Thanks, Laura! Every once in awhile I need to be reminded that I'm actually telling a story here, and not just engaging in an elaborate intellectual exercise for my own geeky amusement. I'll get the brother home early, because when in doubt, conflict has to win.

Sail, while the first one made me raise a virtual fist in cheer, that last one teared me up.

Sail, I'm loving the story you're telling in vignettes, almost like snapshots. It's lovely.

Glad you guys are enjoying them. I feel like after taking that long break I've got all these words and little stories dammed up and just waiting to flood the thread. Trying really hard here not to submerge you.

Bev, I just can not seem to get that cookie jar out of my system. I've started tagging those as "cookie jar" in my lj, so you can just click on that tag and get all of them.

Oh submerge us! It's been a really long dry spell for the thread. If anybody's writing I think we're all ready to read it.

Sail, I love it! You're writing! And it's awesome.

I just cut the last 50 pages off my manuscript. It had to be done. I realized I'd gone completely in the wrong direction with that part of the story and had to start over again.

But...it felt so good back when I passed the 200 page mark a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm back on p. 181. Sigh. I hate it when I have to do stuff like this...

But it is a real sign of professionalism that you can do it.

Thanks! Maybe it's just that I have enough experience now that I'm on my fourth manuscript to realize that I'll never get anywhere by continuing to march stubbornly down the wrong road.

I have a 5,000 word portion of my manuscript that is giving me problems with transitions. It is a list of seven market failures that lead to wasted energy. It now has decent transtions between sections in one sense, in that opening of each section after the first either compares itself or contrasts itself to the section preceding. But while that at least leads the reader from section to section, it does not make for snappy section openings. Earlier versions were snappier, but were pretty abrupt, and not really transitions. Anyone care to look this over, and make suggestions? I mainly need recommendations for section beginnings, so you won't need to read the whole thing - just the beginning and end of each of seven sections.

My profile is good if you feel like you can help me out. Thanks.