I’m at a writing retreat called Despite Excuses, up along the California coast. One week, nine writers, an amazing view of the ocean, and words words words.

This retreat is called “Despite Excuses” because there will always be excuses, reasons to not write, other things that take priority or precedence. But we get together somewhere beautiful for a week and we write anyway.

We workshopped my next novel for an hour before dinner. I got great feedback and new ideas, and was proclaimed “ready to go and write this thing.”

I’ve tried to write this thing before. This novel’s been in my head since 2010. It’s the hard science fiction manuscript that brought me to LaunchPad. I have eight(ish) chapters of a draft, which I apparently wrote to bring myself to the realization that I was using the wrong point of view, and possibly starting at the wrong part of the story.

Today I’m converting those 14,000(ish) words from first to third person, to see what they feel like there. Then I’ll build on them. They might all stay, they might all go, but I need to look at my foundation to decide whether it fits the house I want to build.