We’ve been blogging for 100 weeks! Can you believe it? We have some fun stuff planned for September, our two year anniversary month, but we thought we’d celebrate our 100th week by giving you a Top Ten List. It’s certainly been a trip down Memory Lane for me as I’ve perused my posts from the past 100 weeks.

          It seemed almost arrogant to go through what I’ve posted and bring it back to your attention. Sort of like a pompous, self-centered little girl jumping up and down shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” As I’ve reread my posts, though, I’ve been encouraged, inspired and reminded of several important truths. I hope you get as much out of rereading them as I did.

          I had to include my first post, Stephanie’s Intro. This is where it all started.

          My second blog was Routines and jumped right into the heart of our purpose, that routines are the way to productivity.

          Changing times discusses the importance of knowing when to change that routine.

          Wasting Time talks of the importance of establishing a a set writing time.

          Since NaNoWriMo has been such a big part of my life for several years, there are several posts relating to preparing or writing during NaNoWriMo: Writing Fast vs Writing Slow, How To Prepare Your Life For NaNo, Goals for NaNoWriMo?

          My Rewarding Routine reminded me of the importance of rewarding myself as well as a writing routine that needs to be implemented.

          I have several posts on goals, Goals-How and When to Evaluate Them and Anatomy of a Good Goal are just two of my favorites.

          What were the posts that helped you them most?

          We are talking about revision all this month. Some of you are in the midst of revising and editing the novel you wrote during the chaos of November’s NaNoWriMo. Some don’t even want to look at it again. Some never wrote one. Even so, we all need to be reminded of the need for revision. Kitty, Shonna and I are all thrilled to have Margie Lawson blogging with us all month. Judging from last week’s post, she will be offering us a lot of instruction. I’m not even going to try to compete with Margie in giving you more or better instruction (I’d only fail miserably). Instead, I’ll share some anecdotes that illustrate or reinforce her advice and maybe even inspire you.

          As Margie says, good critique partners are a wonderful thing. They see what you miss, they praise what you discount and they hold your feet to the fire when necessary. Kitty and Shonna are some of the best. Last week I wrote about feeling as though I’d lost my creativity. Kitty commented that she disagreed. She said that blog was the best I’d written in months. I’ve been mulling that over in my mind ever since. Why would she say that? What made it that much better than what I’d been writing?

          Revision. Yep. That’s right. Revision. Revision that results in what Margie called tight writing. Without revision, scenes, articles, novels might be okay, even good, but revision makes them better. Makes them sing. And revision takes time.

          I wrote the Boll Weevil blog several days before it was due. Even before that, I’d been thinking about the monument, sensing I could relate it to my writing, but not quite sure how. When I sat down to write, I wasn’t sure that what I wrote said what I wanted, but I saved it, trusting I would know how to edit it when I came back to it. And I did. As I reread what I’d written, the places needing polishing or changing or even deleted became obvious. The 2 days I let that sit untouched allowed me to realize, albeit unconsciously, that I needed to maintain the crop metaphor and nix all my other metaphors (I really like analogies and metaphors. They pop up in my writing all the time.)

          I’ve mentally reviewed the past 16 months of blog writing. Most weeks I write some initial thoughts one day and come back to it a few days later to polish it for posting. Occasionally, I’ll need two revision sessions. When I stick to that routine, I’m much more satisfied with what I write. (And I get more positive feedback.) On those occasions, more common these past two or three months, that I write the post too close to when it is due to be posted, I might have something good to say, but the end result isn’t nearly as clear or polished. And on the few occasions I wrote it late Sunday night or even Monday morning, it was obvious. (See typos? More than likely it’s because I didn’t have or take time to polish it.)

          Margie is right. A good critique partner or two are crucial to helping you tighten your writing. Their feedback, whether encouragement or rebuke or something in between, is invaluable. Equally important, I think, is the time a piece sits “resting” while someone else looks at it, (Or not.) So even if you don’t have a critique partner, use that time as an aid to tighten your writing.

          Kitty and Shonna, thanks for being great critique partners, even when you aren’t actively critiquing my work. May every writer who reads this blog find CPs like you!

