As usual, the alarm clock seemed to go off waaaay too early this morning. We stumbled through breakfast and into town to the coffee shop, where I nearly fell asleep at the table--and, sadly, got very little writing done. Bleagggghhh. I hate early mornings. I'll perk up a bit later in the week, I expect. Mondays are always shocks to my system.

It was a really lovely weekend. By yesterday afternoon, the stress really seemed to have entirely drained away, and I just felt great--peaceful and really happy. Lots of long walks and good weekend time spent together with Patrick is always the best cure for any tension I'm feeling.

I finished Draft 4 of Masks & Shadows yesterday, helped by the really good comments I'd gotten from critiquers--thanks guys! I've done a lot of work on cleaning up the opening scenes, I've done massive line and plot edits on the rest of the book--now I just have to read through the whole damn thing again to see if it all still holds together. And Patrick has promised to be a willing audience for me to read several chunks out loud, to find out whether they really flow. (There's nothing so perfectly designed to show up any flaws in a piece as reading it out loud! Scary but very, very useful.)

This morning I'd meant to take a break and write something different at the cafe--maybe even start a new short story. Instead, I stared at my notebook blearily. Write? Something that isn't M&S? I don't know how to do that anymore...

Oh well. I'll wake up soon, I'm sure.