So I did get the intro to a story this morning. Don't know yet where it's going, and I was a bit surprised about the appearance and setting, and of course it feels clumsy after a couple weeks off. But it's fun, looking at it and wondering what puzzle my mind's set for me.

We're on a personal travel day, today, headed up to about as close as you can get to that Ol' Red River without falling over into it. I haven't been up to visit my relatives in that part of the state for, oh... well it's been a lot longer than I like to admit.

Mostly, because my grandfather moved away, down to his/our part of the country, and then my grandmother only moved back a few years ago. So for the longest time, there wasn't any personal reason to go back. Now that she's back kicking around in "South Oklahoma" (couldn't resist), the timing's right for us to take a weekend trip.

Well, except for the part where it'll be a 105 degrees in the shade. Such is life in Hell's foyer.

I'm planning on doing some writing along the way, how much or how little remains to be seen, but after finishing up the last novel a couple weeks ago, this is the start of my next practice cycle. Even if it's just a few hundred words tomorrow morning while everyone else is asleep, a start's a start and I'll take it how I find it.

RIP, Harlan Ellison. And thank you. If Ray Bradbury taught me what language coule be... you taught me what passion could do to take that language and story to whatever end awaited. How to be brave, how to be foolish, how to rage and thrash and no matter where and how and what to take the story where it needed to go.

Harlan's words, stories were just always there. Like Zelazny, Moorcock, that generation of merry fools tackling the walls that others might have already climbed, but now faster and farther.

And in Harlan's case, perhaps with the occasional can of spray paint in hand, just to remind everyone that what we do here can often be taken a little too seriously.

Go thou, man, and find us someplace new to imagine, some other world beyond this one that has yet to know the sound of your voice. 

In one sense, this is horribly dated, but I just found the book: Clive Barker, may I say thank you for Mister B. Gone? I ran into it by complete accident, browsing a bookstore for a couple reads for myself on top of my daughter's pile.

And it was an absolute blast of a read. I smiled from page one all the way to the end, in simple joy at a story well told. I hope it was as much fun for you to write as it was for me to read. Thank you, sir.

For my fellow newbie writers a bornin', when I looked up the publication date for Mister B. Gone (2007), the finding of it made me smile too. It doesn't matter really when a reader stumbles over it (and this was a new bookstore, not used), that a book's out there and waiting for its reader, that's the simplest of magic we're after. The only request we can make to the book gods as we send our stories on their way is that it be there under the reader's hand when they need it.

I went round and round with myself about how I wanted to talk about this, the movie called Bohemian Rhapsody, aka a Freddie Mercury and Queen biopic.

I saw the trailer for it this weekend, it was the first time I remember hearing that the movie had actually been made. I was cautiously optimistic. At first.

Then I made the mistake of reading the wikipedia entry on the movie. And I lost my optimism.

Look: Freddie is protected.

First, because Brian and Roger were never going to allow the suits to turn Freddie into the "Hollywood Biopic" freakshow extravaganza.

Second, because let's face it, first gen Queen fans are all doing what I have, i.e. pretending this doesn't exist.

Meaning: without Brian and Roger, there's no Queen music. Which sort of blows anything else about making a picture about Freddie out of the water. And, Queen fans aren't going to be impressed by an extended music video.

So I get it. This was a thankless task.

But really, Hollywood suits? You tried it anyway? First, attaching Sasha Baron Cohen to this for any reason at all. Then Bryan Singer, right up to the point where he walked off the job with a couple months to go.

Warning signs much? I wonder how many times Brian May had to say "No" before everyone realized he meant it. And that he had the money and power to make it stick no matter the stage of the project.

Ah, well. Just remember, everyone involved with these sorts of projects. There are worse, just waiting for you to entangle yourselves in.

Graham Chapman. John Lennon.

My suggestion would be to wait a couple generations. The Pythons are considerably less forgiving than Brian May. And God help you if you ever cross Yoko and Paul, because no one else will.

Assuming you've learned to watch for the warning signs.

The summer sun is creeping back into our picture, here, and the heat along with it. We were given that most merciful of breaks, a rain wave pushing through for a few days.

But it never lasts long enough. Our grass is cheering the rain, every drop a blessing.

I'm glad the tropical wave wasn't more than rain, and I know the people living down south of us were happy even more than we were to have it come through. Water being always at a premium. I remember the first time someone from the Valley (i.e. South Texas if that's unfamiliar to you) who told me they were praying for a tropical storm to come through. And they weren't kidding. The reservoirs are always low and getting lower.