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I am thinking about the year ahead. I’ve gotten back into a routine, and now I need to keep up with it. An occasional polishing or revising of routines won’t hurt either. So how do I begin? Since NaNo is so close to January, post-NaNo usually begins my annual planning. I buy a new calendar (either paper or laminated) and start marking it up. (You can print monthly and annual calendars for any year, with or without holidays for various countries, here.) This is how I proceed.

STEP 1 – Cross off all the days I don’t expect to work.

I only work Monday through Friday, so I could X out the weekends, but it makes the calendar too messy, so I don’t. I cross off birthdays, our wedding anniversary, holidays, vacation time (as soon as I know it), etc. As soon as I make a doctor appointment or anything else that must be done during the work day, I write it on this calendar so I can plan around potentially fewer words that day.

If you only have Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, for instance, you might want to cross off all the other days so you are focusing on just those two columns. If you have children, you may be crossing off days with school events. Think about your own life and schedule and decide how you want to do this step.

Though you still may get a bit of writing done on days you originally crossed off, they will be “extra” days and the words will be in addition to your planned writing. This is better than having a goal and not meeting it or feeling guilty because you didn’t write in a corner at your daughter’s birthday party. (We need to have days we relax and have fun without guilt!) This also gives you a cushion for days that you didn’t hit your goal.

STEP 2 – Count how many days are left.

Now I go back through the year and count the number of days that are left, the days I plan to write. Say I have 224 days not crossed off. Then I give myself 1 mental health/sick day each month (I’m a generous employer!), so I subtract 12 days from the 224 – but since I don’t know when I’ll take my sick days, I don’t cross anything off on the calendar.

Think about your past year, or what you think to be your average month and see if there is any other number of days you should subtract. I will often subtract an additional 5-10 days (1 to 2 weeks) to make sure I have room for things I forgot. (In my initial planning for 2010, I forgot to subtract the days I’ll be at my RWA writers conference.) The reason I try to make the number as accurate as possible, but on the low/conservative side, is that I want to meet or exceed my goals!!

If you prefer, you can subtract fewer days and give yourself a high-reaching goal. Many people work better when pushed. I can be one of those people, but only if I’ve been meeting goals lately and need a push. Right now, I want to make some goals I believe I can achieve because I haven’t hit my goals for the last 2-3 years.

STEP 3 – Estimate how much you can write on an average day.

If you just finished NaNo, you may have an idea of how much you can write on average. I went through my chart and saw I had one day that I wrote 0 words, and the other days I wrote between 105 and 4104 words. I know I can write about 1000 words per day if I’m pushing myself a bit without neglecting the rest of my life.

However, after reading Jim’s blog yesterday, I decided to schedule my writing a little differently for 2010. I’m going to schedule 500 words a day on new work. Then I’m going to use the rest of the time to edit the previous book. This is closer to how many professional writers work. So I’ll work on a new book in the morning, then edit the book I just finished in the afternoon. I’m really excited about this because now I have my NaNo novel to begin editing! I hope 2010 becomes for me The Year of Writing Professionally!

If you don’t know what your average output is or can be, use December and January to figure it out. On a calendar or in your journal, write the number of words you wrote and the time it took you to write them on each day. In the next six weeks, you’ll have holidays, vacations, kids out of school, kids in school, “normal” days – by the end of January, you’ll know about what you can do in most any situation.

Work on these three steps this week, and next week I’ll tell you what I do next. In the next few days, think about what your goal is for 2010. Write a polished book and send it out? Or two books? Get all the way through a first draft and finish a book for the first time? Meet the deadlines for the contracts you have because in the past you’ve been late?

Nearly every morning I get myself out of bed by reciting a sentence from the Bible – “His mercy is new every morning.” It gives me energy because today is a new day, with new opportunities to accomplish great things. No matter how yesterday went, today I have a fresh start. I feel that way about new years, too, but to a greater degree. 

Get ready for a great new year!

For a children’s writer, writing 50,000 words in one month is a lot. In fact, it is more than the average number of words in a middle-grade book. I’m not the fastest writer in the world, so I needed to do something to make sure I’d win NaNoWriMo 2009. (Stephanie and Kitty can say Pshaw! to winning this year because they have already won in other years. I had no such luxury.)

I planned my work and worked my plan. About mid-month I thought I was going to die. I decided that I had to win this one so that I never had to do NaNo again. Now? Sure, I’d be willing to give NaNo another go!

