Mary and I awoke this morning to intermittent muffled thumps from somewhere beyond the bedroom window. When I had cleared my sleep-fogged brain sufficiently to realize that the cat wasn't romping on the roof, I knew immediately that I was hearing good news and bad news. The good news was that the temperature was above freezing, allowing the snow to drop from the tree limbs and hit the ground with a thump. The bad news, of course, was that it had snowed again during the night.

I was still thinking in terms of bad news and good news today when we got word of another positive review of Seven For A Secret. No, there isn't any bad aspect to a good review, but I remembered how unpleasant much of the writing process had been, how uninspired I had felt while working on my portion of the book, how contrived and mechanical it had all seemed to me.

The good news, judging by the reviews thus far, is that the contrivance worked so I must finally be gaining some control over what I'm doing. Which is also the bad news because when I am consciously controlling the flow of words the process doesn't feel very exciting to me.

Rather than being swept along on a flood of seemingly brilliant ideas I am laboring, tediously ordering events, rearranging scenes and tinkering with sentences. It is more like work than play. Readers might enjoy the ultimate effect but I only get to see the nuts and bolts and all the shortcomings which I probably would never have noticed ten years ago.

Is it really possible to feel less competent the more competent you become? Or perhaps I really am less competent but Mary has improved enough to make up for it!

The sun has just behind the rim of the mountain, without having eliminated much of the snow cover. I guess that's the bad news. The good news is that the cat didn't manage to get out on the roof.