It took me a while to get used to that. I've lived in Texas essentially my whole life, but my family and my summers as a kid are in Louisiana, where a tropical storm or hurricane is always a threat, a killer waiting to drop in unwanted. Over there, there is always rain.

Here, not so much. It's one of the little differences that tell you so much about how people think different just a few miles away from their neighbors.

I realized this summer one of the ways that difference shows up. In south Louisiana, if I see a twenty, thirty percent chance of rain in the forecast, I know there's a reasonably good chance I'm gonna get wet at least once during the day.

Here, this summer at least, and in South Texas every year, a twenty percent chance of rain is something closer to a laughing curse from the weather gods. Because you know you'll be looking at the sky, watching a few clouds roll over, begging them to drop something.

And knowing they're just going to breeze on by.

And corollary to a trip out of town, as soon as I got back we ran off to see my dad for Father's Day. So, a busy week away from the keyboard.

I am glad I finished Peace Offer, the timing ended up being perfect to have a nice break and rest my wrists etc. Plus clearing the mind a bit for things away from the world being built.

That one's going to be interesting. I'm not sure it's a classic series open, but it is a view on a world that I had not yet visisted. That's another way of saying that the ending surprised me, leaving the story in a good place but with a clear path forward when I'm ready to catch up to the characters again.

I've a few short stories ahead of me in the next couple of weeks. I tripped over a voice or two on the road home, the radio singing in my ears.

There's this John Prine song calling to me for some reason. I don't have a clue what for, but the siren's wail is there and I've learned to trust she'll have something interesting to show me if I follow the whispers.

I had to run away for a couple days for the day gig. Connectivity and time were both at short supply, so I haven't been able to put electrons to their dance for a bit.

I did think about the formatting of that last puzzle; what I wonder about now is whether I wanted it to come out more comparable to the way it appeared in my editor or not. In which case, rather than relying on html, I'd probably be better off posting it as an image.

It's a conundrum. There's a certain element of "hey, it sort of fits in the what if" but at the same time, given the diversity of tablets, computers, phones, etc. that get used to read the web, if I want something like that to work the same way for everyone, I need to try a different formatting route.

A bit about the What If? behind yesterday's bit:

What would natural-language communication (if AI is thought of as a natural language compiler, for example) look like between Earth and a far-flung probe? (here: non-linear superposition )

and

What would an un-looked for stellar perturbation look like from the perspective of a probe in the Oort cloud? Meaning, what would happen some centuries hence, if we've got a pretty good set of probes way out past Pluto, and one of the probes sees something completely unexpected?

You know, like still happens on a regular basis in astronomy, but up close and personal?

             (Visual Report #A-281H, Oort Cloud Subsystems Nearest Approach)


degrees. by rotated obscura, mechanism A meaning hides in the veil.
                                             diaphonous
                     beneath. topography rough pink cloud, locally smooth
                                         backlit
                                         by
    type. and numbers catalogue assigned suns yet to be named.
                                           unknown to me,
                                         settles
        thunder? low turbulence, barest on along the barest skin depth
                                         mountain
                              at hinted valleys with peaks intimate range rising and falling
                                         in the
                                         distance.
                                         Scouting
                           brief. my of out is this will be a long walk.
    eyes. my over cascade visual drifting system calls wail.
          touch last the of memory the for the hint of the new
                                           new vistas,
                                         I am yet
                                         to find
                                         just the
             follow will who those for space right moment to let go
                                         place.


(Dear Reader: I just hope the formatting works well enough to make this puzzle-poem clear...)

I was catching up on some reading for the day gig, and I just finished an article that I'd imagine should be pretty interesting for a variety of readers, whether you're interested in the history of science, a fan of the "Hidden Figures" movie or book, a fan of Kris Rusch's Women of Futures Past, or of Tor.com's similar Women SF writers of the 1970's ongoing articles.

Ok, so the article is in the May, 2018 issue of Physics Today, it's entitled "Domesticating Physics", written by Joanna Behrman.

The setup here is one that I wasn't aware of in a conscious sense, but once Joanna linked it into her article, the light bulb went off. Which is always a delight, a writer that can turn on the light bulb for me in just a couple paragraphs.

What Joanna points out so well is that there was this magic moment in the early 20th century, when electricification of the household was taking place, where physics (at this point almost entirely classical physics) training wasn't the abstraction that it can so often appear to be. People, in large part women since at that time they were the dominant market for household goods, found it essential to have a good idea of just how these new electric appliances worked.

