Total word count, hearthcraft book: 15,600
New words today: 2,161

Better. Much better. This was all done by transcribing some notes I made in bed the other night, and running away with ideas (ha, I originally typed ‘ides’) that needed to be explained or explored. If I can manage to do one or two longhand pages of notes before each writing day, things should stay this good. It was nice to sit down and work out things I’d thought up two nights ago; it felt like I’d already done the work, although a couple of pages of longhand notes do not directly equal eight pages of writing, of course. It’s more like I laid the groundwork.

Just looking at how parts of the manuscript are expanding, I can see that I’m going to end up cutting or reducing other areas that were going to be entire chapters. Them’s the breaks. The good thing is I can cut a handful of sections that I was including for the sake of completion. Instead, I can point to them and say, “This is worthy of exploration but outside the current scope of this book. I recommend researching it to further support your own work.”