
- I don’t know what this guy is doing and it might hurt. Better tap.
- I know what this guy is doing and it hurts. Better tap.
- I know what this guy is doing and I try to get away. But he just cinches in tighter. I tap.
- I know what this guy is doing and I try to get away. But he gets me in a different position. I end up tapping.
- I know what this guy is doing but I have a game of my own. I try something. He gets away. He tries something. I get away. But eventually I can't escape, and I tap.
- Just like the above, only sometimes I get the other guy to tap!
After class, Sifu asked me how many books I had written and how the process has changed over time. The answer was 17 published + 2 done but not yet published + 1 half-done + the 3 I wrote before I got published + the 4 I wrote after I got published but that never found a home (none were mysteries or thrillers, which might explain why. Maybe).
That equals 27 books! Which explains why I can now write a book in a compressed timeline and without a super-clear idea of where it's going and still pull it off. So the more you write, the more you know about writing. And the more you grapple or do kung fu, the more you know about grappling or kung fu down in your marrow, deep down past thought. The more you trust the process.
Like in my current WIP, The Girl I Used to Be, I needed this character Jason to be a tweaked-out trucker. And I could write him tweaked out and paranoid or I could write him talking to his ex-wife about who might have killed their old friends years ago, but I couldn't write both parts of the chapter. They refused to go together, even though it said in my outline that that should happen.

Every day or at least every month, I'm getting to be better at kung fu/BJJ/writing. But I don't think I'll ever be this good: