Just spent the past hour or so compiling all my notes (spread out on various printouts and stickie notes) for the revision to my novel Sixteen Miles from Everywhere into a 3-page, single-spaced document. Knowing me, I probably won't even reference that new document much; it's all about getting all the facts organized and written down for me. Okay, maybe I'll peek at it now and then.

The plan now is to just sit down and re-read the whole novel, start to finish. I'm hoping to try and do that this weekend. Elizabeth works tomorrow, so maybe I'll try to start while Drew naps. Wish me luck!

We've been trying to drop the little guy back to just one nap a day, and his reaction has been to sleep only 2-3 hours during that nap, and walk around in a thumb-sucking fog for half the time he's awake. All part of growing up, I guess. We made the switch with his naps so he can go to 2 days of preschool during the week, from 9 a.m to noon, and not be sleeping during that time...

Speaking of Drew, he's been cracking us up lately -- the other day, while we were driving home in the rain and splashing through water puddles, he was sitting in the back seat going, "Woooowww. This is cooool!" I almost ran into the curb, laughing at that.

Going back to the writing for a second, I had one of those light-bulb moments last night about an old, failed novel (Last of the Hand for those of you keeping score at home). After getting two agent rejections yesterday along with a story rejection, I was trying to think of a way to improve my writing and maybe redo that novel at the same time, and then it hit me -- I need to take a scissors to that book and shorten it, give it just two main characters (instead of a cast of thousands as it was in the old version), and make it truly a young adult book. I think I figured it out too.

I love it when that happens, when your brain does all that work for you unconsciously, and all you have to do is pluck it out of the gray matter. That is cooool! Later...