Real Life Gets in the Way (Again)

My grand plan this weekend was to upload a chapter each of Evening Star and Pinned but Fluttering.

But as happens so often, life gets in the way.

A parent whose high school sophomore in my online writing class was upset about my apparent neglect of an area of research. So I spent the great majority of Saturday, my usual fan fic writing day, drafting a seven-page document on the reliability and authority of various non-print resources.

Yeah--exciting, eh?

It's true that it should have been treated in greater depth than I had planned, but researching, writing, editing, and posting that new lesson, plus re-editing and uploading four other lessons, took up all of my day Saturday. Right until 3 AM Sunday morning, to be precise.

With only four hours of sleep, I ended up napping for four additional hours on Sunday--day of rest and all that.

Which left me with my holiday to write my fan fics. Over the course of the week I had drafted Chapter 46 of Evening Star. It became quite lengthy for me--3300 words when my average is 2500. But something about it just isn't right, so although it's edited and technically DONE, I'm going to sleep on it another night and reread it--and possibly revise it--tomorrow.

Today (or I guess I should say "yesterday" since it's coming up on 2:00 AM Tuesday morning)--okay, Monday was devoted to meeting the deadline for the discussion questions for the literary analysis course I'll be teaching starting on Hallowe'en. My boss gave me through this weekend to complete them, which is a bit of an extension as they're usually due on the 1st of the month. So my day was spent drafting, revising, retooling, rethinking, etc., nine lengthy multiple-part questions for Anne of Green Gables.

At least I have that book practically memorized. ;)

So I confess: I have not even started writing Chapter 2 of Pinned but Fluttering. I have a decided idea where it's going--and it may go into some very, very dark and OOC corners before our hero steps in--yes, I'm unabashedly Team Edward. I hope to work on Pinned but Fluttering over the course of this week.

It could be that writing two chapters each weekend while teaching an online course may be unrealistic. I may have to consider alternating weekends--one week a new chapter for Evening Star, and the next a new chapter of Pinned but Fluttering.

It's a good thing that I'm almost finished with Evening Star, isn't it?

Okay, I hope that I've opened the portals so that creative story ideas will start flooding my brain, my fingers barely able to keep up with typing them into my groaning laptop. (Yes, it's rather archaic.)

Anyway, I'll take a fresh look at Chapter 46 of ES in the morning and see what is salvageable. Then I'll tackle Chapter 2 of PBF as I go through the week...teaching my online research course...running a household of six people and one dachshund convinced he's human...home educating three boys in grades 6, 9, and 11...driving my college-aged daughter to work two-to-three times/week and to community college twice/week...preparing for my literary analysis online course later this fall/winter...preparing to teach one high school expository writing class and one 4th-6th grade medieval history class at our co-op starting on the 15th...helping my chiropractor get started on his book...proofreading and editing for several churches and missionary groups...writing and updating the various blogs I keep up for myself and organizations near and dear...and enjoying the peace, quiet, and decided lack of interruption that writing at 2:00 AM, the house darkened and sleeping, affords.

Yeah. I'll get right on that.

After I go scream in a spidery corner for a few moments, that is....


--Cassandra