For safety, for use, for maintenance, among others. That's the main point of the article.

However, Joanna weaves another thread throughout: this was the part of the physics field where women physicists, practical applied women physicists in particular, found an application area they could work in productively. One example that Joanna illuminates is that of Madalyn Avery, a physics teacher at what eventually became Kansas State University.

Highly recommended as a window into a historical era that may otherwise have disappeared simply because it appears so mundane.

Hmm, one last thought: Steampunk, historical fic, romance, western, any writers interested in the early 20th, late 19th century, I'd imagine there're quite a few jumping off points hiding in this one...

I continued thinking last night about how this sort of math might apply to publishers. The problem I ran into was the usual one with this kind of thing: overthinking it.

First blush, and I say to myself "can't do this directly, there are too many hands involved in a publishing imprint".

But then I returned to the basics. The editor.

Let's keep it simple and stick with the editor's time.

And again: we're going to talk about a very good editor, salt of the earth, does everything fairly and professionally. It's the constraints of the job we're after seeing, that's all.

Editor Mona is the development editor at a major publishing house. She's very good at her job, and prides herself on developing new and burgeoning talent. She pays a little better than base, she reads the books coming in, buys them from the agent, babysits them through revisions and copyedits and art/covers/galleys and press and shipping them off to the printers and the stores.

And, she works fair deals: half to the writer, half to the publishing house.

To keep the math reasonable, let's say she pays 4K dollars for an advance. A little lower than Agent Bob typically gets, but he's worked with Mona often so he can trust she'll treat Yvonne's second book with a fair eye. Then the other 4K (the publisher's half) is divided evenly as 2K to Mona's salary, 2K to the publisher/house, 2K to art/covers, and 2K to copy/line edits.

Again, let's assume we're in a transparent and fair house.

2K per book for Mona's gross salary. 50 books per year gets her a nice 100K gross salary per year, which ain't bad if you're in Sheboygan, but is kind of tight for the rare air of Manhattan. So Mona's early in her career if the house is located there, maybe a little farther along if the house is outside the big city lights.

Either way, Mona's spending about 1 week per book. That's to read it, negotiate the sale, revise, ride herd on the copy/line edits, shepherd the cover art and book design, the press, the galleys, the printing, and the shipping off to the stores.

Meaning: a new book had best be ready to go with Mona spending at most one day getting the author's draft revised and ready to copyedit. Maybe two, if she's got a spare moment or two. And, the new writer's agent/negotiations can't take more than a cup of coffee to settle. Maybe lunch if Agent Bob's in town that day.

How about an old pro writer's submission? Zach worked with Mona early in his path, and he's written something that's just right for her house. So Agent Alice sends his latest modest opus off to Mona. Mona reads it and sends a good 40K offer to Alice.

Mona's salary didn't go up. That's fixed. What did Mona buy? An expected 10K profit for the house, and 4 whole weeks of her time.

Because Zach's a well-practiced pro, she doesn't expect to spend more than that same 1 week of her time on Zach's book. He's good, she's good, they'll get it out in exactly the same amount of work that she'd spend on Yvonne's first novel. Probably less.

No, what she's done is buy 4 weeks to work on the problem children. Every house has a set of those. The million dollar screwup, the celebrity collaboration, the flakeout who left for Nepal (nice quiet Nepal) to get her head on straight.

The ones who need significant re-writes, or if it gets really bad, a ghostwriter, to come in rescue the smoking hole in the ground.

Now, it's not all bad for Zach. So long as he's hitting his marks on the manuscripts, that 1 week editor's time should be all that's needed, and he'll still get the 40K checks so long as he delivers. Why not, he's delivering Mona that most precious of things, time to breathe. So she most likely enjoys a couple days with Agent Alice, meets Zach for lunch on occasion, has time to listen to their contract requests and maybe get the house lawyers to negotiate a little.

Why not, Zach and Alice give Mona those 4 weeks in her schedule, she's got time for a little lagniappe in return.

No book-doctoring, though. Zach's a pro, he shouldn't need it, and when he does, Yvonne should be ready to step in and fill that slot in Mona's rotation. And then Zach will move over to the problem-child slot.

Just to follow up on the math below, I guess the only conclusion I can offer is the following, hoping it can help writers, if nothing else, understand just why it is so difficult to break into, or sustain, standard traditional model publishing via an agent:

With the best will in the world, the best agent in the world seeing an average first time novelist's baby hit their desk can only afford to spend 8 hours or so packaging, shopping, and closing the sale on that first novel. That is, unless you are destined for glory, in order to break into the business via this route your first novel has to be readable and sellable by your prospective agent in a single day's work.

