Still making notes, structuring, reading, immersing, researching. The book won't be tough to actually write. I can tell. It's all about setting up the structure that I will pour my new knowledge and stirred imagination into. The pouring will be fun and easy. The planning, mapping, gathering, cutting, fitting, preparing the "mold" is a bit less immediately gratifying, and tedious. If the energy involved in creating this book for me were a visible shape, it would definitely be lopsided on the reading/notes/researching/planning stage. What would, in the filmmaking parlance, be termed Pre-production.

And then, of course, a lot will be required in the illustrationing of the whole thing (be warned, I tend to invent words when I am so inspired or the passage requires), but that tends to draw me in so close that I end up blurring a few weeks by and hardly sleeping as I fall into drawing. So it's hard to think of it as a time period. Drawing the amount of illos that go into a 96 page book is more like falling into a tunnel for me. Everything smears by—food, sleep, day—and I just draw. Morning to night, hardly a rest. It's something I can get lost in for a very intense period of time. Drawing, painting, things like that.

Textual things—writing, editing, reading—require breaks from me. I can only go so long with words before I begin to get anxious. I love them, don't get me wrong. But they simply require a different kind of concentration.

I did not used to have the discipline for the first part of the equation mentioned above—the "preproduction" part. And in my snobby artistical mind I thought the tedium was not something an artist should weather. I thought the pure, primal, gut-spillage of inspired passion was "art," and all the rest was too thoughty for me. But I learned, in time, O, the folly of my ways. Do not skimp on the planning phase! Or you will learn the hard way. However that is usually exactly the way this writer prefers to learn. What are ya gonna do? (Pay attention.) And I did learn. In fact, that beginning part is SO important that until you discipline yourself to manage the less-exciting but crucial "secondary process" part of your art, you will be undisciplined (hmm duh that's redundant) and immature as an artist, which basically means that you will never be a Master. One day, I would love to approach that level. But if I do, it will not be by fooling myself. And so I have learned to prepare, to discipline myself in my work, to take the time to prepare the ground, so that when it is time, I may just hack away with my hoe in wild abandon. Or something less absurd sounding, in the way of metaphor. Guilt-free roto-tilling? Hmm. Neurotic Gardener.

It is fascinating, Ancient Egypt. And you know what else is? Life. Because one of the things I used to say repeatedly was that I longed to study more history. My college curricula didn't include a lot of History (a lot more of Psychology, Science, Photo/Cinematography, Art), and I've always been fascinated by it. I planned (and still might?) on taking courses in college again. Not for a degree, just to learn more History. This was something I had been planning to do for a year or two. It was in the back of my mind, wasn't ready to do it yet. But knew I would (will?).

But then this series of books came along, the opportunity to write/illustrate this series of books, and I am required to do a lot of reading (a lot) on the subjects I will write about (seems fair).

So bit by bit, I can fill in areas of my knowledge base that are lacking, and in areas I specifically wanted to do as much. Isn't that amazing? Just what I wanted. Life as Santa. Cosmic Jolly Karmic Reactor. Listen to that whistle blow.

So first, it's Egypt, ancient Egypt. Next, it will be dinosaurs. Then, perhaps outer space...or right to some other countries (China, France, etc), or maybe vice versa. But either way, it will be fun, and we can learn together! Just what Horris needs, though! to know even more about the world than he does. He's such a know-it-all, man. If his head swells up any more, I don't think he'll even fit through the door.