Items of Note

1. The stack of manuscript pages on the left is slightly taller than the stack on the right, which means I'm halfway through this revision. The novel is becoming shorter and the story tighter, so all is going according to plan.

2. The stacks of unrelated papers and magazines on my desk are growing, and I'm having spring cleaning urges that are in part a desire to goof off from writing. Must resist procrasticleaning.

3. As I continue plotting out the future novel, I keep thinking, "Oh well, I can always take that part out later." Maybe this explains how I arrived at item 1.

4. Probably the best thing I could do for my writing career would be to swim laps daily and then harvest all the brilliant ideas that occur to me in the water.

5. There already aren't enough hours in the day for me to write all the things I want to write. That's a pretty good position to be in.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Hannah Gersen of The Millions asked fellow writers to share their notebook pages, diagrams, and timelines: "I had a list of scenes and an outline of what I had written but the only way I could really get my bearings was to Google old lunar calendars. Finally, I took a big piece of paper from my son's easel and drew a three-month calendar that I could look at as I worked. In the calendar squares I wrote the events of the story, like a diary. After I did that, it was much easier to write. It was as if my brain could finally relax once the events of the story were organized in a familiar way."