Here was my battle plan:

1. Outline before November.
2. Write more than the minimum each day.
3. Prepare the family.
4. Plan no other events for the month.
5. Automatically say “No” to people.
6. Plan rewards.

Here is what happened:

1. Outlined one children’s novel. Used note cards. Highly recommend this! If you read my blog of Michael Stackpole’s NaNo advice you may recall he suggested writing one chapter a day. My note cards pretty much came out to one chapter a day for that novel. I say for that novel because, as a children’s writer, I had to work on two manuscripts to add up to the 50,000 words. (As I learned from last year.)

The first 2.5 weeks were outlined and went smoothly. I spent less time thinking about what I was going to write and more time actually writing. The hardest part was forcing myself to write to the word count. The last weeks, working on my non-outlined novel, felt more disjointed, patchy, and somewhat flaky. I really like the story (done the panster way—Stephanie will be proud!), but I should have outlined it. Now I’ve got a bit of a mess to clean up.

2. I wrote about 2,000 words a day near the beginning to build up some cushion. I liked that my word count graph stayed ahead of the NaNo chart. I want to be a writer who can deliver before the deadline. This was good practice.

3. My family was on board. My kids signed up for the Young Writers’ Program. They went strong for the first two weeks before they petered out. They are both proud of the stories they wrote. My husband’s expectations for the month were so low that he was happy when I didn’t completely disappear into another world.

4. I managed to attend no extra events in November except for one baby shower and Thanksgiving.

5. No one asked me to do anything! Could it be the blank stare plastered to my face as I walked around? Or the fact that I let all calls go to the answering machine?

6. My rewards? Mid-month I bought some books. At the end (after finishing 2 days early) I went to a book signing. Debbie Macomber has written a great nonfiction book called Knit Together. I got her to sign it. Below is a picture of her talking about her latest book, One Simple Act, Discovering the Power of Generosity. Note the uber-fan in the front taking pictures. She took about 30.

I’ll end with a quote from my “reward.” I just now flipped through some pages and this caught my eye. Debbie is talking about a revelation she had about her writing:

I could no longer afford to dream of being a writer someday. I could no longer stuff my dreams into the future with a long list of justifications. Life holds no guarantees. I realized then that it was time for me to move my life purpose forward. It was time to go after my dream.

http://twitter.com/ShonnaSlayton

First, can I just give a shout out to all our NaNo-ing friends who hit the 50,000 word mark? Woo-hoooo!!!! You guys ROCK!!!

Second, if you participated this year – or anytime you’re challenging yourself to write more – and you didn’t hit the mark you were aiming for, sit down for a second and look for the take-away.

What you may find is that with the holidays and family and travel and cooking, November is just never going to be a good time for you. Then have your own event with your friends another time of the year.

You may decide that the number of words is not working for you, but you consistently hit another mark. Maybe you’ll find that 30,000 words in 30 days challenges you but also allows you to “win.”

Or instead of working with someone else’s artificial goal, like NaNoWriMo, use the energy they’re creating to get a jump start, but come up with your own goal. That’s what I did this year.

When NaNo started, I hadn’t written consistently in about a year. I’d been preparing to move, then traveling to see family, then moving, then apartment-hunting, then unpacking. (It’s been a long year!) More than anything, what I wanted and needed was to re-establish some writing routines. So I made that my number one goal for NaNoWriMo, above and beyond finishing a first draft.

It worked.

I decided that it wasn’t just butt-in-chair that I needed to focus on. I also wanted to focus on how I best tell a story. How much planning do I do beforehand, right after I start, in the middle, and even at the end? (I do a little bit all the time.) What time of day worked best for me? (Surprisingly, anytime between 6am and 6pm.) Should I allow myself to check email before I started, or not until I hit a certain page count? (I get to work faster and hit my mark faster, mostly, if I can’t check email until I write 2000 words.) Did exercise help? (I exercised the first two weeks, and didn’t during the last two weeks. My total word count was greater when I exercised. I think this is relevant because in the past I’ve always written more words in the last two weeks of NaNo.)

Some people got the colorful icon to put on their web site or in their emails to show they won during NaNoWriMo 2009. That’s cool. I got the satisfaction of feeling I “won” back my writing routines. Now if I can just keep them up during the Christmas season and into the new year, that will be very cool!

