While I was working on that first chapter, the world stopped. My husband Victor and I had gone to New Orleans to celebrate the anniversary of our leap-day meeting in February 2016. Covid wasn’t a thing when we left Seattle, but right after we got home, the city locked down.
Instead of leaving the house at 5:30 AM and zooming down the freeway, I was leaving the couch at 5:59 AM and walking over to my desk. And instead of driving home and falling into a heap on the couch when 3:00 came, I switched over to my personal laptop and kept working without leaving that desk. Working from home allowed me to write more consistently, and having structure meant the chapters came more quickly. I finished the book in July 2021.
The trip, by the way, was awesome.