Flow. What's with the flow of this novel I'm working on? One thousand words or a little more one day, four or five hundred words the next day. Day after I'm back up to thousand words. I had hoped to build enough momentum to have a return of the Vagle 3000, but that's not happening. I'm doing steady work, I guess, although dropping wordage by half every other day doesn't give a sense of momentum at all.

A writer never writes a novel the same way twice. It's true, it's true. Each new novel comes out differently.

Roll with it. Go with the flow, no matter how the flow may be.

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There's a lot of energy in the workshop right now. A lot of the newer members are handing in multiple stories, a few of them going for the Mad Marvin award (nine stories submitted to workshop in one quarter). Inspires me to consider doing that too after the novel is done.

I've aimed for the Mad Marvin before and fell way short. I still dream of doing it just to say I Did It.

I'll ponder this.


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Lovely weather in Oregon. Close to sixty degrees today.

I was leaving the bank in my Toyota Tercel, prepared to exit onto Pearl Street, which is a one way street going south. There's a stop light at the corner and at that moment it was green and I was waiting for a break in traffic flow with my window down.

I didn't need to drive onto the sidewalk while waiting, so I held back, and glanced to my left where a bicycle was going north down the sidewalk. The rider was a gray-haired lady with large, white helmet on. As she passed the front of my car she said, "Gee, your car is a pretty color."

My car is blue. Standard, typical, boring blue. I didn't think it was anything special. Nonetheless, I gave her a big smile as she passed.

Good moods were easy to find today. Of course it was a lovely day.

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These mini pocket planners they're making these days are great. More portable than those large day planners, which I always buy planning every year I'm going to really use it, and then I don't. I've been writing down my word counts every day and keeping records of submissions and rejections, and even writing expenses. Apparently, planners had to shrink down to managable size for me to find them completely useful and convienient.