NOTE: Someone created a Yahoo Group called 100 Words Challenge to keep up the NaNo momentum. The idea is to write at least 100 words a day, every day. Everyone is free to join here. Let us know if you join and how it goes for you. Have fun and good luck!

          Looks like I’m the out of step with the group again. Unlike Shonna (Congratulations!), I didn’t finish NaNo and unlike Kitty, I’m not even close. I haven’t written a word on my NaNoNovel since the day before I wrote my blog about quitting. Should I hold a pity party and grieve my loss? After all, I missed out on a lot of fun and I have an almost empty story document to prove it.

          No! This is a time when the best decision was to break the routine. Like I said last week, we must continually evaluate our routines and daily activities to make sure they are still the best use of our time. The best use of my time this month was to focus on my personal blog for the first couple of weeks and revel in spending time playing with my family the last two weeks of this month. (I still have two more days with my daughter and six more with my son!)

          I am reminded of comments I’ve heard during my seventeen years of homeschooling. Most had the same theme. “They are missing so much. You should send them to school.” When pressed, these critics listed things like proms, PE, time with friends, routines and schedules, football, band, yearbooks and more.

          For every negative presented, though, I saw the possibility for many more positives. They had many of those similar experiences and so much more. I had the privilege of leading and teaching them via delight-directed learning. We studied topics that interested and challenged us, integrating family life and school in a way not possible in classrooms. We went to numerous play dates with large groups of kids. We attended and participated in countless recitals, classes, clubs and special events. We socialized, joined groups and even went to PE. And we did it in a safe, secure and harmonious environment. What they experienced was so much richer than the traditional alternative of classroom learning. I knew I was giving them experiences and an education far more valuable than a few illusory rites of passage like proms, standardized tests and PE locker rooms.

          That is exactly how I feel about this year’s NaNo “loss”. Yes, in past years I have indeed reveled in the insanity of writing a story as fast as possible. I’m sure I’ll do so again. Probably in 2010. This year, though, far more important things captured my attention. Had I spent my time trying to finish a NaNoNovel, I would have missed long talks with my visiting daughter, afternoons spent cooking and baking, hours of family games and movie-watching. Instead of a fun-filled, busy day of creating and enjoying a Thanksgiving feast with the family, I could have frolicked with my characters. In so doing, I would have missed way too much. Had I been caught up in NaNo fever, I would never have written the blogs for my personal website or enjoyed that hilarious game of CatchPhrase with the family.

          I might have lost NaNo, but I am much richer for it. I’m thrilled that Shonna has won NaNo! I’m just as excited for Kitty’s progress (and probable win). And I’m rooting for you to win, too. But I’m resting contented in the fact that I made the right choice.

          Being out of step with those around me has been a constant theme in my life. Perhaps I’m out of step because, as Henry David Thoreau said, I am marching to a different drummer. What about you? Out of step? Evaluate. Maybe it’s a good thing.

          And to all of us . . . Happy, Joyous, Productive Writing!

Let me save you some time here and tell you at the beginning that I don’t know the answer to this question. Just in case you got all excited and called your writers group to come read this blog.

But I bet you know what I’m talking about. When do you realize that this was just a really bad idea? Or that you’re the wrong person to execute an otherwise good idea? (Or the right person to execute it in the homicidal sense of the word!) When do you say to yourself, “Self, this ain’t an easy task you’ve got here, but I believe in you, you can do it”? When is the cost of continuing greater than the cost of quitting? How will you know until it’s over and the dust settles if the cost was worth it? (You know what I mean – missing a birthday party, skipping the holiday decorating with the kids, writing in another room while people relax and tell stories after Thanksgiving dinner.)

I think about “costs” every time I look at my credit card bill – maybe I should get a job with a weekly paycheck for six months or a year. (I have finally stopped calling them “real” jobs. I hope you have, too. Writing is a real job. That’s why so many people around the world in a variety of ways get paid for it.)

Instead of dwelling on my credit card bill (I’ll allow myself to wallow in those blue pages in December when NaNo is over), I simply gave the problem to my heroine. Yesterday. When I needed to stop thinking about my real problems, and concentrate on her imaginary ones.

So now she’s sitting there at the end of Act 2 trying to decide if she should throw in the towel. Maybe this is a fight she can’t win. If she loses, she’ll be devastated. If she simply chooses to sit this fight out, she has less to lose. But she also won’t win what she so desperately wants.

