See how it glows! My manuscript, with beginning, middle and end, all crammed onto a handful of blindness inducing pages. It doesn't really deserve this ethereal glow, though it does deserve the blurriness. It's just a draft, which number draft I can't say. That would depend on what counted. But that's not what matters. What matters is that I have this thing that feels like a wildly imperfect whole. Its very existence infuses me with a vigorous sense of challenge. That's nice, but you can do better.

The other thing these pages whisper to me is Oh my god, you might actually finish this! What will you do then? This question came to me for the first time this morning. I didn't even now I was scared of this prospect, but aparently I am. No big surprise really. Finishing it will mean facing the truly daunting world of publishing. My instinct at this moment is to protect my poor little story from such brutes, but I'll have to get over that. Luckily, I have some time.