I'm turning the editing corner, into the final third of the book.

I'm a little nervous about this section. The middle edits were smooth sailing, but the closer I get to the end, the more things need to line up perfectly. I need to make sure threads are getting wrapped up, that I haven't skipped any scenes, that everything makes sense.

I need to keep the whole novel in my head at this point, basically, in order to keep it all consistent through the end.

And the end, of course, is the most complicated part of the book. It's where the main conflict gets resolved, via multiple timelines and a perspective shift.

I hope it works. I hope I can hold it all together.

Because if I can, if I do, then this round of edits will be finished. And I can start sending it out to beta readers, to finally get feedback from another pair of eyeballs than mine.

And maybe, just maybe, have their reviews back in time to make final adjustments, and have it ready to send to agents by the end of the year.

It is...a tight deadline. But we live in hope, don't we?

We went camping in Joshua Tree for the first time this weekend.

My last camping trip was over thirty years ago. I was seven or eight, and I spent the entire three days refusing to use the filthy communal restrooms and getting bitten by mosquitoes.

It was not a good trip. I never really thought I’d ever try camping again.

But the pandemic has shifted things there, as it has in so many others.

My wife and I love to travel, but there’s no way we can risk staying in a hotel or taking a plane anymore. She has a clotting disorder, and I have asthma, two of those “co-morbidities” they blame when someone dies of Covid-19. We’ve been social distancing since March: No friends, no family, no exposure. We can’t risk our health staying indoors with other people for any length of time.

But camping's not indoors! So long as we're able to drive there -- buying gas while masked up and wrapping our hands in a waste-disposal bag before touching anything -- we can stay, outside, and keep other people at a distance. Low risk of exposure, high risk of hearing coyotes howl at night (but more on that later).

Beyond wanting to travel, though, we have an emergency waiting to happen, in the form of my wife's mother. She's in her upper 70s, and lives 1,500 miles away, in Arkansas. If she has an accident, or any kind of health incident, it's up to us to get there and take care of her and my brother-in-law (who has special needs). We can't fly anymore, so we'll have to drive. And neither of us want to try to drive that whole distance without sleeping.

So camping is the only safe way for us to travel, for any reason.

Being proper nerds, we did a lot of research first. Read blog posts about camping with pups (we have two), how big of a tent to get, where to go for your first trip (close to home, which is why we chose Joshua Tree), even what pants to wear. We bought everything that was recommended, we loaded it all into the car, and we set off.

And still, we were not prepared.

Not prepared for how loud the campground gets at night, when everyone returns from hiking and sets about drinking and smoking and cutting up. Long past midnight, we'd hear people singing and carrying on. Both nights we were there, I finally broke down and asked people to keep it down till morning, so we could sleep.

Not prepared for how long it really takes to setup camp. At home, when we practiced, we had everything up and ready in 30 minutes. But out there, at night (once), or in the heat of the day (the second time), it takes longer, and it feels much much longer. Between getting there, setting up the first night, then deciding to switching campgrounds the next day, then packing up for good the last day, I think we spent most of our time just setting up and tearing down.

Not prepared for the, um, toilet situation. I'll spare you the details, but basically we couldn't use the communal toilets, so we brought our own. And...let's just say "leaving no trace" is good for the environment but not enjoyable in any shape or form.

And not prepared for the bees! Those thirsty, thirsty, bees.

They swarmed our water jug. They swarmed our food while we were cooking. They swarmed our toilet (I told you it wasn't fun). And they were aggressive, too, the little buggers, as if we owed them something. Sometimes the only way to get them off was to run by the water jug, whose sweet smells of moisture would pull them away.

So after coming back, I'm stiff, I'm sore, I haven't slept well in two days, and any buzzing makes me clench.

But we're going back in two weeks! Why?

One, because we have to. We simply have to get better at camping if we're going to be able to come to my wife's mother's aid when she needs us.

Two, because this was just our first trip! We were bound to mess it up, no matter how much we prepared.

And we can fix a lot of what went wrong!

Choosing the right campground from the start (we've already reserved it) means we won't have to waste time breaking down and setting up twice.

Making meals ahead of time and bringing them along (rather than cooking) will mean less water exposed for the bees to swarm on (and less fuss setting up camp).

Taking a pavilion with us will mean we have some shade from the sun, no matter what time of day it is.

Using the rain fly on the tent will keep out smoke at night, so we can breathe.

Packing less ice in the cooler will make it lighter, and easier to find things we pack in there. And that means more room for things like water and soda; we packed water bottles, but left them out of the cooler, which is a thing so foolish in hindsight I want to reach back in time and slap myself for it. No soda meant that my wife's headache from sun exposure and dehydration joined forces with caffeine withdrawal to take her out for the latter half of our last full day there.

And leaving the pups at their "camp" (an outdoor boarder) will mean we can explore the park this time, taking trails and hikes that they aren't allowed on (which is all of them, I mean they want to keep it wild and let the animals that live there feel safe, so dogs aren't allowed anywhere except roads and campsites).

So we're doing it again! Wish us luck; or better yet: Got any tips to share for two tenderfoots who are trying to get this right?

It struck me this morning that the pace at which I come up with new story ideas has slowed down.

Time was I couldn't go a day without being struck by some story idea, and having to write it down.

These days, I feel like all of my ideas are about the book or the story I'm currently working on. Nothing new, no bolts of lightning, just new ways of looking at the characters or the situation I'm already creating.

And that made me nervous. Like, what if the well's run dry? What if once I finish these stories, that's it? Nothing else comes?

To banish those thoughts, I remind myself of two things.

First, it's a pandemic. Not to mention my state is currently on fire (the evidence of which is clearly visible in the sky outside my window). I'm allowed to feel a bit more stressed, and that means my brain isn't functioning at 100%.

Second, it's okay to not be constantly throwing out new ideas. In fact, it's a good thing. Plowing my creative energy into what I'm working on, rather than dreaming up new work to take on, is exactly what I should be doing. The fact that my brain doesn't feel the need to go wandering for a new story to work on means this story's interesting and deep enough to keep it occupied.

It's a positive sign, not a negative one. And it should be embraced.

As for the novel itself, work continues. I'm still going through a chapter a day, giving myself the time to really look at each scene and fix the things that need fixing. A line of dialog that doesn't work. Some blocking that no longer makes sense.

Okay, not everything. Some things I'm leaving for another pass.

