I've mentioned before that I'm condensing the process of writing a novel from 3.5 years to 1 year. That's one year with breaks to revise the first book a couple of times, to read through and address the copy edits, to travel to promote that first book, and to have periodic panic attacks.

Still, I'm going to make the deadline.

It'll be to the wire and there will be more revisions than last time when I spread the process over 3.5 years, but I'll make it. I'm a deadline person, you know? If you tell me when it's due, I'll do it by that time.

I wasn't always this way. For instance, I distinctly remember NOT doing my seventh-grade English homework by the deadline. There was a workbook called Plain English. You had to put the commas into sentences and fix the capitalization. You had to label the helping verbs. As I recall, I didn't particularly enjoy or understand this homework and sometimes "forgot the book at home" rather than complete the assigned pages.

I did this kind of thing pretty regularly. I got a lot of Bs in high school, and it was totally fine. It seems like it's less fine now to get a lot of Bs in high school. I tried to take the pressure off of my high school sophomore recently by telling him that, "There will be a college that accepts you."

He took this the wrong way and thought I was saying that he wouldn't get into a "good" college if he got a B+ on something or other. But that's not what I meant at all. I meant, just chill. There are lots of different paths forward. You don't have to go to the one tippy-top pinnacle school that everyone thinks is "the best." I explained this, and he felt better, but we now have a running joke about "there will be a college that accepts you." I say it when Shef tells us he's going to play Grand Theft Auto rather than studying for AP US History.

There are therapists for that, and I'll be happy to pay.

In conclusion, I don't even know what I'm talking about, except to say: it's okay to not be the best, but also I'm going to try to be the best and make my deadline. That's great blogging. Right? Tippy-top.