It’s Monday morning of my final week off work and the final four days of 2009. I am searching for some enthusiasm to do something besides curl up on the sofa with tea and read or work on other projects. What I NEED to do this morning is finish tea, exercise, and haul my butt to the office and start recording lectures. Followed by some work on the novella. I’d really rather jump straight in to Draft 2 of HiS. I’ve been thinking a lot about Marley, maybe because the book opens (in the revised version) right about now. It’s Christmas night in the first scene and the entire first act takes place between then and New Year’s. I’d love to ignore every responsibility I have and tear through that first act. It’s plotted out, in detail, and is going to give so much the better introduction to Marley. I really feel like I know her now where I didn’t before.
But I can’t.
Even if I was willing to temporarily abandon the novella, I can’t ignore getting these lectures done. It’s the thing that will give me time to write over the next semester–having all that coursebuilding crap done.
Besides, I’ve been working on this being able to finish stuff thing. Establishing the good habit of pushing through to the end, even when I don’t want to. I started this novella in mid-September, right after I put the first draft of HiS to bed. Given everything I’ve been juggling in the last three and a half months, I’m happy to be 2/3rds of the way through it. But I want to be finished. I’ve got 10-12k left, and I’m absolutely unenthused. Not because I’ve lost faith in the story. I’m still quite pleased with it. But I’m just…a bit bored. I’m ready to move on to something different. And yeah, I’m excited to start implementing some of the things I came up with to save HiS. I’d give a great deal to be finished with it by January 1st, but there is no possible way. So I’ll shoot for February 1st and pray.
Meanwhile, it’s time to squeeze in my workout.