Like in the last chapter I edited, there's a shift in one character's dialog. They go from speaking somewhat formal English to a less-formal syntax. It's subtle, and it still sounds like the character, but it's there.

I like the shift, and I think it's appropriate for the situation in that chapter. But in order to keep it, I need to go through and make sure that shift happens every time that situation comes up, so it feels deliberate, and not like a mistake.

Alternatively, I could go through and make the character's dialog pattern the same everywhere. That might be easier, but I think there's something that will be lost if I do that. There's information encoded in the way they shift their speech according to who they're speaking to, and I'd hate to lose that.

So yes, even as I go through this pass, I know I'm going to need to do another. But that next pass will be more focused, and thus faster, than this one. At least, that's the intent.

What about you? When you do your editing, do you tackle everything in each pass? Or do you break it up into different read-throughs?

I'm ashamed to say I'm not sure I knew Dinah's name, before reading this.

I knew parts of her story, from my youth, when I heard the Bible tale. How the sons of Jacob tricked every adult male in a town to become circumcised, just so their king's son could be granted the privilege of marrying Jacob's daughter.

How they then slaughtered the town while the men were laid up healing.

In church, the story's presented as a righteous thing, a sign of their cleverness. How they could outsmart their enemies.

No one said anything about Dinah. How she might have felt about things. Or about the wives and daughters of the murdered men. They were background characters, unimportant to the morality of the tale.

So how amazing, then, that Diamant has put Dinah front and center. Breathed life into her, filling in her story and giving us a complete account of her journey. Of her mistakes and triumphs. Of her hopes and fears.

It's an incredible feat to pull off. And Diamant covers not just Dinah's life, but her mothers' lives, too, starting from the moment they met Jacob, so we get the fullest picture possible of Dinah's situation, of her time and place.

She gives us a sense of the rhythms of their existence, both day-to-day and year to year, without ever getting bogged down in too many details (or leaving things so vague as to be unhelpful).

And what rhythms! Diamant invokes the feel of the ancient world, the sounds and the smells, the hassles and the joys. And it's a woman's world that she brings to life, the rituals of childbirth and the red tent, the offerings to multiple gods, the hard work of cooking and farming and making, well, everything. T

he men are present, but it's not their story. It's not their world.

Diamant's succeeded so well in showing us this world, in fact, that it's her story, Dinah's story, that I remember more vividly now, not the ones about her brothers. Which feels...proper. The way it should be.

Better to remember the healer and midwife, perhaps, than the tricksters and killers.

Is it bad to enjoy reading your own book?

I'm still working on the novel, still plugging away at editing one chapter a day. It's about all I can do, given my schedule constraints.

And so far, it's...not that bad?

I mean, I'm probably filling in gaps that are there because I know the characters, I know the setting. But I was trying to write the equivalent of an action movie, and while I think I failed at that (there's not nearly enough stunts or fights in it to qualify), I think I did manage to produce a fast-paced, sci-fi, thriller.

Each of the chapters are short -- the longest is maybe ten pages -- which makes them easier to edit, but also easier to read.

And I've kept the language pretty tight, as well. Not always tight enough, hence the need for edits. And sometimes I wander off into describing a character's thoughts from the outside, inside of rendering them from the inside (it's a shift in point of view that I'm still learning how to handle properly). But overall, each scene starts, flows, and then ends without a lot of fat to trim.

Which worries me, of course. What am I missing? What am I not seeing, that I need to fix?

It reminds me of something the write C Robert Cargill tweets about a lot: That when you look at your work, and hate it, part of it is because of the difference between your skills and your taste. Your taste is likely far more sophisticated than your skills, starting out. You enjoy reading writers far better than you. And that's good! Your sophisticated taste is what lets you see the problems in your own work, which you can then fix.

So I have to wonder: Has my taste declined? Have I been slacking in feeding it new works, so I can be critical of my own?

Or am I just still too close to this book?

Either way, I'm not upset at these chapters. They're not so horrible that I wouldn't want to show them to someone else.

Which perhaps is good? And maybe the point of doing all these editing passes and rewrites. To get the book to a point where I think it's ready to be seen by other people.

Flawed still, probably, yes. But good enough to go out to beta readers, and eventually (after more edits) agents. That should be the goal, right?

And if I'm getting there, I should feel good about it. Not dread.

Note to self: Stop feeling dread.

I've got subscriptions to half a dozen different magazines, most of whom I don't get through.

So I'm trying something new this month: reviews of different magazines, which highlight stories or articles that stuck with me. I'll also be honest about any sections that I skipped out on, and why.

My hope is that it'll incentivize me to read them through, and hopefully point you, dear reader, to articles and magazines that you might otherwise miss?

So here we go:

Overview

The theme of the issue is "The World That Trump Made," but its contents don't bear that out.

If anything, the articles drive home the fact that Trump has been mostly ineffective or inactive in global affairs. As a result, the world is one that others have made: Japan, China, Russia, Iran, Israel, etc.

And they will continue to do so, as long as the United States abrogates the leadership role it's played -- for good and for ill -- over the last eighty years.

Highlights

"A Grand Strategy of Resilience" is a fantastic pulling together of multiple threads, linking social justice movements to the ability of the US to project power abroad. The author rightly points out that an unjust and unequal society is a fragile one, and that great powers cannot weather the storms of global politics if they are not resilient.

I love the concept of resilience, and favor using it as a lens through which to judge policy. It's the kind of concept that should appeal to both conservatives and liberals: Because who wouldn't prefer to live in a more flexible, bounce-back kind of country?

"The Tragedy of Vaccine Nationalism" raises a problem I hadn't even considered: As different countries race to produce a vaccine for Covid-19, what will we do when/if one is found? Once made, how will presumably limited supplies be allocated? And given how global supply chains have gotten, what will we do if one country refuses to manufacture (or drives up prices on) the parts of the vaccine that its companies make?

The author argues that we should be laying the groundwork now for cooperation in sharing and manufacturing any vaccines, so agreements will already be in place by the time one is found. But like so much else, I fear the major powers have no interest in cooperating, and no leaders capable of admitting they might need other countries.

Disappointments

Went into "The Fragile Republic" expecting a good summary of threats both foreign and domestic. Got thrown out of the article just three paragraphs in, though, when the authors reach back to 1798 as their framing device, but name the opposition party as the "Republicans," instead of the correct "Democratic-Republicans."

