I'd like to share a word with you: detent. Not detente, detent. You know when you turn the dial on an appliance or the car radio (remember those days of analog?) and you can feel that little bit of resistance that tells your fingers you've dialed past another setting? A mouse wheel also gives you that sensation as you click through its rotation. The device that arrests the rotation, ever so slightly, just enough to let your senses know, is called a detent.

When I hit a tough spot in my writing, I think of it as a mental detent. And here's the thing: once upon a time, I was much better at applying some focus to get past that little bit of resistance. It feels much more difficult now to achieve that focus. This could be due to (a) age or (b) social media. My sincere hope is that it's (b) and that if I can stay off Facebook and Twitter for a month, my brain will recover its pre-Internet state and I'll be able to work past the detents and spin that mental dial like Mary Poppins twirling her umbrella.

I'm also pledging a month of extremely minimal social life, no movies, or reading fiction unless it's for research. It's time to really make significant progress with Novel #2.

The cat can't wait. All that lap time.

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