I think I'm making some progress in the rewrite because all the signs are there.

PENGUINS OF PANIC
The doorbell rang and, silly me, I opened the door without peeking through the window first. In came three extremely distressed Penguins of Panic and the tip of their iceberg.

"You have to stop now," warned the tallest one. "You could be making better use of your time by trying out a new recipe."

"Or posting items up on eBay," suggested the one hovering by the shoe rack. I caught him fondling my new fall boots and shot him a look. His flipper dropped behind his back.

"Is that all?" I asked, pulling the hairdryer out of my back pocket and flipping it on.

Okay, it wasn't in my back pocket, but it sounds a lot better than "I raced into the bathroom and dragged out the entire contents of the vanity, searching for my hairdryer, which I had left on the tub that morning because I was too lazy to put it away..."

The gang of three backed up, standing between the hairdryer blast and their iceberg.

"We'll be back human," sneered Tall Penguin. "With dry ice."

SHINY NEW IDEAS
It was just a few days ago when I was lamenting to Michelle about how I can't seem to think of any great book ideas besides the one I've just written. (Well, I still think it's great right now, ask me next week though.)

Then I got the triple whammy this morning. Three nifty ideas - right when I was supposed to be evaluating my revised story arc and character motivation.

So I rubbed my hands together with glee, wrote down a few lines for each and then placed them into my shiny new idea box. Every writer should have one. You can even get a matte one if you're not into the shiny thing. Mine is also made of some sort of tin so I can stick magnets on it. Way cool.

These two happenings are making me feel good about my somewhat sluggish progress. I can't even begin to fill in word counts at this point since everything is being done offline. Longhand. In all caps because my handwriting comes across as in a different language when I try to read it. Like Latvian. Hopefully I won't feel that I'm yelling at myself when I type it all in a few weeks from now. :::puts Dr. Phil on speed dial:::

Okay, time for some ice cream...