CONTROL? I DON'T NEED NO STINKING CONTROL

There is a moment of clarity as your car careens sideways across a street that is now a skating rink, right before it jack-rabbits up the curb scooping out snow and packing it in around itself:

Huh, you say to your brain, I have no control!

The next thought is...well, maybe we'll leave that one alone. Suffice it to say, no one was hurt, I met a lovely woman (whose yard my car landed in), I was not the first car in her back yard...nor the last, I had a nice chat (really!) with a city salt/plow driver, he was kind enough to take three passes with the salt truck on that crazy iced-up curve, and I got to stay in my car as the tow truck driver winched my car out and then dragged it out--it was fun. Really.

Life is like this.

And sometimes writing feels this way too. Which isn't altogether a bad thing. When we take our feet off the brakes of our imagination, brainstorms, first draft or fifth, we can end up in unexpected places!

Now, on to my check-in for ROW 80 

First basic pass on manuscript: complete 

Had to add this next step: 

Second pass, making extensive notes in notebook--which big scenes need to be added, what new research is needed, where to really deepen POV: more than halfway

What I'm loving the most about this process (a process I put off and off and off because I didn't know how to start) is I'm finally seeing the book and how it will/could look. I've been writing this book forever--constantly setting it in a corner for unruly behavior and then picking it back up again a year later. I love it that now I can see its potential.

Can't wait to see how everyone else is doing...