The last few weeks have been really nice, for the most part. First, I had a wonderful vacation with my family, full of swimming, soaking up the sun, feeding ducks, and having lots of little adventures with my niece and nephew. My nephew is almost three, and he’s in that stage where his vocabulary is growing by the day (maybe the hour) so it was entertaining to spend so much time with him and really get to see that development in action (I contributed to this development by teaching him to do a Yoshi impression).

Of course, coming back from vacation is always a little bit of a downer because I never want it to end, but I’ve had the last two weeks to play catch-up and reset the routine, and I’m feeling more refreshed now. I’ve gotten a little writing in, and I’m still feeling cautiously optimistic about chipping away at the structure issues my project seems to have. There’s only been one scene, I think, that I’ve completely cut at this point, it’s mostly been realizing the problem scenes have chunks that need to occur slightly later in the story, then reworking so that what needs to remain still makes sense, and sometimes allowing myself to type “Insert ___ here later” and move on when I know something’s missing from the flow instead of trying to force a scene before moving forward, which is probably what led to some of these problems in the first place. It’s not necessarily solving everything, but it’s making it less tangled.