i will love you with all the madness in my soul

I spent a lot of time thinking about Ferguson today; thinking unfortunately doesn't get the pages written, and it also may be just a little bit weird that I've gotten to the point where I now actually talk out loud to myself in the car (which I *never* thought I would do -- clearly the next step is to get a cat). But, I feel like I must work out what his motivation is before I write any more scenes. Right now, his whole motivation is just that he's a hot mess, which, while entertaining, is not a motivation. Don't get me wrong -- I love hot messes, and he may be the best, baddest hot mess of them all. But there has to be a *reason* why he goes to the theatre and discovers Madeleine, a reason that forces them together long enough for him to fall in love with her (at which point winning her becomes enough of a motivation to sustain the rest of the book).

So how does a hot mess who just inherited a dukedom end up in a shady theatre in Seven Dials? If he doesn't want the dukedom, why not just go back to Scotland and let some indifferent administrators handle the funds? Perhaps the twins will miraculously resurrect themselves from the summary death sentence I gave them last night, since he may be sticking around London out of some vague sense of duty to the family he abandoned ten years earlier to escape his awful father. And speaking of the duke -- not only is he dead, but I may have resurrected one of Ferguson's older brothers (Henry or Richard) long enough to off the duke in a tragic murder/suicide, which would explain how Ferguson could inherit so suddenly and unexpectedly, and would also add to his sense of guilt that he had abandoned his siblings to survive their father on their own. That last gem came out of a conversation with Terry earlier today -- it may be too dramatic, but we'll see.

Needless to say, I'm just dithering at this point, and it's not helping anything. I need a break from thinking about them, but I also desperately want to finish by October, and it's becoming clear that I'm unlikely to meet that deadline. But as much as I'm complaining about Ferguson right now, it's quite entertaining to play around with different ideas for him -- and unbelievably satisfying when one of them finally clicks.

Anyway, work was fine today; I successfully blow-dried my hair to the point of perfect straightness, so I felt quite put-together despite the fact that my entire desk is still in boxes and I don't yet have a working phone in my new building. I spent the day slogging on a variety of tings to get ready for the three-day offsite I have starting tomorrow, and I had to stay late to film the big boss for something (and by 'late' I mean I was in the office until 6:45, which wasn't bad, particularly when my favorite Finance guy brought me a donut from Krispy Kreme). Even though the video was less than two minutes and the only reason I had to 'film' it was because the big boss doesn't have a Mac and so couldn't use the format that the requestor had wanted, she said she didn't know what she would do without my 'production assistant' skills, since I successfully propped the laptop just right to give the webcam the most flattering angle possible. So, I'm glad to see that my obsession with camera angles has been put to good use, even if setting up a webcam is hardly an artistic endeavor.

Now, I suppose I should go to bed if I'm going to get enough sleep and still be on time to this offsite tomorrow -- bleh. Goodnight!

Daily word count: 0 (0% of goal)
Productive time: --
RescueTime productivity rating: -0.42 (global average: 0.87)