I will just come out and say it. “I wrote another novel.”

I thought I was done with it, that I’d sworn off forever, that taking it one day at a time I would never write a novel again.

I had turned my life around and had some good clean years. No novel writing. None. Nada. Nothing. I was a reader again, just a reader, and happy. My family was happy to have the old Orrin back. Everything was good.

It wasn’t an easy habit to kick. I went to the meetings. You know the ones: sad, recovering novelists gathered in church basements to support each other and be among people who understand. I comforted nervous newcomers, still trembling from not having touched a keyboard in seventy-two hours, and took them back to their apartments to make sure they deleted every bit of novel-writing software from their computers.

But the meetings and the helping others became annoying. Life had become full again. I was exercising, going to the movies, traveling, and being active in my family life. I didn’t have time for all that nonsense.

But without the meetings, the thoughts slowly crept back in.

It started innocently enough. I could write for Medium. Little humorous articles about aging, or law, or cooking. Whatever struck…

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