Writers often advise other writers to just get the words on the page—hammer it all out, don’t worry about format, grammar, whatever. Hammer it all out, and don’t bother reading until the story is done. I am incapable of this.

Regardless of the type of project, be it an academic assignment, a poem, an email, I mentally compose a few lines,write a few lines then read them back, then edit/revise, then write a few more. My writing is a task of fits and starts.

The index cards have been shredded. At least two notebooks are full of messy strike-throughs and scribbles, and I have added all of one thousand words to the word document begun on Day One. Now I’m rewriting half of what was written on Day One.

That first person present is still nagging. I’ve worked out a tentative plan to soften the worst of that, but there’s still the problem with lack of setting and those sweet little details that flesh out a character. Holly doesn’t like those, and I am so set in my ways that I can’t stop rereading and worrying over the flow.

Thank God I have this place to come to, where I can whine, bitch and moan in print, because no living person wants to listen to me. Even Oliver, my trusty pup and bff is hiding under the bed with his paws over his ears. I probably over did it with the apologies to him after writing a brief but gruesome, heartbreaking scene in which Holly discovers a child has been gnawing on the family pet. Oliver doesn’t want to listen to me prattle on about my writing projects anymore.