I am completely hyphen incompetent. I never knew that before. And I long to hyphenate hyphen-incompetent. Doesn’t it look better that way? Isn’t it easier to read and understand?

“Trying to” — why do all my characters try to do things? Can’t they sometimes just DO the thing? And speaking of that, what is my obsession with the word “just”? Do I really need to use it five times a chapter?

Editing is… ongoing. All of my quotation marks, both single and double, point in the right directions. My em dashes are actual em dashes and not double hyphens. Only one of my characters ever uses a dry voice and only one ever has a wry smile.

But I am only on the 5th chapter and my frustration level is rising. Lots of people liked the story, I remind myself. But when I edit, every perfectionist instinct I have kicks into over-drive. Gah. Should overdrive be hyphenated? Over-drive, overdrive… if this was a book, I’d spend at least a couple minutes looking it up and reading definitions. Fortunately, it’s a blog post. But I did backtrack there to delete “just” as in “just a blog post.”

My wrists are tired. I’m usually good about taking breaks, because I’ve seen people with bad carpal tunnel syndrome and no, thank you, not interested in doing that to myself. But it’s been a long couple of days. And as soon as my iPad gets enough charge that I can keep reading, I’ll get back to it.

It’s so close that I can taste it. The day I post Time on Amazon, I’m getting sushi for dinner. I don’t care that I can’t afford it. I’m doing it anyway. Meanwhile, I had no idea that “anymore” was a colloquialism. Live and learn.