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I’m mid-way through the final polish of SHE. It’s slow going, because I am looking at each sentence individually. It’s not as fun as letting the words flow during the first draft, but it’s necessary. I do feel a tiny thrill when I improve a sentence, tighten a phrase, and trim fat, but it’s not as fulfilling as creating new material. I realized that the task was getting me down.

I also realized that I didn’t have to let it be the full focus of my writing time. I decided to limit myself to eight to nine pages a day of that kind of work. It’s the first thing I do, and then I reward myself with more fun work—writing background material for Bullet Catch, brainstorming short stories, research. So far, so good.

My biggest problem lately is that I have slipped from getting up at 6:00 and getting right to work. Instead, I laze in bed, sometimes until 6:30 or even 7:00, then dawdle over the newspaper for a half an hour or so, leaving me less time for the important task of writing. The relative tedium of polishing may have something to do with that. I need to recommit myself to the discipline of getting my butt in the chair and my face in front of the computer. I can get to bed on time. I must force myself to get moving as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning. I can read the newspaper over lunch. Writing fiction is what I want to do; slacking won’t help me get it done.