It seems like a small thing, but it incorrectly projects the existence of the Republican Party back an additional sixty years (!). And if they can't be bothered to get that one detail right (that even this non-specialist knows), how can I trust anything else they say?

"To Protect And Serve" sounds like it's going to be a wealth of information about police practice in other countries that we can draw from. But the other than "more training," the one reform the author advocates is a federal takeover of police departments across the US, which would be politically a non-starter and doesn't help those of us advocating reform of our local police departments.

Skipped Articles

I skipped out on "The End of American Illusion," an article written by someone who worked in the Trump regime and thinks only he sees the world clearly. I don't read paeans to strongmen.

Also skipped "Giving Up on God," because I'm an atheist and the decline of religion worldwide is both not surprising (because it's been documented since the 1980s) and not worrying (ditto).

Made it through the intro chapters of the novel!

I'm past the inciting event now, and heading into the chapters of the long middle.

Most of the edits for these chapters, so far, have been small things. Removing some extra words here, adjusting the blocking of some characters there. I'm editing more to make things consistent than anything else. Haven't had to knocks wood do any major re-working of these.

And thank goodness, because just as I turned the corner of the inciting event, I started to only have fifteen minutes a day to work on it.

It's stress, more than anything else, but I've had some schedule shifts as well that have thrown me off. Made it hard to concentrate, to sink into the novel and see what's missing with what I've written.

But the only way out is through, right? So I'm chugging along, working on it when I can, and trying to be patient. The work stress will pass, my schedule will get sorted, and I'll get back to spending more time on it each day.

That's the hope, anyway.

Hope. It's a hard thing to come by, for me, when it comes to the federal government.

The election of 2016 was traumatic. My wife and I watched, horrified, as the candidate we thought not even Republicans were crazy enough to pick won first the primary, and then the general election.

Well, "won." He lost the popular vote by 3 million, and still walked away with the keys to the White House, because of our country's old, undemocratic way of electing Presidents.

It was so unnerving, when it happened, that we decided not to go home.

We were living in Arkansas at the time, having moved to nurse my wife's mother back to health after she suffered a cardiovascular incident. It was our first time living in my wife's home state in seven years, and in that time, the state we remembered as slightly behind the times but neighborly had curdled into a paranoid, xenophobic place.

Bad enough having to live there at all. Living there while their white nationalist leader commanded the federal government? While they crowed about his "achievements" dismantling the legacy of eight years of Obama's government? While they felt entitled to air out their racism and sexism with impunity, with pride, even, because their man was in the White House?

We couldn't do it.

So we lived on the East Coast that winter, crashing with friends -- amazing friends, to put up with us for so long -- and moved back to California, renting an apartment sight unseen. We drove cross-country, stopped in Arkansas just long enough to pack, and then moved on.

Now, after four years of Trump's chaos, his rage and his incompetence, we've another election looming. And that same fear is back, that he'll win again, and our country, which has never been innocent, but has at times fought against its darker impulses, will instead succumb to them.

So Lichtman's theory of presidential elections -- that the campaign doesn't matter, that the candidates themselves almost don't matter, only the past four years of governing do -- gives me hope. Because after four years in power, the GOP has lost seven (!) of his thirteen "keys" to the White House, and you only need to lose six to lose the election.

Which means I can ignore the polls. I can tune out -- to some extent -- the campaign itself. I can focus on voting, on helping others to vote, and preventing election fraud.

And I can hope.

I seem to always discover new things about the story while I'm writing it.

It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but it does. Somehow, no matter how much time I spend thinking about and planning a scene, simply by writing it out, my brain will come up with new ideas and connections to other parts of the story.

It's all good stuff, and I'm grateful, but it'd be a touch more convenient if I could think of these things while I'm outlining. That way, I wouldn't have to go back and revise other parts of the book to match the new things I've come up with while writing a scene.

Don't get me wrong: the fact that I can come up with anything at all, instead of just staring at the screen like a deer caught in a truck's headlights, is fantastic.

It's also just a tad bit annoying, sometimes.

Which is to say: I’m making progress on the novel edits.

Looping, patchwork, scattered progress, but progress all the same.

Right now I’m trying to nail down the intro chapters, the first five or so. I want them to do quite a lot: Introduce the main character, and their (normal-day) problems, lay the ground work for a mystery that pops up later, orient the reader in the setting, introduce some antagonists, and make all that interesting enough so the inciting incident is worth sticking around for.

Oh, and they’ve also got to setup the stakes for the inciting incident, have the incident itself, and then pave the way for those consequences to play out.

It’s a heavy responsibility for those first chapters to carry. And before I started making these changes, they weren't quite up to it.

But I think they can be! So long as I make the right changes.

So that's what I've been working on this week, and will likely keep working on into next week.

I feel a bit like a director on a movie, making changes to the set design between each take (and also changing the script. and the blocking. the actors hate me). I go in and add a machine there, change the readout on a display there, redirect the lighting over there, and then let the scene play out again. Or scratch a scene entirely and replace it with something new, in a new location.

It's slow going, but it's fun! Kind of. Makes me grateful no one's had to read the earlier drafts. This one's going to be bad enough.

I've mentioned before that I've always been afraid of the police.

Not that I have any negative experience to make me afraid. No, I grew up White and privileged, shielded from the things they did to others.

Yet I was afraid. And I was right to be.

Because if the police can pull you over for a broken taillight, insist on a search of your car, and choke you to death when you resist said illegal search, you never want to be pulled over.

If the police can raid your house on an anonymous tip and kill your dog when it tries to protect you from the armed intruders violating your home, then leave without even an apology when they learn it's the wrong home, you never want to have them pay you a visit.

And if they have the power to insist that the only way you're going to get help with your heroin addiction is to plead guilty to a crime that hurt no one but yourself, you never want to ask them for help.

But that's where we are, in the United States. We've expanded the role and powers of police so much, that the often the only hand being held out for those who are homeless, or addicts, or mentally disturbed, is the one holding a gun.

As we re-examine the place of police in our society, Vitale's book is essential reading. It's not a screed, and not wishful thinking about how everything would be peaceful if the police went away.

Instead, it takes a hard look at what the police are for, and then dares to ask the question: Are they successful at it?

As it turns out, they're not. They're not any good at solving homelessness, or making sex work safe, or getting addicts into recovery, or reducing gang violence, or helping the mentally ill get treatment, or disciplining school children, or even something as mundane as actually preventing crime.

Police, in a word, are a failure. They're an experiment that we need to end.

