I’m watching the pumpkin fatten in the neighbor’s garden across the alley, I’m watching the spider’s web expand in the corner of my kitchen window, I’m watching as the tiny buds on the African violet on my writing table swell, then open, then shout “I’m here,” to the morning sun.

Day-by-day, at my kitchen table in the square between two windows, I open my notebook and write. I’m halfway through notebook #8 now in the notebook draft of my memoir, which I started on June 16, 2016. I have the ending, but I don’t have the beginning yet. I have over 125,000 words, far too many for any kind of finished manuscript.

But I’m only on the notebook draft. After this, I’ll do my first edit as I work from the handwritten notebooks, transferring some, but not all, of the scribbled pages into Scrivener and I’ll write new ones, too. This will become my first manuscript draft and then, day-by-day, draft #1, #2, #7, ad infinitum. Who knows how long until I can say “The End.”

All I know if this: the pumpkin will fatten and fatten until it is ready to be someone’s jack-o-lantern, the spider web may trap a creature or two before Carolina uses her cleaning brush to knock it off the screen, the African violet on my writing table will lose its blooms, and pause and wait, and then create new ones.

Day-by-day, the pumpkin, the spider, the violet, and I will do what we do every morning. Day-by-day is what matters.