Once in a while someone will ask if I might have ADD. They never include the "H", because it's quite evident that I am not and probably have never been hyperactive--hypoactive is a much better description. However, as I understand it, one of the supposed symptoms of this alleged disorder (which some maintain is merely normal male hunter processing) is that the subject becomes very focused on some tasks to the exclusion of others. It isn't that the child is daydreaming, but that he is doing so in a way that makes him unaware of everything around him. The "Hunter Mindset" theorists maintain that this is not a disorder, but an appropriate and valuable mental condition for the male hunter, enabling him to shut out distractions while stalking his prey, while the "normal" condition is actually the female mental condition, useful for village multitasking that often involves keeping track of several children and aware of threats to their safety while foraging in the area immediately around the village to gather less defended foods, firewood, and supplies.

I don't really have an opinion on that, although I admit the male/female mindset theory has a lot of appeal to me, and I wish I had some names to give because the only name I can ever recall of a scientist who argues that men and women are actually different apart from upper body strength and reproductive organs is sociobiologist E. O. Wilson. I know there are others, and have read interviews with men and women who similarly argue for these inherent differences between the sexes, but other than that one classed himself a Darwinian anthropologist and another was a medical professional in New York City, I've lost the really pertinent details that are critical in citing opinions, like their names. Those little details have never been so important to me as ideas, and I regret that I've not been good with names at any time, probably because of that ADD thing that gets me focused on the things that interest me to the exclusion of irrelevant distractions.

You know, I really enjoy writing. I had no idea I was going to say all that when I started, but I'm rather pleased with it now that it's done. Still, it's time I get to the point.

The point is that the night before last I started sketching character information extracted from the novel Verse Three, Chapter One, and now I keep going back to it. I keep telling myself there are other pressing matters, but this is the one that has grabbed my attention at the moment and so when I think, What can I get done in these minutes?, I open the PDF of the book and the character paper spreadsheet, find my places in each, and do another minichapter or three. Then I find myself saying that I really need to make supper, or read to Adam, or do laundry, or go to the bathroom--but I'll do another chapter first. So that's been my focus. In fact, this morning I glanced at a stack of edit pages next to the computer that are from Orc Rising in The Third Book of Worlds, and wondered whether they were corrections I'd already typed into the system and needed to file, or pages awaiting my attention for typing. It would not take too much effort to answer that, but at the moment my mind is not there, nor on the clothes waiting in the washer to be moved to the dryer, nor on the ground beef I have to defrost early if I'm going to make meatloaf for dinner (microwave-defrosted ground meat is always a mix of frozen lumps and cooked chunks, and while that's fine for Sloppy Joes, Hamburger Helper, and Cowherd's Pie, it does not work well for meat loaf or meat balls, which require raw thawed meat). In fact, probably if I did not have the discipline to do my regular work including this blog and these forums, I'd be reading that book right now. I've been known to stay up all night reading a book I've read before, if I get into it and my wife isn't home, but that is not conducive to getting anything done the next day, so I try not to do it.

I'm eager to get back to that, so let me move on to the forums and see who has managed to post since I left my comments yesterday.

--M. J. Young