Hard work comes in many forms – the physical labor of digging in the garden or moving furniture, the intense work of reviewing legal documents to make sure there aren’t any loopholes, and the creative work of taking a chapter that contains the right information and instilling a tension that drives readers forward and a flow that makes them forget they are reading. Today I did the latter.

I started at nine this morning. I’ve completed the rewrite of half a chapter. That doesn’t sound like much but it’s a very important chapter revealing a lot of seemingly inconsequential pieces of information to the reader. More importantly, this chapter will set the main character’s motivation that drives the actions for the rest of the novel. It’s something that I have to get right. And so I’ve moved and rewritten dialogue, made parts active that were off screen, and written entirely new settings. Suddenly, it’s the end of the day and I feel good about what I’ve done. Hard work, as they say, it its own reward.