taking time between writing and editing is, hands down, one of the best things you can do to get a bit of distance to see if what you wrote achieves what you thought it did. (I know people work differently, but I don't think I know anyone for whom that's not true - I know people who don't want to go back because they're no longer interested in their story because they've moved on, but that's not really the same thing.)

Re the challenge thing, if you don't set it up to be an exchange challenge, most of the stress just - isn't. Esp if you let people post direct through a community and aren't doing hosting and so on.

Re rest of life - are you coming home this week? Mostly I feel like I haven't seen you in forever, but also, if you're not around, I need to arrange cat-cover for Ariel for Saturday.