Trying to clear my head here. There are hornets inside, and I can’t focus on writing today. It’s still early, though, and I have a lot of time today still. I’ll get a chapter done, and soon it will be all downhill.

I have a lot to get done over the next few days, and that is probably the source of my inattention. Podcasts to record, and Christmas to prepare for. But all those things will be done with time, and this needs to be done first. It’s the only way I can work.

Every manuscript is a perilous thing. Until it is done, there is always the threat that it won’t be done. That it will fizzle out, that your idea will turn out to be bad, or incomplete, or not enough.

There’s a certain threshold I cross with every novel, where I can start to relax, and realize that this story is long enough, that it has enough to meat to be a novel. Even after story beats and outlining, I’m never sure there’s enough until it’s written. Because that’s where the novel is, in the writing, not the planning. The planning is important, but the novel doesn’t exist until the writing is there, and eggs and baskets and all that. If the writing doesn’t exist, the novel doesn’t exist.

I’ve crossed that threshold here, but my brain is on fire at the end of a week, and I desperately want to sit down and play Cyberpunk and disappear into a different world.

But I have a lot of work that needs to get done.

I’m really just rambling at this point. That maybe is the point. The rambling. I’ll unleash my fingers onto the chapter I’m working on, and let them ramble there.