Six writers in a Tacoma coffee shop and four of them flipped their whole thing? That is either the most useful writing exercise I have ever heard of or you just accidentally tricked your group into therapy. Either way, I want in. The cheating husband guy is the one that gets me, because he did not even switch genres, he just quit. That is a guy who wrote the thing he thought a prompt wanted the first time and then ran out of fake juice on round two. I have done a version of this with a poetry group back in college, same prompt three semesters apart, and my own stuff went from trying to sound deep to writing about my dad's truck, which is way less cool but at least it was true. Eight months is a smart gap because it is long enough that people forget the trap but short enough that they are not totally different humans yet. Just do not tell them it is the same line next time, the second you say that, everyone starts performing for the experiment instead of just writing.

Hit ten years in the trade and the only number I track is how many times I've dropped a panel cover on my foot, which is way more than I'd like to admit. That pic of every can before you touch a wire is smart though, and it probably saved you more headaches than the counter ever will. Keep that cheat sheet taped in your lid, because the day you toss it is the day some oddball panel shows up.