Bump goes the life.

Today I am a failure.

Well, maybe not.

However, the Internal Editor's working overtime today and boy is he pissed.

Maybe a lot of that is because of the fact that I missed a couple days of posting, violating my ROW80 goal. However, that was because I was visiting my in laws and my Mom for Canadian Thanksgiving... I was trying to keep up with the writing but there were more interesting things to do on the weekend.

On the up side, great drive in and back, great chance to talk with my son, who is a brand new teenager. So, that's always great to be able to do.

I think this is important to writing, to get away from it and actually have days off from the routine and have things to say when you return.

All work has breaks and as I've been trying to emphasize, we need to look at writing like a job, with quitting times as well as responsibilities . Just as you work 9 to 5 or whatever, your writing needs boundaries as well.

Making it part of your every day life means knowing when to walk away from it. Hemingway talked about leaving when you knew the next sentence you would write, so that you had an entry point into the next day's writing.

 Lawrence Block went a bit farther and often rewrote the last half-page of whatever he was working on as warm-up every morning, before moving onto the day's writing.

Regardless of how you are going to start each day, it's important to know when to leave. Whether or not you can see a sentence into the future of your story or the entire next chapter, you need to plan your exit.