Which is not to say the former can't turn into the latter, but at base, they're different kinds of questions.

Yes, this. This a thousand times over, and then some. Different questions, different needs and, vitally important, with different impacts on the work.

(deep breath)

This is a bit longer than drabble length, and I'm not cutting a word. As some people know, I'm in the process of recovering memories of a certain time period. I hadn't actually forgotten about this, except for one thing; I'd forgotten I was crying at the time.

Contents of a Kitchen Floor

Two bottles of Seagrams whiskey, one empty, the other with an inch of liquid left.

Courvoisier, I'm counting three bottles, sticky with depletion.

The cats' dishes, empty.

A scattered pile of mail, probably pushed from the table by Pig or Fluff jumping away from their human, as he was fighting with his insane wife or reaching for one of the bottles I'm now bending to dispose of from my wheelchair. Included; one confirmation of the next dialysis appointment for the damaged man who emptied all these bottles into his damaged body.

Oh, and one damaged man, unconscious amid the rubble, trusting me to be there when he wakes up.

And me in my wheelchair, tears of love and longing sitting angry behind my eyes, wondering how to save him.

Ouch, Deb...stings.

I just hit page 100 on the wip! In theory, I'm a quarter of the way done, though more than likely my rough draft will end up well over my desired 400 pages/100K words and I'll have to find a way to cut it. But still. It's a number. It's round. I've been staying on track this year, for the most part. I'm happy.

t pats self on back

Go, Susan! I haven't tried for anything more than a couple pages, double-spaced, at that.

Oh, you better believe these are doublespaced, too. And Courier 12, which takes up a lot of space.

The truly crazy part is now that I'm used to manuscript format I prefer the look of Courier to Times New Roman. It's crisp and it photocopies well. You get into all kinds of debates about which one is better and which editors prefer and so on, but I think I'm the only person who actually likes the way Courier looks.

Susan, you are far from the only one.

Susan, you are far from the only one.

Raises hand. Times is a bitch to copyedit, because it's too damn small. Maybe my eyes are getting older, but I much prefer Courier. I always asked my authors to submit in Courier, too.

And yay on the hundred pages. Nice solid milestone.

Oh, and Deb, that was sharp and painful and needed every word.

I loves me some courier. So much more readable, so much easier to parse. I use TNR for letters, but manuscript format with courier is da bomb.

Times is a bitch to copyedit, because it's too damn small. Maybe my eyes are getting older, but I much prefer Courier. I always asked my authors to submit in Courier, too.

The last writing contest I judged, I had three entries in TNR and one in Courier. The Courier was a much easier read, and not just because it was shorter. TNR is fine when it's an original from a decent printer, but I had copies, and even the faint degrading you get with a first-generation copy is annoying.