And for the working pros, not the biggest of the big but the reliable sellers who can hit that 40K advance book after book, the best agent in the world can afford a week for each book, instead of a day. So, assuming that level of agent and writer and editor are a good working team, sell on emails and clean manuscripts, basically I'd estimate that that week's time is devoted to your basic promo, booking tours, etc.

Again, averages, all things cannot ever be equal in this sort of thing, your mileage may vary, no warrantees admitted to or implied, buckle your seatbelts, etc.

Now, onto the part where I do some math. This is for the hardnosed, business inclined. There are plenty of assumptions involved here, so it's mostly a ballpark sort of estimate I'm working on. But the orders of magnitude that result should be enlightening, even if the details are off.

Ok. One more warning: for any agents that stumble across this, I'm doing outside business estimation based on broadly available information. Your own business will of course vary in the details, so don't take this as anything other than an estimate, which might be significantly different than how you operate.

Right, that out of the way, let's talk about Alice and Bob. Both of them are star agents. Very good at what they do. Alice works in one end of the pool (let's call it high-midlist) and Bob works in another (let's call it beginners).

Alice averages 40K dollars per advance on each novel she sells. She sells one novel per week, and she makes 15 percent for the life of each contract.

So Alice makes 6K dollars per week from advances on new novels sold. 50 weeks per years, so she grosses 300K dollars per year. She's a one-woman shop, with a full-time secretary and a very good lawyer on speed dial, and she lives in or around Manhattan, close to the action. That's a detailed way of saying she nets out about 120-150K per year, after expenses. Which, let's face it, isn't exactly a lot for living in New York City.

But let's get back to the important part, from a writer's perspective: For every novel writer Zach sends to Alice that gets sold, he's paid her 6K dollars for exactly one week of her time.

What about Bob? Bob works with new writers, he's proud of that, and he's very good at his job. Bob gets 5K dollars per advance for a new writer, and he sells one new writer novel per day. He too gets 15 percent for contract life of each sell, so Bob grosses from advances on new sales on average 188K dollars per year. Bob's frugal, so he lives in New Jersey or out on Long Island, his rent and so on are a little cheaper, so let's say Bob, kind soul and devoted agent searching for new talent, nets about 100K dollars per year just from advances on novel sales.

Note the rabbit in the hat? Let's say Yvonne sells Bob her new novel. In exchange for 750 dollars of the advance, Yvonne has just bought one day of Bob's time.

Let's go further. Let's assume that, Bob and Alice both being very good at their jobs, each and every novel they sell earns out in the first year and continues earning royalties every year after, at 1/2 of each of the previous year's total.

That is, for Alice's case, she expects Zach's novel to gross: year 1 is 40K for the advance, year 2 is 20K for royalties, year 3 is 10K, and so on until the stream of royalties dies off sometime around year 10.

I won't put the exact math in (it's an integral over an exponential function) but this works out to Alice expecting about (15 percent of Zach's gross totals of) 2.5 times 40K dollars lifetime for each of the novels she sells. So, Zach grosses about 97K dollars total over ten+ years of the good selling lifetime of each novel, and Alice gets about 15K dollars in return.

That 2.5 factor is important. What it means for Zach is that he's paid Alice 15 percent, lifetime, of each of his novels that he sends her that sell, for 2.5 weeks of her time. Total. Ever.

Same thing for Bob. The dollar totals are different, but if every one of his new talent first novels breaks out and sells at the same rate (5K advance, 2.5K year 1 royalties, etc) then lifetime, he expects Yvonne's novel to gross about 2.5 times 5K or just over 12K total, lifetime, for each novel sold,
and his cut to be about 1200 dollars lifetime.

And Yvonne, for her first novel, can in turn expect to receive about 2.5 days of Bob's time, total. Ever. For that novel.

(edited to add a few clarifications in Bob and Alice's lifetime cuts)

Ok. The most important part of my day: I finished Peace Offer! About 47K words, and it was a delight and a surprise from page one. At this point, I don't know schedule for when it'll come out, so watch this space for details. There are a few in the queue ahead of it yet to come.

There's a huge mess stirring in writer circles right this minute. Writers being who we are, scratch three writers and you'll find ten opinions, here there and everywhere.

