Writing news

After putting up a post about the difficulty of committing to writing, I promptly wrote nothing, on the blog or really anywhere, for weeks.

But an email that came in yesterday will change all that. To quote selectively:

Dear Horace,
Good news today--the outside reader has confirmed my instincts about your book project, calling it "a substantial, informative, and original piece of scholarship." How exciting! . . . I'll look forward to having the complete manuscript, when it's ready to send.

So if that doesn't inspire a commitment to writing, then, well, I might as well not be in this profession.