I am going to wreak havoc on the keyboard today. Dead Can Dance (Thank you, Barbara ONeal) blasting, sun barely awake enough to color the sky, I can hear my wife attempting to wrangle our wild son and send him off to school, and I am breaking past the midpoint of my project today.

Not an easy task. I have gone to all sorts of trouble to procrastinate: traveling, writing Substack essays, recording reels, going to war with Scrivener. Yesterday, I asked AI what the hardest part of a novel is, and it said the midpoint. I most certainly agree. I sort of know where I’m going, but the fear and anxiety of entering a dark cave with barely a lantern is absolutely there. I must remind myself that the dark flashes that fly overhead are not bats, they are words, and those screams that echo, they are stories.

Those of you who don’t write might say I’m exaggerating, playing drama king. No. Not at all. Moving onward in a project, breaking past that Wednesday hump day midpoint is no joke. Pure fear. And I for some God knows why reason adore it, love it, the challenge, this sensation, this moment where I’m about to enter the cave. It’s why I’m here, the drug keeps reeling me back in, giving me tastes of making magic.

Here I go, here I go.