Writing is the longest, most elaborate improvisation you will ever have to pretend is not an improvisation. Writers, incidentally, get up to a lot of nonsense they don’t really teach you in Lit class. For instance:

• Editing drafts feels like polishing shit and hoping it turns into an industrial fridge.
• Your audience’s favorite piece of your writing will never be your favorite piece of your writing. This is a fact of the universe and you must accept it.
• Plotting a story is the ultimate roulette. I make a list of things I would like to happen, but whether or not my characters actually decide to do those things is anybody’s game.
• Writing is great because you can write about writing, and nobody calls it hokey.
• Hours of research may go into checking the validity of one reference in one sentence. Hours. Like whether or not mackerel can be cooked, or eyeballs really are organs. I’m serious.
• I plan fantasy worlds like most people plan weddings.

(Also, CAMP NANO IS A GO. 1,667 words a day in the new novel, starting right now! Good luck to all participants!)