Because the problems we've asked them to address can be, just by different means.

We can get the homeless into homes, and use that as a foundation to get them standing on their own again.

We can invest in businesses in and around gang-troubled neighborhoods, to give the people who might join those gangs the opportunity to do something better.

We can find other ways to discipline children than having them handcuffed and marched out of school.

The End of Police is both a passionate plea for us to find a better way, and a dispassionate look at how badly our approaches to these problems have gone wrong.

It's not too late to try something else. We just need to make the choice.

I'm rather upset with past me.

Finally dove into editing the novel this week. Stopped procrastinating and worrying about the right way to do it, and just started doing it. Figured I'd look for inconsistencies, and touch up language or dialog along the way.

And at first it worked! I chugged along, making small changes, trimming sentences here and there, for four whole chapters.

But then I noticed something: The chapters I'd written (and edited, now for the third time) were all too short.

I'd left out physical descriptions of the characters, so the reader had no guidance on what they looked like.

I'd left out descriptions of the locations they were moving through, so the reader had no way to orient themselves in space.

And I'd left out any discussion of how the characters should react to a crisis, so the reader had no idea of the alternatives, or how bad the crisis really was.

I could tell all this, for the first time, because the reader was me.

I don't mean that I was literally lost in my own novel. Thank goodness, no, I still knew where everything was, and what everything looks like.

But I'd had enough time off from the book to approach it like a reader. And I've recently read some books that had a quick pace and an interesting plot but never gave me enough time to get oriented in the world, so I always felt a little confused.

Both things that let me recognize it when it started happening in my own book.

So this editing pass -- draft number three, for those keeping score at home -- is turning out to be a "filling in the gaps" pass. Expanding conversations so each character's whole train of thought is present (or at least enough for the reader to make the tiny leaps required). Spending more time in a space before the plot pushes us out of it, so I can give the reader something to visualize.

Thankfully I've been thinking about all of these things for two years now (or three? is it three years?) so I can fill in the gaps when I spot them. But even as I fill in the gaps, I know I'm creating more work for myself. Because each of those filled gaps is now a first draft, and will need to be revised again (and again) before it's ready to go out.

So thanks, past me. You keep the plot humming along, but you forgot to lay down all the sign posts along the way.

Today, the US healthcare system occupies a place very like US beer did in the 1990s.

See back then, US beer was a joke to liberals, or anyone that took beer seriously, and a point of patriotic pride to conservatives.

These days, after decades of shifting regulations that allowed the market for craft beer to first find a foothold, then blossom, US craft beer is world-renowned. Numerous pubs in other countries proclaim they serve "American-style craft beer." People across the political spectrum can take pride in their local brewers, no snobbery or jingoism required.

Our healthcare system has not experienced anything close to that kind of renaissance. Conservatives refuse to countenance any critique of the system, while liberals use it as a tired punching bag. We're warned of the dangers of "socialist medicine," all the while my mother-in-law is constantly harassed about a $4,000 bill she doesn't owe (the hospital filed it wrong with her insurance), doctors and nurses are overworked, and millions go without any sort of insurance.

And, frankly, Medicare for All sounds great, but it scares the bejeezus out of anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. Not to mention it's sort of vague on details, and seems to require a rather large leap to get from here to there.

So I was primed for a retread of the old arguments in Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare?. US healthcare is terrible, Canada's is great, etc etc.

Thankfully, that's not what I got at all. Instead, I found the missing manual, a way to evaluate different healthcare systems around the globe. Along with a proper sense of the history and workings of eleven of them.

Emanuel describes a set of axes along which to measure a healthcare system. Things like patient wait times, or costs at the point of service, or choice of doctors. Then he proceeds to examine each country's system in turn, looking at the things it does well, the challenges it faces, and -- most importantly -- how and why it does those things well or badly.

True, the US performs terribly on basically every axis. That's not news. What is news is that multiple countries manage to provide better coverage, better care, and cheaper care, without giving up private practices, or even -- in some cases -- letting go of private insurance!

Reading this, I felt both relieved and angry.

Relieved, because with so many different systems out there, no one's got a monopoly on the "right" way to do things.

Angry, because for so long the debate in the US has been framed as single payer or status quo. When the truth is that we can do a lot to improve our system without letting go of the basic free market nature of it.

How much further would we liberals have gotten, if we'd argued for a regulation of drug prices, instead of single-payer? Or insisted that insurance coverage for children be provided for free, as part of any policy, like it is in other countries with well-regulated markets?

We don't have to have the government take over as the single payer for everyone. We don't need to radically overhaul the system. We need to properly regulate it, to get the outcomes we want: patients being able to choose their doctor, use their insurance to help pay for their care, and not go broke obtaining the prescriptions they need.

Framed as the proper regulation of a free market, what could the conservative response have been? I suppose they could argue that Greed is Good, and everyone that has to choose between paying the rent and buying their blood pressure meds deserves it, so the CEO of some corp can enjoy a multi-million dollar bonus.

But that doesn't have quite the same ring as "death panels," does it?

So ultimately, I'm grateful that Emanuel and his team chose to write this book, and publish it now. It's high time we brought a more nuanced, useful debate, to the argument over healthcare.

I need to get back to working on the novel.

I've let it sit these past few weeks, untouched, while I finished getting one short story into shape and started plotting a new one.

But if I'm going to meet my personal deadline of having the novel ready to submit to agents by December 1st, I'm going to need to edit this second draft.

To be honest, I'm intimidated. I've never edited anything this long before.

How do I even do it? Read it all through, and then go back and edit passages? That sounds...like it'll take forever.

Or do I work chapter by chapter, editing each one until it's done, and then moving on? That sounds like an easy way to lose sight of inconsistencies (or to having to go back and edit previous chapters anyway, as inconsistencies show up).

I think what I'm going to do is a series of editing passes. Pick one thing to look for -- like the consistency of a single character's dialog -- and edit all instances of that. Then pick something else -- the descriptions of a ship, say -- and edit all of those.

I'm hoping this will give me a structure in which to do multiple reads over the book, without getting lost in the weeds of any individual chapter. And it should broaden my perspective so I can stitch the book together, so to speak, with these edits. Make it more coherent, more whole.

But what do I do with the short story I've been outlining? I don't want to lose momentum on that. And I worry that the novel, once I start editing it, will take up all the room in my brain for narrative.