It’s a conundrum. (I love the sound of that word – conundrum. Conundrum. Already it makes you wonder which path to take.)

It’s kind of a fight or flee type of question. I don’t know the answer for myself personally. Will I try harder, or at least keep trying, to complete this 50,000 word challenge? Or will I say it’s not worth the fight? Decide that other things are more important, like getting my grad school application completed and turned in? It occurred to me that “losing” the NaNo challenge has no repercussions, and I’ve already won something I desperately wanted – writing routines. Until this month, I’d been without a real writing routine for a full year! But now I have a routine I follow Monday through Friday, a routine that has netted me half of a first draft in only three weeks! That is a “win” no matter how you look at it.

I don’t know if I’m willing to cancel all my plans for the rest of the month, to stop showering and to write instead of sleeping, just for the sake of a pretend deadline. I think I’ll be a bigger winner if I don’t exhaust myself now and therefore don’t quit doing what is working for me, making sure and steady progress. If I write a first draft in five or six weeks instead of four, it’ll still be a praiseworthy accomplishment. It will prove I am dependable in my output. It will prove that writing routines produce results that create writing careers.

I don’t know for sure what I’ll do. I’m so competitive that I hate the idea of not getting the little “winner” badge. LOL!

But I do know that, with the help of friends who love her, my heroine is going to get up and choose to fight. And who knows, maybe as I get caught up in her struggles over the next week, I’ll find I can 20,000 words in five days. And shower, too.

          Last week I told you I was quitting my NaNoNovel and going to work on non-fiction. I’m sure you are wondering if my experiment worked. It did! Maybe my new motto needs to be, “If at first you don’t succeed, Quit!”

          I remember years ago watching someone teach a group of mostly children how to succeed in life. He had a 4-step system meant to be done repeatedly as needed. He had intriguing words and actions for each step, but it’s been so long I don’t remember them. I do remember the gist of the lesson, though.

1. Evaluate the situation
2. Make a plan
3. Aggressively work the plan
4. Step back and evaluate.
5. Repeat as needed

          Without realizing it, that’s exactly what I did over the past couple of weeks. I stepped back from my plan, evaluated and realized something wasn’t working, ie the fiction wasn’t getting written. I made a plan to refocus my efforts on my website and other non-fiction projects. This past week I have aggressively worked that plan. Even though my writing sessions were limited, they were very productive.

          If you have been checking out my personal website, Stephanie’s Musings, you will know that I have posted several entries over the past week. They are short and follow a theme, things for which I’m thankful. What you can’t see is that I have at least one more blog written and scheduled to post and several others are in various stages of completion on my computer. And, while they are not yet written, I also have plans for what I will post all the way through the rest of this year.

          Every time I sit down to write I am inspired and energized. During my short but energy-filled writing sessions, I often have three or four documents open to catch all the extraneous ideas creep out of the shadows of my mind and beg for attention. Many of these partially finished documents could end up as two or more posts because of all the ideas and thoughts pouring out of my fingers while I write them. The thrill of words s back!

          And while I don’t want to scrutinize it too much for fear it will skitter away, this focus on the non-fiction seems to be refilling the well of fiction ideas. (One of those constantly open documents is for the fiction.) And the notebook I carry in my purse is rapidly filling. Many of those ideas feeding on each other and merging into bigger ideas. Soon they might even jump out of the notebook and insist on becoming a project.

          Yes, quitting brought success. . . . or, more accurately, re-evaluating and refocusing brought success.

          Do your plans need evaluating?

Here we are half-way through NaNoWriMo. For those of you toughing it out, how is your middle going? I find mine lagging a bit so I went online for some encouragement. Here’s what I found:

Richard Harland says: For me, there’s always a moment, 10-15,000 words in, when the tight opening sequence of scenes runs out. Suddenly, everything is possible and nothing is necessary. So many angles to follow—but which one first?

http://www.writingtips.com.au/IV.Story/2.%20Middles/i%29midnovelsag.htm

Alina Sandor suggests trying writing prompts: Maybe you are writing a really great story that at first you were excited about. Now, halfway through, you’re stuck…. Bogging down might mean you haven’t thought your story through enough. Try creating prompts by asking yourself questions about what you want to do with your story.

