I have been thinking about “The Booker Rebellion” for seven years. I have been writing it in my spare time for five. And yesterday, a day of furlough from my newspapering job, I finished the final draft of the first chapter. It is good. It is pointing, finally, in the correct direction. I am easy in my heart.

I don’t know why I had to write so many bad first chapters (I think at least seven).

Now to overhaul the next 19  chapters. Yesterday, as I began examining how this rewrite will fit with the rest of the story, I could feel things falling into place, like the tumblers in a lock lining up at last because I found the right key.