( Chapter 9 )

In the back of my brain there was a large unruly Babylon 5 bush that had been growing wild for over a decade but now a B5 muse has landed on me with a vengeance and I've begun paying attention to that bush and pruning it. The muse is "screaming" in my ear. I'm once again living, breathing, dreaming B5. I'm channeling lines of dialog while I'm walking down the street hoping to recall it long enough to write it down. I've been organizing my story by sorting through dozens and dozens of scraps of paper with bits of dialogue and miscellanea that I've accumulated over the years. And boy does it feel good to throw away those scraps of paper once I'm through adding what's written on them to my online notes and story outline. I have begun to see the basic structure of the fic though I've known where it begins and ends for years. Despite a tremendous amount of trimming, eliminating scenes, characters and plotlines, making it half the size of what it was, it will still be a long fic, consisting of dozens of chapters and vignettes as the story spans over 50 years but I now know the basic scenes that I need and I can rearrange dialogue and various plot points with far more ease on the computer than on paper. Now, of course, comes the hard part...actually writing the story. Wish me luck.