Lessons:
1) You can't edit a blank page.
2) Trust the process. Not every day will be great, and writing will proceed unevenly, but having a baseline adds confidence and allows you to trust in incremental progress.
3) Sometimes you have to let the argument reveal itself to you. It will happen.

Adding the new chapters extended the timeframe of the book from 1960-1978 to 1912-1978. A big change that forced me to rethink my argument and overall narrative arc. It was only late in the process, in late October/early November, that the big picture became clear to me.

So long as I hit that word count (I think it was 366), I would be able to finish on time. There were many rearrangements, edits, reshuffling of argument, etc., some paltry days and some blockbuster word count days - but I trusted the process and sent the ms on Nov. 25, as planned.

I knew I wanted to have a full draft by Thanksgiving, so I took my goal wordcount, based on the holes in the manuscript identified after a writing group session in May and some more thinking (90,000), and set my writing days to three a week in Scrivener, which gave me daily goal.

When I had time to turn to editing in June, I had about 62,000 words mostly of stuff I wrote in 2018, when this was a rather new area for me. I'd been researching for 4 years at that point, but I wasn't really sure what I had. So I had to rethink my angle and write new chapters.

... in an extremely painful move in December 2021, I cut off six chapters from the manuscript.

Those are the core of this new book, basically chapters 2, 3, 4, 5/6, 8, and 10.

We are a mere breath away from mile high bangs — if someone makes an CFC friendly Aquanet (HFC?) it’s over

Well given the state of things…

What the hell is happening

I mean, so is showing up to a game in cords and a hoodie instead of a cocktail dress, so I can probably still do that

I think that her point was attraction changes with maturity