Over the last few days I’ve been committing to paper a long chain of thought that, I hope, is going to serve as the basis of the biggest writing project I’ve ever undertaken. I’m not plotting yet, justworking on a setting that I hopeto develop exhaustivelybefore I embark on the actual story.

I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m planning itoutin a totally different way to my other projects. Time, as ever, is the enemy ofprogress, and working on several things at once certainly doe...