NaNoWriMo is a few days away. I have participated before but found myself in a muddle of words halfway through and never finished the story I started, stalled with the mid book blues. I just read a wonderful essay by Steven Johnson with the same title as this post https://medium.com/the-writers-room/8ee301a21ef1 My compulsive love of editing, tweaking every paragraph, every fifteen minutes has made me my own worst enemy. Next month I am going to shoot the editor, stifle that mistress of correction until November 30th and write, write, write. Maybe I will find that I should stick to picture books where I can pick at every word until the few hundred I've written make a perfect text.  The longer books I've began have led me to dead ends and maybe now I've found the answer why.  You can't move forward if you keep looking back.