Writing Update

The good news is that I'm a little more than 17,000 words into "Sneakatara Boatman and the Quest for the Lost Lumberjacks."  That's the short novella I'm writing for my kids for Christmas.  That word-count puts me at the start of Chapter 9, maybe two-thirds of the way through what I'm hoping will be a slightly less than 30,000-word story. 

I've gotta admit that it's going pretty well. I put down something like 1,200 words on Friday, maybe another 2,500 or so during the weekend, and something on the order of a thousand this morning on the train ride into the office. That stuff is all good; it's been a long, long time since writing has come this easily for me. 

What's bad is that I went to bed last night thinking about the story. That was stupid.  And I know better. You always want to write your ideas down before you go to bed, that way you can sleep soundly knowing that they're safe in your notebook. That's why I keep a notebook. But I didn't do that this time, meaning that I instead laid there for literally half the night trying to work out little story points that I promptly forgot this morning once I actually sat down to work on the story again. Argh!

So bottom line, now I'm sleepy as all Hell. Pleased with the progress I've made but definitely feeling like I've paid the price for my art, such as it is. 

*sigh*

The act of writing isn't too hard for me. But learning to write, to balance the obsession--all of my little obsessions--with everything else in my life has been a real bear at times.