One step forward, five steps sideways.
In playing with the tone-row that is the theme of Prelude No. 6, I transposed some notes octavewise to smooth out some of the spiky leaps , and found that the two halves of the theme are identical and lead into each other. I could make the harmonies of each half the same, but that would be boring.
The bigger problem is that, left to itself, the theme is static in the extreme. I will have to break it up to get it to go anywhere.
I played with several modulations, mostly rhythmical. None are grabbing me at this point. I am truly in the phase of creating a lot of crap.
I did write an ending which grew on me.
The situation is this: I have to take that step out into the void and create such weird, useless, lame crap that something decent will appear in order to balance it out.
A lot of the time the creative process works out like that–the pearl in the oyster thinky.