Spring has come to my world with a vengeance. Forsythia, hellebore, daffodils and their relatives, hyacinth are all in glorious bloom. The rhododendron is covered with buds ready to pop. Flowering trees are coming out up and down the street. My patio border is lagging behind. It looks like my hummingbird mint and ground covers are coming back, but so are the weeds. I need to get them out of there before we mulch. The same is true in the dahlia bed behind the garage. Weeds weeds weeds. Already. I need to get to them early.
It occurs to me that writing is a bit like that. You struggle with the blank page and claw your way to “the end.” At that point a story blooms. You smile. You read it through, and there they are, the pesky weeds. Weak words, confusing construction, typos—you get out your verbal trowel and just weed them out. Last week, after six beta reads and an editing pass, I put my draft for Love’s Perilous Road, “Charred Hope,” on read-aloud. That function lets me watch the screen while it speaks the words one by one. There they were: more weeds. I dug them out and sent my final copy off to formatting. It’s a precious peach blossom of a story of sorrow, neglect, true love, and hope in the midst of mysteries, ballrooms, and highwaymen. 
I know you will love it.
This week: I owe a story to Word on Fire that is barely half done, I should start one for Dukes All Night Long (I have that one sorted out in my head), and I need to begin new epilogues for my Dangerous series. We’ll see how far I get. But first, coffee.