Coco on her shit tonight. Not wanting to take meds meatballs. Not wanting to take her Dasuquin chews. Borkin, even though we’ve taken her out. Sigh. She’s a willful one, that lady. It’s one of the reasons why we love her so much.

Solid day today. Not nearly as good of a writing session as I had yesterday, but only because I didn’t have the breakthroughs I did yesterday that all kind of came in a rush. It was more normal today. The process of outlining, I realize, is part making sure the puzzle pieces fit together once I have them, and part just recognizing where the holes still are.

I need to nail down my crises in Act 2 and 3. Those are my biggest holes. The plot, the adventure, is starting to come together, but one of the reasons why I think book 1 was more successful story-wise than book 2 (for me, personally—I’m sure loads of people think the opposite) is because the crises were SO STRONG in all three acts.

I’ve got a solid Act 1 crisis. Just need to find the other two. And I will. Just going to take sustained effort. Once those are in place…man. The story starts to write itself.

…not really. I have to push out every fuuuucking word…but it really is the game-changer when an outline goes from concept to something I can actually SEE.

Netflix work was so-so. Little distractible today. Means I need to buckle down and kick ass tomorrow, which I will. I really, really appreciate the flexibility I have in my job to be able to do things like that, have a day where I’m not jamming away and then just be able to make it up the next day, or the day after to make sure I stay on track. It’s that kind of up and down time management that actually keeps me consistent over the long-view.

Coco’s not barking any more. She’s happy we’re in bed. Last night, she spent almost the entire night sleeping with her head snuggled right up on my shoulder. She’d snore right in my ear. I loved it. Boy Ira’s dreams coming true.

I remember Ryan and I were staying once with a friend out in Miami after the music conference there, and they opened their house up to us. Stayed the night with them that night. And they had kittens. A whole batch of them. One of them had three legs and he couldn’t get up on the bed by himself. He’d been skittish with us all that evening, but as we were getting in bed, I noticed he’d just stopped and was standing there looking at me. And I asked him if he wanted help up onto the bed, and I could tell from his body language that yes. He wanted up on the bed. So I reached to scoop him up, and he let me pick him up and plop him onto the bed. It was just this really…cute, unexpected sweet moment where we spoke the same language and I was able to give him exactly what he wanted.

He slept curled up on my shoulder, tucked into the crook of my neck the entire night.

I’ll never forget that.