October 25, 2017: The one your mama warned you about.

Where. Has. The. Time. Gone??? 

Actually... not a fair question. Because I totally know where the time went.

It feels like it's been a blur, but it went mostly to one place: I had a fling this past month. 

Okay, okay. Not a fling. It was pretty serious. REALLY serious. Took a lot of thought, a lot of emotions, a lot of time. Sooooo much time.

I was head over heels in love with Overplanning. 

You GUYS. It was mad, it was fast, and it left me kind of a wreck. Overplanning!! How did you get so deep in my mind and my work?! 

Overplanning draws me in by promising he's going to make everything go more smoothly later. 

If I just figure out an exponential amount of absurd detail, then writing these novels will be a dream, everything will tie up in the trilogy, it will all be roses and chocolates and long walks on beaches.

... AHEM. He talks a good talk, but I just figured out he's another one of Perfectionism's minions, DARN IT. And I fell for it again.

I literally don't have any excuses. I know better than this, technically, but I just fell for his everything-will-work-out-so-well promises. ... And millions of documents and bullet points later, here I am, with my poor novel in tatters, my characters rolling their eyes at me, and my imagination threatening to sue.

So I throwing out overblown plans, I'm refusing to pick up the phone when Overplanning calls, and I'm putting myself on a fast track to drafting this thing. 

Even though I don't have all the answers. Even though I'm not sure. Even though I don't have every bit of plot in every particular place.

(When kicking Overplanning to the curb, it helps to have an ally. I've been thoroughly loving the book Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford. I loved his TED talk on the same topic, and the book is brilliant. It's extremely readable, and it's helping pry my rigid little fingers off my slow-moving ultra-tidy ways.)