, and I’ve had two of them in the last two days, finally removing the logjam that was keeping me from advancing on the first draft of Fatal Blade.  Mind you, the time I didn’t spend writing, I spent getting better acquainted with the world around me, for what that’s worth.

The third installment of Decker’s War has now passed the half-way mark and I’m hoping that progress will accelerate, now that I’ve gotten the first two acts out of the way.  Thankfully, winter seems about to release it’s grasp with temperatures forecasted to be above the freezing point from Sunday onwards.  Soon, I’ll be able to do my thinking while I’m walking the dog around the neighbourhood.  I’m sure he’s looking forward to it as well after three months of confinement.  When you’re a five pound Yorkie, snow and ice aren’t your friends.