I’ve been circling the rewrite of my novel’s second draft for about a month now, hoping that I was moving closer and closer. I’ve jotted notes here and there, and thought about it. A lot.

Then yesterday morning, in my twilight sleep/wake, as Tommy watched me stir and meowed for an early breakfast, the first sentence of the new prologue came to me. My eyes were still closed. The rest of the chapter appeared in my head, in almost full form. My cat didn’t get fed for a while, nor did I.

And here we go.

I used to run a column, occasionally writing one myself, about writers and their creative process in Written By, (and before that, The Journal) the Writers’ Guild of America, west monthly magazine. Over almost ten years, it gave me enormous pleasure to hear and see how other writers faced the world, both the external one and their internal one. As long as the column was connected to their creativity or process, they could write on any topic they chose.