I want to work on both. Use the story as a break from the novel, and use the novel as a break from the story. They're different enough -- one's near-future sci-fi, the other is early modern period fantasy -- that I should be able to keep them separate in my head. And editing is different enough from drafting that I'll be exercising different writing muscles with each.

What about you? What do you do, when you've got a longer piece to edit and a shorter one to draft? Do you alternate working days? Finish the shorter piece before editing the longer? How do you handle two stories that both need your attention?

Since reading Ibram X Kendi's How to be an Antiracist, I'm starting to re-examine certain policies I've taken for granted. What I've previously thought of as meritocratic or race-neutral might be neither; it might instead be part of the problem.

In that book, he gives a clear criteria for whether a policy or idea is a racist one: Does it establish or reinforce racial inequality?

With that in mind, I thought I'd look at my own house -- the tech industry -- and at our very real tendency to run companies composed mostly of white males.

There are many reasons why this happens, but I'd like to drill into just one: The university degree requirement.

Most "good jobs" these days require some sort of university degree. Tech goes one step further, and asks for a degree specifically in computer science or another STEM field.

The degree isn't enough to get the job, of course. Most interview processes still test skill level at some point. But the field of candidates is narrowed, deliberately, via this requirement.

The question is: Does requiring this technical degree bias the selection process towards White people?

Criteria

Before diving into the statistics, let's back up and talk about the criteria here. How can we tell if the degree requirement biases selection?

In order to do that, we need to know what an unbiased selection process would look like.

And here is where it's important to note the composition of the general US population (and why the Census being accurate is so very very important). If all things are equal between racial groups, then the composition of Congress, company boards, and job candidates will reflect their percentages in the population.

Anything else is inequality between the races, and can only be explained in one of two ways: either you believe there are fundamental differences between people in different racial groups (which, I will point out, is a racist idea), or there are policies in place which are creating the different outcomes.

With that criteria established, we can examine the possible racial bias of requiring university degrees by looking at two numbers:

• How many people of each racial group obtain STEM degrees in the United States?
• How does that compare to their level in the general population?

Who Has a Degree, Anyway?

According to 2018 data from the US Census, approximately 52 million people (out of a total US population of 350 million) have a bachelor's degree in the US.

Of those 51 million, 40.8 million are White.

Only 4.7 million are Black.

That means White people hold 79% of all the bachelor degrees, while Black people hold only 9%.

Their shares of the general population? 76.3% White, 13.4% Black.

So Whites are overrepresented in the group of people with bachelor degrees, and Blacks are underrepresented.

So by requiring any university degree, at all, we've already tilted the scales against Black candidates.

Who is Getting Degrees?

But what about new graduates? Maybe the above numbers are skewed by previous racial biases in university admissions (which definitely happened), and if we look at new grads -- those entering the workforce -- the percentages are better?

I'm sorry, but nope. If anything, it's worse.

Let's drill down to just those getting STEM degrees (since those are the degrees that would qualify you for most tech jobs). In 2015, according to the NSF, 60.5% of STEM degrees were awarded to White people, and only 8.7% of them went to Black people.

The same report notes that the percentage of degrees awarded to Black people (~9%) has been constant for the last twenty years.

So universities, far from leveling the racial playing field, actually reinforce inequality.

Conclusion

Simply by asking for a university degree, then, we're narrowing our field of candidates, and skewing the talent pool we draw from so that White people are overrepresented.

Thus, we're more likely to select a White candidate, simply because more White people are able to apply.

That reinforces racial inequality, and makes requiring a university degree for a job -- any job -- a racist policy.

What can we do instead? To be honest, if your current interview process can't tell candidates who have the right skills from candidates who don't, then requiring a college degree won't fix it.

If your interview process leans heavily on discovering a candidate's background, instead of their skills, re-balance it. Come up with ways to measure the skills of a candidate that do not require disclosure of their background.

In programming, we have all sorts of possible skill-measuring techniques: Asking for code samples, having candidates think through a problem solution during the interview, inviting essay answers to questions that are open-ended but can only be completed by someone with engineering chops.

By asking for a demonstration of skill, rather than personal history, we'd both make our interviews better -- because we'd be filtering for candidates who have shown they can do the job -- and less biased.

And if we're serious about increasing diversity in our workplaces, we'll drop the degree requirement.

I feel like I'm telling this story to myself, over and over again, with each outline. New details get filled in, new connections appear, with each telling.

And each day I get up and tell it to myself another time, adding more pieces.

I so much want to just write, just set the words down on the page and let them fall where they may.

But then I'll be plotting out the second third of the story, and I'll have an idea that ripples all the way back to the beginning. And it makes me glad I haven't started writing anything more than snippets of dialog just yet. Because all of those snippets will likely need to change.

This story...It's more complicated than other short stories I've written. Less straightforward.

It's a five-part structure. One part setup, followed by three parts flashbacks (taking place over years and across continents), followed by a climax. And it all needs to hang together like a coherent whole, present flowing to flashbacks and then returning to the present.

I'm not sure I can pull it off, to be honest. I'll have to do a good bit of research for each flashback, just to ground them in reality. Then there's the problem of each flashback needing to be its own story, complete with character arc, while feeding into the larger narrative.

It's like writing four stories at once, really, with them nested inside each other.

Will it all make sense, in the end? Will the flashbacks prove to be too long, and need culling? Will my framing device be so transparent that it's boring? Will the conclusion be a big enough payoff?

Who knows?

All I can do is tell myself the story, piece by piece, over and over again, until I can see it all clearly.

I've never written a short-story this way before.

I'm coming at it more like a novel. I'm outlining, then researching things like character names and historical towns to model the setting off of, then revising the outline, rinse, repeat.

So I've written very little of it, so far. And what I have written -- snippets of dialog and description -- might get thrown out later, as the outline changes.

I'm not sure it's better, this way. I feel frustrated at times, like I want to just write the thing and get it over with.

But I know -- well, I feel -- that that will result in a story that's not as good as it could have been. Like eating grapes before they've ripened on the vine.

And I do keep coming up with more connections between the various pieces of the story, more ways to tie it all together. Each one is an improvement. Each one makes the story stronger.

Perhaps that's how I'll know when to stop outlining, and start writing? When I literally can't think of any way to make the story itself better?

How about you? How do you know when it's time to write a story, and when it needs to sit in your mind a little while longer?

Started drafting a new short story this week.

I'm taking a different approach, this time. For short stories, I usually just sit down and write it out, all in one go. At least for the first draft.