Ok, for reference, if you're interested: go to Chuck Palahniuk's article at his blog (he's the writer of Fight Club, among other novels/comics etc) (link here) and you'll get the most immediate description of what happened.

My summary: Chuck's agency (not agent, so far as is known, a bookkeeper working for the agent is the current accused) stole him blind.

The headline number so far is 3.4 million dollars. This is likely spread across a number of different big name writers (Mario Puzo's estate, for example).

Let me get this out of the way up front: I know absolutely squat about the workings of literary agents, other than the "how to submit" articles that are attached to their websites. I've never submitted to one, don't play in that end of the pool, and don't have any plans to do so.

There's a bit of back and forth over this among writers. From many circles in the indie-writer world, I pay most attention to the old pros, the ones who've been in the agent/big publisher end of the pool. Kris Rusch has a couple articles on her view of this at her place (the latest in the series is here).

Jim C. Hines has another view of it, from someone currently involved in the agent/big publisher side of things, at his place (link here).

This is inside pool, but if you're at all interested, especially if you're a writer, I urge you to read all of them.

I don't know that I can say anything useful, really; tarring all agents with this brush is easy, especially for old pros who've seen some version of this over and over again. Whether the population of agents at any given time deserves that brush is for them to look in the mirror and decide for themselves, given that there are a pretty regular stream of these sorts of stories from the agent community, year in and year out. And from an outsider's point of view, precious little visible to objective observers being done to fix it.

Especially given that agents now ask, from what I understand, for a lifetime percentage of a sale that, to a first approximation, they work on once. Real estate agents don't get a lifetime percentage of a house's value when they arrange the sale.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that some agents typically do things well beyond the sale of a given book, booking gigs, handling mail to the writer, and so on. However, I'm not sure in the age of email, websites, and social media that I believe this to be a universal practice across all writer-agent relationships, especially to such an extent that a lifetime cut of an author's earnings is an appropriate ask, especially at the fifteen percent level.

An actor's agent, or a sports agent? Maybe, maybe not, those relationships are opaque but understood (correctly or not) to be a more hands-on arrangement than the writer-agent relationship.

Again, I'm on the outside looking in, and I don't pretend to anything other than a level of "really, this is the way a certain portion of the business operates?" incredulity.

That being said. Audits are a standard business practice, far beyond just the IRS and the tax agencies. If you want someone as a partner, they will almost without fail ask to audit your books before they join up. Your insurance company will want to audit both your books and your physical spaces to make sure you're good with the policy.

Real businesses get audited, in some way shape or form, every. single. year. School boards, property tax boards, insurance companies, big customers with well-written contracts, the list is endless, constant, ongoing.

And not just for-profits. Charities get audited regularly as well. For these reasons and more, because big donors to charities know better than to let the reins run free with checks with lots of commas on them.

If you're a writer who wants an agent, realize that you're hiring someone whose business practices could bankrupt you, today, tomorrow, long after you're dead and your children or heirs or dog or cat or favorite charity are dealing with it.

And act accordingly: if they refuse an audit (after you're signed) or if they refuse to put audit language into their contracts (before you've signed) that you know, understand, and allows you to call an auditor of your choosing in from day 1, then run away and find an agent who respects you as a writer.

Not as a mark.

Ah, the joys of the lightbulb moment (when the lightbulb goes off and the idea you're working on becomes clear). I had two of those today, in too completely different areas, one fiction and one for a day-gig project.

The fiction one has to do with the end game in Peace Offer. Don't have a clue yet how it's going to resolve, even this close to the finish line, but I know it's there, waiting for me to find out what on earth I just stumbled into. This book I can't really figure, even now, but I know it's a joy every day to sit down with it and discover where it's going.

The joys of the lightbulb moment: the A-Ha!, the Oh boy this is gonna be a ride... and then there's the Holy Crap what did I just stumble into?

The open vista, the anticipation of sliding down it... and then occasionally the discovery that there's a cliff at the end of the ride, am I ready to spread my arms and flap like hell when I go over?

Yes, yes I am.

Nothing much today, there's coding going on in these here parts, and one mustn't assume that the brain cells will allow for playing thereafter.

Or, put another way, I hit the breach and dropped my breeches instead of furthering on into the word mines.

Maybe I should just quit while I'm behind...

(alas, worldbuilding; or, an aside hanging empty in the vast. Who knows, this might be of interest to you, fellow writer, assuming you can find a place to jam a square peg in...)

Ok, two mages, most puissant of power, call them Alicia and Bob. They are exquisitely well trained, exemplars in all respects.