http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/prompts.shtml

Hilari Bell says writers get bogged down because: they don’t have a big enough problem to drive a whole novel or because their main character is just wandering around while the story happens to them.

http://www.sfwa.org/members/bell/writingtips/winter0708.html

Vicki Hinze uses the metaphor of plot as a bridge and says: Often when writers feel the middle fizzle, they’ll delete conflicts. In short, don’t do it. Instead, beef up the existing conflicts by inserting further complications, new bits of information that the characters learn which alters their perspective and gives them a different view. Information that compels them to continue on in their journey across the bridge.

http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/middles.html

Walter Mosley, author of This Year You Write Your Novel says: You know the characters; you know the circumstances — now you must make sure that the reader is aware of every factor that makes up the tale.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9620861

Alicia Rasley offers advice on how to establish and then multiply the purpose of the scene. Then she shows how to “structure the middle for power”: The middle can, however, be deepened and strengthened by following this advice: Have three purposes at least for each scene. One should be “advance the external plot”.

(Then she gives a list of 16 more purposes! You really just have to go read this one yourself.)

http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/artmid.ht

And, in case it is YOU who are sagging and not your middle, here’s a fun blog from Katrina Stonoff talking about how it feels as an author to go through a sagging middle!

“… I’m talking about the Sagging Middle of one’s personal journey to write a book.”

http://jeannieruesch.com/wordpress/?p=745

We’re pretty close to being completely unpacked. Some stuff we took out of boxes and put on the floor knowing we’ll have to put it away to avoid tripping over it for the next couple of years. It says something about my cooking that most of our cookware is still sitting on the living room floor.

One of the items sitting on John’s desk is a talking Yoda action figure from Star Wars. The box says he has 24 phrases, so as a way to procrastinate for another five seconds, I pressed his hand. Yoda told me to ask him a question and he’d tell me the answer.

Laughing, I asked him if I was going to finish my last 1500 words for the day.

I pressed his hand.

“No.”

Remember in junior high when people would make fun of you and you’d laugh as if it were all a big joke, but on the inside it got to you? That’s how I laughed at Yoda.

Doesn’t the toy maker know that “No” is not a phrase? It’s a word, I grumbled to myself. So it shouldn’t be advertised that he can say 24 phrases.

And what does “No” mean, anyway?

“No, not if you keep playing with me.” Now there’s a phrase that would’ve worked for me!

“No, not in the next hour.” It takes me longer than an hour to write 1500 words. This is an acceptable phrase.

“No, not if The Force is not with you.” Duh. That would be so Yoda.

But just “No”? I don’t think so!

You know what, Yoda? I’m over my junior high hurt laughter phase. I’m an adult and I’ll do as I please. And I’m going to write the stupid 1500 words. Today. Before dinner. Just to show you.

Stupid toy.

And by the way, I’m not going to play with you anymore either. You aren’t any fun anyway.

There. That’ll show him.

Who says I can’t be mature?

What’s the take-away for you? Don’t – DO NOT – let other people (or inanimate objects) sway you or take your energy from you when you are writing. It is so easy to lose your confidence, and much more difficult to get it back. When you feel that sickening junior high feeling coming on, admit that it’s affecting you and then fight back! For me, that meant reacting in a way that made me laugh honestly. And then working hard enough to prove I could do it.

Yup, Yoda was wrong! I wrote 1594 words after that incident. Take that, oh plastic toy with only 24 phrases!

P.S. I’m adding this note at the 11th hour in case it helps anyone besides me. On your Tuesday, my Wednesday, I barely got a few hundred words written. Strangely, I didn’t feel “bad” about it. I usually hit the “guilt” button quickly, early, sure that there is always something to feel guilty about – like not writing enough.

So I sat down and tried to figure out why I still feel peaceful and not stressed about being behind in my NaNo word count. I realized it’s because this morning I awoke with a specific focus in mind. I wanted to be sure I was writing this book with all of the love and joy and creativity I had in me rather than to “win” an international word count war.

Huh.

The very few words I wrote absolutely belong with this book. I could’ve just started typing any old thing, trying to jump-start myself into some scenes that may or may not work when I begin editing. But for once I wasn’t competing; I was just enjoying the process of writing a book. And apparently, my process decided that a couple hundred words would do on this one particular day.

Wow. For me, that is a very worthwhile epiphany. (Thanks, God!)