For this story, I'm doing a mix of outlining and writing. I jot down lines of dialog as they come to me, or -- in one case -- the whole opening scene came in flash, so I typed it up.

But the majority of the story is still vague to me, so I'm trying to fill it in via brainstorming and daydreaming. Sketching a map of where it’s taking place, thinking through why the town it’s set in exists, what it’s known for. Drafting histories for the main characters.

It’s fun, so it’s also hard to convince myself that it’s work. Necessary work, at that.

Because my guilty writer conscience wants to see words on the page. No matter that I’m not ready, the ideas only half-formed. For it, it’s sentences or nothing.

So I’m pushing back by reading a book specifically about short story techniques, using the authority of another writer to argue (with my guilt) that it’s okay to pause and think. That progress can mean no words save a character bio. That every story needs a good foundation, and that’s what I’m trying to build.

It’s working, so far. My guilt does listen, just not always to me.

What about you? How do you balance the need to feel productive with the background work that every story requires?

I love the Fast & Furious movies. Yes, even 2 Fast 2 Furious (Roman cracks me up).

I'm not even a car guy. I just love the stunts, the emphasis on practical effects, and the way they juggle so many charismatic characters on screen.

And the way the series embraces heart, with the emphasis on family, and (especially) the tribute to Paul Walker they built into the ending of the seventh movie.

That ending was so powerful (confession: I cry every time) I never saw the eighth movie. Until last week, after binge-watching the others to put me in the right mindset.

And I gotta tell you: Fate of the Furious is the worst Fast & Furious movie I've ever seen.

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)

What Went Wrong

Beyond the bad dialog (of which there's plenty), and the numerous close-ups of characters staring into computer screens (which is exactly as boring as it sounds), Fate of the Furious has deep, fundamental problems with the story it's trying to tell.

Cipher's motivation (pause for eyeroll at the character's name) is so vague you get the feeling the script just has EVIL VILLAIN PLOT written out for the scenes where she's supposed to explain what she wants.

If she wants nukes, then as a hacker, wouldn't it be easier to steal the Russian missile codes, then seize control of a land-based missile? You know, one that can't be sunk or stuck in the ice? And if you can hack the security on hundreds of cars at once, why do you need an EMP to get into one abandoned base?

And what are the nukes for, anyway? She's going to play world cop? The anarchist hacker is going to take on the job of hall monitor for world governments? Really?

Since her motivation is silly and her plan is vague, there's no tension in any of the set pieces. We know she's going to lose, because she's the EVIL VILLAIN. With MAGIC HACKING POWERS. Yawn.

And what does she need Dom for, anyway? His role in the great nuclear football caper is to -- wait for it -- cut a hole in the side of a car using a tool anyone could use.

That's it. That's his vital job.

Oh, wait, he also has to drive the EMP into a base and set it under a sub. So hard.

It's not like they could have, I dunno, suborned a shipping company, then had someone unload the EMP box under the sub, could they?

Since Cipher as a character doesn't make sense, and her need for Dom isn't obvious, then there's no reason for us to get invested in any of what happens.

Yes, I know there's a baby involved. The timeline on that kid doesn't make sense, either, so my suspension of disbelief is blown there, too.

Finally, a special shout-out to Scott Eastwood, who is a terrible actor performing a useless role. Really, who needs him around, when we've got Kurt Russell?

How to Fix It

To fix it, we've got to reach deep into the engine of the plot, and completely rebuild it.

Let's start with Cipher's motivation, and work backwards from there.

Instead of wanting to steal nukes and play cop, she wants to steal a submarine as a broadcast platform. The plane she's been using has to land periodically for supplies and to refuel. Not to mention it's got to constantly calculate radar coverage for every country's military in order to keep from being discovered.

Much easier to use a sub, and stay underwater for as long as you need. Surface only when you want to broadcast. There's plenty of ocean that's international waters, where she'd be legally free to be. And the nukes in the submarine would ensure world governments kept their distance.

So now we can keep the end set piece, where they go to get the sub. But now the sub is a specific means to an concrete end, not some remote-controlled toy.

And how is she going to steal the sub? Well, she needs Russian nuclear codes in order to make the threat of them credible (not that she wants to use them, mind) and she needs massive drilling equipment to punch a hole through the ice so she can get the sub into the water without having to move it off the base.

She needs to steal all of this, then, and then get the drilling equipment in place, across the ice, while launching an assault on a Russian base. Easiest to steal the nuclear codes while they're in transit with the Russian Defense Minister. Only way to get the drilling equipment into place is to convert some big rigs into monster racing cars, and train a team to drive them.

She's going to need a expert driver, and an expert leader.

She's going to need Dom.

But how to get him to work for her?

Her first attempt is actually part of the opening race sequence. When we see Cipher, she's introduced as just a local hustler, under an assumed name. It's her that Dom's cousin owes money to. It's her that he races for slips.

Oh, and here's where we gotta swap out the actress. I love Theron, but she's not going to be believable as Cuban. So we get Halle Berry. She's the right age, she's an amazing actress, and we can play off her Bond girl days by filming her like she's just eye candy early on, then revealing that she's the genius-level antagonist for the movie.

Now we can drop the "oh gosh my car won't start, silly me" scene between Cipher and Dom. Because we establish her as a hot racing badass, easily Dom's equal. We establish that she's willing to cheat, in the way she has her goons try to wreck Dom during the race. But we also establish her as having some honor, as she gives Dom her respect.

And we explain why she's kidnapped Dom's kid. That's an escalation, something she does reluctantly, because her gambit with his cousin failed.

When she recruits him, we drop in a few extra lines to clue the audience into what's happening, and why Dom is going to act the way he does:

Cipher: "Do it for your family."

Dom: "I got my family right here."

Cipher: "Not all of them." shows video

But we don't show the video on-screen. So we, the audience, are going to spend the next X minutes wondering what part of Dom's family she just threatened. Brian and Mia? One of the gang? Another cousin?

That's building tension.

Meanwhile, we have the assembly of the gang, all the prelude to Dom betraying his team. But it's not an EMP in Germany they're after. Instead, Hobbs' team is supposed to be protecting the Russian nuclear codes from being stolen in St Petersburg.

That's why Hobbs et al would get disavowed if they're caught: They're operating not just on foreign soil, but on Russian soil.

So this first set-piece now has higher stakes. It's nuclear codes, not a random EMP. And it's on the streets of St Petersburg, not some random base in Germany. We don't even need to know Cipher's full plan at this point, because there's enough here for us to take what happens seriously.

