Hoped to make it to 40,000 words by the end of this week but it was not to be, partly because it was a moving target due to the last several hundred words being outline notes, but mostly because the offspring had other ideas. These days I'm having trouble writing one-handed as he tends to thrash while I'm feeding him like he's practicing frontcrawl, so I have to arm-wrestle him with my spare hand in order to prevent myself from being repeatedly throatpunched. Best job in the world, my ass.
No worries, I tell myself. I'll just write during his morning naptime. Oh, except he never got the memo that he is supposed to have regular naps. So Alice "I wrote during my kids' naptimes" Munro is the superior mommy writer after all, as she was actually able to get her kids to sleep. For that alone she deserves accolades and respect. And I see why J.K. Rowling would have written Harry Potter in coffee shops with her daughter in a stroller; the journey there would have put her daughter to sleep, thus buying Rowling some writing time.
Such is life, and as I've said before, life experience has made me a better writer, albeit a less prolific one. But that's okay. Jeffrey "Virgin Suicides" Eugenides publishes a novel every 10 years. Ted Chiang has only published about a dozen stories in the past 20 years. If I had the choice, I would rather be Ted Chiang than Stephen King. Wait, bad example--King makes pots of money with his dignity still intact. You know what I mean.
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On a related note, I won't be making it to SFContario this year. Who'd've thought that babies are so time-consuming? (I hope that's understood to be facetious.) I haven't figured out how I fit with cons these days anyhow; I feel I'm too out of the loop to sit on panels, but attending panels doesn't teach me anything new anymore even though I enjoy them.
