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In addition to that one page, I completed one to-do item (an important one: starting discussions with my cover designer), but I had forgotten to include it on the list originally, so I didn’t quite get the dopamine hit I needed from checking it off. If I step away from the stats, I know that those several hours were important. I’m working on a revision of this blog post that analyzes the components in a scene from Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. I knew that I would need to figure out how to make the graphics work for a book, but that seemed like a fun little problem to solve. I’d play around in Canva or decide to hire a graphic designer to make something for me, I’d tweak the manuscript to match the new graphics, and then off I’d sail into chapter 3. But when I sat down and looked at the graphics and thought about what I’m trying to accomplish in the chapter, I finally had to admit that I hadn’t quite hit the mark I was aiming for, which is to demonstrate how Patchett is using the tools available to novelists. I realized that some of the tools (like action and dialogue or setting and character description) have similarities I want to capture. I saw that when I reread the scene, a bigger structure emerged that I also want to show readers. Finally, I also understood that I was creating a methodology that I think readers are going to want to see in action at least a few more times over the course of the book, and currently I only use it in one other chapter—which means adding one or two chapters I hadn’t planned to add. This process of realization wasn’t pretty. I stewed. I stomped home from the Ruby, where I’d been working. I threw the cats out of my office and spread out books, papers, a notepad, my laptop, and my iPad and slowly fought my way forward. I pulled the chapter into a new Word document so I could revise it there, knowing that I could revert to the original if I broke it irretrievably, which it felt like I could do at that stage. I looked at the sign hanging over my desk telling me to Have a plan. Hold it lightly. I thought, Fuck you, sign. I was still grumpy when I went upstairs to make dinner, but a glass of wine and the soothing process of making mashed potatoes—peeling, washing, cutting, boiling, pressing through a food mill, mixing with buttermilk—set me straight.
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