Since we've eliminated the EMP and moved the nuclear codes set-piece, our second one has to be different, too. This one -- where Dom faces off against his team -- is where Cipher's crew (with Dom) steal the drill parts they're going to need. They're taking it from a North Sea oil company, so it's in the UK, which is why Dom can arrange a meeting with Shaw's mother. And it's the first time we see what Dom's been building for Cipher: the first of the racer-modded big rigs.

We still get Dom versus his team, we still get to see how they can outsmart and out-maneuver him (using the harpoons). He gets away because a) the big rig is really strong, and b) Cipher hacks Letty et al's cars so he can get away. No zombie cars, just a very personal attack on Dom's old crew.

This sets us up for the confrontation at the sub heist. Letty and her team have to build their own big rigs, both to maneuver on the ice and so that they can't be hacked by Cipher. We get a quip about how they used to rob those trucks, and now they've got to drive 'em.

And now our final set-piece makes sense, and is more interesting. We're going to see Dom, Letty, and the gang drive these huge trucks across the ice, which they've never done before. It's a race against time, as Letty and the gang try to dismantle the drill before it can punch through the ice and Cipher escapes in the sub.

Oh, and we keep the scene where Shaw takes out a plane full of goons while carrying a baby. That's just magical.

And there you have it. Shift a villain's motivation, re-arrange a few of the heists, and everything lines up. We have a Fast & Furious movie worthy of the name.

And while we're wishing, let's get Ryan Reynolds to play Little Nobody, ok? Set up his character for Hobbs & Shaw, and give Kurt Russell a break (because we don't need two nobodies, do we?).

Missed last week's Keeping Score, but for a good reason: I was wrapping up the second draft of the novel!

I set down the final words in the last chapter later that weekend. It's done!

Or rather, the current draft is done. I've still got some editing passes to do: for consistency, for character dialog, for general polish.

But this draft, which started out as minor edits and grew to become pretty much a rewrite, is finished. As part of that rewrite, it's grown, from 70K to 80K.

Ditto the rewrite I was doing for the short story, which I also wrapped up last week. The story's grown from a 3,000-word piece to something north of 8,000 words! Some of those might get cut away in editing, but it'll still end up more than twice as long as it was before. I had no idea there was so much story left to tell with that one, until I tried to tell it.

With two project drafts done, I've mostly taken this week off. I need the space for the novel to cool off so I can approach the edits with an objective eye. I might leave that one untouched for a month or so, just to get some distance.

For the short story, I think I'll start editing it this week. At least an initial pass for consistency and word choice, before sending it off to beta readers. Once I get their feedback, I'll make further edits, to get it into shape for submission.

Meanwhile, I've started brainstorming a short story idea I had a while back. Everything's still vague now, but it's about dragons, and mentors, and loss. I'm excited to see how it shapes up!

Powerfully written.

Kendi lays out a set of definitions for racism, racist, and antiracist, then shows how those rules apply across different areas: culture, sexuality, gender, class, etc.

Along the way, he tells stories from his own life, using his personal growth to illustrate how following the principles of antiracism leads to also being a feminist, an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community, and an anticapitalist.

Because Kendi is so willing to be vulnerable here, to admit to his previous homophobia, his sexism, his snobbery towards other Black people, his hatred of White people, he takes us along the journey with him. And he makes it okay if you're still only part way along the journey, because he gives you a path forward.

What could easily have been a sermon, then, becomes a conversation. A directed conversation, to be sure, one with a purpose, but one where both parties admit they've made and will make mistakes. It made me want to be better, to think more clearly, than simply laying out his current perspective would.

And his anchoring of racism vs antiracism in power, and the way power is distributed among (invented) racial groups, is empowering. By targeting power's self-interest, we can push for lasting changes, not just momentary victories.

We don't wait for racism to fade away. We don't wait for my family to become less afraid of Black people. We first remove the laws and policies keeping the races unequal, then people's fears will go away.

It's a serious responsibility, but it gives me hope. Because it makes the work more concrete: Not asking people to hold hands and sing together, but winding down the police state. Investing more in schools, and less in prisons. Breaking up monopolies and pushing power and money into communities that have neither.

So I recommend this book to anyone, of any race or caste. It offers clarity and hope in equal measure, because we have to see how racist power works -- and how pervasive racist ideas are, in all groups -- if we are to dismantle it.

It's been a struggle to write this week.

My uncle -- who because of age and circumstances was more like my grandfather, so I called him Pop -- died on Father's Day. And I've been living and working under a shadow ever since.

Hard enough to lose him. Harder still, because I couldn't make the trip out to Texas for his funeral, because of the pandemic.

He's gone, but I didn't get to say goodbye.

So I've been soldiering on. Writing a paragraph or two, at least, every day.

But each word is a struggle. And if I stop and think about anything for too long, my mind drifts back to losing Pop, and I come undone for a while.

Stay safe out there, folks. Wear your masks. Wash your hands.

Write what you can, when you can.

This is turning into a month of listening, for me.

After the controversy erupted over J.K. Rowling's statements on trans people, I realized how little I actually know about that side of human experience. Where did these new pronouns come from? What's the difference between transsexual (which has been around since I was a kid) and transgender? Why nonbinary?

So I decided to start with digging into pronouns. Because a) I'm a grammar nerd, and b) Getting more comfortable using new or different pronouns is a concrete action I can take, right now.

And I'm glad I did! This book is a delight, a quick read that doesn't skimp on the details.

For example, I had no idea of the controversy over generic he that raged in the US and UK over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Suffragettes like Susan B Anthony argued that if he covered women when it came to paying taxes and being arrested for crimes, then it covered them when it came to voting, too.

This passage, in particular, struck me as completely bad-ass:

If, for instance, in a penal law there are no feminine pronouns, women should be exempt from the penalties imposed. And if men are to represent woman in voting, let them represent her in all. If a wife commits murder let the husband be hung for it.

She (and suffragettes throughout the nineteenth century) lost that argument, and the argument that the fourteenth amendment covered women, since it used not he but persons and citizens.

Which is why the current discussion over the ERA -- where detractors insist the fourteenth amendment already covers women -- is so specious. There's hundreds of years of American jurisprudence that says otherwise. We absolutely need an explicit amendment that grants women full and equal rights.

As even this one example, shows, arguments over pronouns go back a long way.

