writing woes.

at a party, it once happened that an acquaintance of mine asked me the usual grad student greeting: "how's the work going?"

without really thinking about it, i said, "i feel like i'm a fireman, trapped in a room full of pyromaniacs."

he looked alarmed, and then i said that i didn't mean it literally. he relaxed a bit, after that.

i suspect he thought that i was accusing him of pyromania.

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anyways, the writing is going that way. the bulk of the math has been LaTeXed, but it might as well be a laundry list of lemmas, remarks, theorems. it's unreadable.

those little paragraphs for explanation, intuition, and flow are fine, but not when you have to write several dozen of them.

also, i keep running into the vicious circle of

1. typing up a fact, then the proof,
   
2. re-reading it and finding it distasteful,
   
3. then wondering if i can improve it ..
   
4. .. and after an undisclosed amount of time, realizing that i neither know whether it's possible, nor whether i should pursue it or give up and write something i know but unsatisfactory and probably tautological.
   

argh. i'm making much of this, i know. better just to write and finish something, and finally move to the introduction.

time's running out.
i've known that for a while.