Excepting only that, for our purposes, Alicia is a traditionalist. And Bob is a conceptualist. That is, Alicia hears her grandmother's whispers, her teacher's implications, her mother's hesitant words, whenever she stops to listen to the wind.

And Bob, well, Bob hears that which has not been done.

Their arguments, Bob and Alicia's, are legendary. Not well understood, even by their peers, mind you. But written in the stars nonetheless.

They have precious little impact on the broader world around them, unfortunately. That's because Bob's students are perfectly happy to incorporate his meanderings into tomorrow's canon.

But we're not here to talk about Bob and Alicia. Let the gods keep that score.

Let us instead discuss Geoff and Janet. Untrained, overlooked by whatever teachers there might be.

Geoff too is a conceptualist, budding and unrefined. For the sake of argument, let's assume he first heard the winds carrying the conversation of a pair of pelicans when he was a child walking the shore with his father.

Geoff has lost little time since then. Untrained he may be, unconstrained certainly, and little bound by needing to wait for anyone to show up to train him.

Janet, alas, is a traditionalist, though she doesn't know it. Her friends might, if anyone else was around to explain why she gets so huffy whenever someone does a homework problem differently than their teachers explained it.

She's heard the wind and felt the tides, the energy flow of the unseen world whirling around her. She doesn't have a context for it, she's found no one yet who can unveil that world for her. She will, though. Soon.

Because Geoff can't help himself? That's certainly one way, isn't it...

I don't have my weekend schedule lined out quite yet. I get the fiction words in just fine at the moment, today and yesterday, but then I get to the blog portion of the proceedings and find myself wondering just what on earth I'm supposed to be doing.

The daily story thing helps when I'm in the middle of one. Then, there's no thought it's just a sit down and write it from where I left off. Tonight I'm not in the middle of anything like that so I have a chance to think about it. And immediately run into my own mind acting like a teenager, "but there's nothing to write about" when I've got a thousand different trains of thought running through my head.

There's a discipline to the daily grind. The fiction part of the writing, well that's an easy (-er) discipline to follow when I'm in the middle of a story. Again, just sit down with the next line and let it go.

Starting a story, or if I'm between stories, and inertia gets harder to overcome on the weekends.

I know that's all still part of the learning process. Both learn the first time for some things, and then learn how to call it back up again when I forget it. I can see around the edges when I read about how the writers farther down the path view their travels and travails.

I've reached the tail end of the Peace Offer story, the point where I've got the bit between my teeth and it's time to power through. The good part is that feeling I've talked about, the one where the bones of the story have all been laid and now it's just time to hang on and see it all play out.

Sort of like kite surfing or water skiing. When the throttle goes over, if I've set my feet right and got my grip, then it's just up and go and by God don't stop to think about how it happens.

We're in the middle of trying to teach my daughter how to water ski. She's had a couple summers, pretty typical, where she'll take a pull or two, but then she'll give up for the day and ask for the tube so she can enjoy the ride. That's natural, there's a progression to it. We ride with her godfather, not every weekend because we all have schedules that make it space out more than that. Maybe two or three weekends a summer, maybe more, it all just depends.

Enough to get a taste for me, not enough for her to really get her feet under her yet. She will, the last trip last year she made it up, but then she had that moment.

I remember it well from when I was learning to water ski. It's the one where you get up and then you're staring at the water, there's this forever moment. The thrill, the rush of "I did it" collides...

with "Now what the hell am I supposed to do?"

It's the critical transition. We can tell you what it feels like, what you're supposed to do. But the getting up part looms so large when you don't know how that it overwhelms everything else until you actually can do it.

And then you get to learn a whole new set of skills. And oh, you have to do it at about twenty miles an hour while sliding around on a couple pieces of wood and hanging on to a couple hundred horses pulling you along the top of the water.

It's a big transition. A story in progress, when you hit that point, has that same magic. I'm comfortable now saying to myself "I've done this a couple times, I know I can hang on and not faceplant this".

But I'm still new enough at it to feel that rush of terror. In some ways, I hope it never goes away, I think that's the one that says I'm learning and I'm staying out there in the part of the craft where it's not just a grind it's a discover too.

"Oh, God, what do I do now?" doesn't have to mean I don't know what I'm doing. "Hang on and find out", I'm the first reader too and oh what a joy it is, isn't it, to read a story that's surprising you, the ones where even if you've guessed where it's going you still can't let go until you turn the last page.