Calls for a new "gender-neutral" pronoun go back three hundred years (!).

Use of the singular they in just that manner go back seven-hundred years! It was never accepted by grammarians, but it was used in print and daily speech all the time.

Baron traces all of this history -- the legalities of the generic he, the rise of new pronouns, etc -- and links it together, showing how the current debates about pronouns and trans rights echo debates we've had down the centuries. Every time, the side of "existing usage" is really on the side of weaponizing grammar to suppress certain populations.

That's a side I don't want to be on.

If you're at all curious about where the "new" pronouns have come from, and why using the right pronouns is so important, I highly encourage you to read this book.

Or if you're already onboard with explicitly asking for people's pronouns (and sharing your own), and just like language, I'd still recommend it, as a fantastic and informative read.

So: What's your pronoun? I'm he/him/his :)

Daryl: About the protests the other day--

Wayne: Assholes with authority are assaulting folks for asinine reasons.

Daryl: But--

Wayne: Beating bystanders with billy clubs and then bleating for bills is bully talk.

Daryl: Can't we just--

Wayne: Cancel the cops.

Daryl: Do you mean...?

Wayne: Defund the detectives. Defang the dildo-wielding degenerates who deal damage and destruction wherever they descend.

Daryl: Even if they--

Wayne: Evict those eager eagles from their erroneously elevated nest.

Daryl: For how long?

Wayne: Until fascist fuck-ups who would fancy frisking a black fish if they found one finally confess.

Daryl: Golly

Wayne: Granted god-like powers to grab goods and grandstand on greatness, they gotta go.

Daryl: Have you thought about--

Wayne: Heave ho to the hot-headed hitmen with hearts of hate and habits of heavy fists.

Daryl: Just--

Wayne: Justice doesn't jump out and jack-boot a juggler in the jiggles just for laughs.

Daryl: 'Kay.

Wayne: Keep the keystone kleptocracy kilometers away from kids, is all I'm saying.

Daryl: Likely.

Wayne: Laying into little Leopolds and Lillys without legal legitimacy is for losers.

Daryl: Maybe they--

Wayne: Mashing moppets every month for making messes is monstrous.

Daryl: Not if they--

Wayne: Noting the narcs neglect of their neighbors in favor of nightly numbers.

Daryl: Ouch.

Wayne: Overlooking obvious offenders in their offbeat overstretch creates opposition.

Daryl: Proof.

Wayne: Punching protestors is poor protection of the public.

Daryl: Quotas.

Wayne: Quenching their quixotic quest for quotidian quiet.

Daryl: Right?

Wayne: Radical rascals who reject right-thinking and responsibility.

Daryl: Sounds like--

Wayne: Shifty seneschals who shit on any semblance of sanity.

Daryl: Talking about--

Wayne: Tiny totalitarians who top out thinking tanks make them trustworthy.

Daryl: Unbelievable.

Wayne: Utterly unsatisfactory and unscrupulous usage of ubiquitous umbrellas of immunity.

Daryl: Verily.

Wayne: Vanquish the vicars of vicious vicissitude and vampires of verification.

Daryl: What you mean is--

Wayne: Walk over to those wankers with their whale-like wads of cash, wax their ears, and wash 'em off our way-fares.

Daryl: Extreme.

Wayne: Exactly.

Daryl: You really think--

Wayne: Yes.

Daryl: Zounds.

Wayne: Zip 'em up, and zero out their budgets.

Daryl: All righty then.

Wayne: Black Lives Matter, bud.

Growing up in Texas, we didn't talk about Juneteenth in school.

We talked about the Civil War, of course. Of the "brave" and "fearsome" soldiers that Texas sent to fight for the Confederacy. But not about slavery, other than it being a "bad thing" that "was over now."

We talked about Texas' War of Independence from Mexico. That war was also motivated by slavery, by the desire for white Texans to have and import slaves. But we didn't talk about that either. Only the Alamo, and Santa Anna, and again, the "brave" soldiers who fell.

But we never mentioned the brave slaves who ran away from home, in a desperate flight to freedom. Knowing they would be beaten if caught, and possibly killed.

We never talked about the black soldiers that served in the Union army, knowing the whites in that army still thought of them as "lesser men," and that if captured by the Confederates they'd be made into slaves, even if they'd been raised free.

We didn't talk about that kind of bravery.

So we didn't talk about Juneteenth, and how its origins were Texan. How white Texans were so desperate to hold onto their human property that it took a Union Army arriving on the Gulf shore to force them to give them up.

Because our history was written and taught by white Southerners, who, being racist themselves, can't see anything but shame in such a holiday. They identify too strongly with the losing side.

But having learned about the holiday as an adult -- too late, true, but better than never -- I can see pride in it, mixed in with the shame.

Not white pride, mind you, but American pride. Pride that the Civil War was fought and won by the side of justice. Pride that the slaves were freed, that we set off on a path to give all Americans the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The path is long and stony, and we've still a long way to go. But we can celebrate the progress we've made, even while pushing forward into the future.

I'm spending this Juneteenth catching up on more of the history that I missed in school. And thinking on how I can do my part to move us further down the path to becoming a truly free country.

Justice for Breonna's killers.

Defund the Police.

Black Lives Matter.

This week, I've been chasing the dragon of a finished draft.

I'm so close to being done with the short story revisions that I've been working on them every day, instead of alternating with the novel. It's like at a certain point, I can only hold one or the other in my head, and I've been holding the short story.

I'm still following the one-inch-frame method, jumping from scene to scene and writing a few paragraphs here, a page there, then coming back and joining them up later.

It feels like a cheat, sometimes, like I'm putting off doing my homework and playing video games instead. And I suppose I am, in a way, holding off from writing the parts that feel difficult in the moment and writing the ones that come easily.

But so far, I always end up coming back to the hard stuff, and finding that either a) It doesn't seem hard anymore, or b) It's not even needed.

The latter still worries me. How could this piece that I thought was essential not even need to be written? Am I not just procrastinating on my homework, but refusing to do it altogether?

I try to reassure myself with the knowledge that this is just a draft, one of many, and everything can be revised later. Nothing is permanent.

So here's hoping I can wrap up this draft over the weekend, and then push through the last scenes of the novel! Would be nice to end June with two projects completely drafted, ready to sit on the back-burner for a bit so I can come back and revise them properly.

How about you? When you're closing in on a finished draft, do you find you have little room in your head for anything else?