Finally, the day's arrived when I can give my daughter and her friends the book I wrote starring them. It seems like kind of a cool graduation present.

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This has been a long road, packed with urgency and stress. Normally you write a book until the story is fully told, not until time's up. At least that's how I've done it.

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In this case, I had to shape a story with time as my major constraint, which was weird. Questions like:

• Do I have enough time to develop a particular sub-plot?

• How many words does it look like I'll be able to write?

• What themes can I explore with the time and word count I'm targeting?

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I don't know that I'd do it this way again. Ideally I would be smart enough to plan things out better so there's more time. But I'm not.

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So here we are.