I went out to write last night, tired after a long week and not entirely sure I wanted to be social. But as always, it was the best thing to do. Thursdays, as my friend Gretchen says, are a bit like church.

Now there's just one more workday to get through: a morning of editing and class prep, then an afternoon meeting, then another round of firewood stacking as I slide from work into the weekend.

But the floors are washed, and the editing trudges on. I wrote a couple of messy drafts last night, and I slept in clean sheets. The class plans are starting to cohere; and though the book-launch prep is making me nervous, I persist. I'm struggling hard to get out from under the cloud of "who will bother to come," but I understand that this is my own stupid psyche talking, that it's just another manifestation of postpartum book-publishing gloom. I wish I didn't have it, but at least by now I recognize the enemy.