The significant reverse-spoiler effect

Yay: an actual study, with actual data, on spoilers and do-they-matter?

Of course, people with opinions are going to stay entrenched, regardless of what studies say. Those of us who really truly don't care either way will probably stay between the trenches, on what we like to regard as the high ground, and carry on ducking shells as they are lobbed over.

We get away with things because we can

I had neither planned nor expected this. If anyone had thought to suggest it, I would've said "Nah, Laurie's done that already, in The Game." But then suddenly there I was, in mid-speech, mid-building this guy's backstory: and hey, why not?

I visited ashrams in the Deccan and monasteries in the hills, I talked to holy men on the road. I think I met Kim, though he was an old man who’d almost forgotten that he’d ever been white.

And then, next page, I typed this -

And her, apparently, presumptively

- and wondered why it came so easily, in those particular words; and went downstairs to fuss with food and wine and such, and came back up and looked at it, and: oh, yes. If you just intrude an 'i', you get:

And heir, apparently, presumptively

- which makes a whole lot of entirely other sense. To my fingers, at least. So that's that.

Book Race: weekly confessional

Okay, racing people: it's time to 'fess up, if you choose to. This is week one, of five or eight or whatever your personal allotment is. How many words have you written, and are you on track for your personal goal?

Self: I have written 13,713 words this week. Which is almost exactly the number of words I need, if I am to bring this book in exactly at the contractual length and exactly on time. Uh-huh. That's gonna happen.

Declare yourselves below...