A slog

Writing this morning took some discipline. Got the usual 90 minutes/800 new words in. Essentially added a new scene to Chapter 2 and set myself up for the next new scene I need to do. (Contrary to my hopes, this chapter is not going any faster than the last one, which means the rewrite could take 30 weeks or so. I'm not liking that idea at all.)

I'm proud of myself for making myself do that much, because I had plenty of disincentive. It's one of those days where I'm running on fumes b/c of lack of sleep. I was up late obsessing.

Have you seen any news stories in the last few years in the "kids these days" vein about college students who are less mature than back in the day and who go so far as to bring their parents to advocate for them with their college teachers when they're having a problem? The tone of those stories is always, "Can you believe this crap?"

Well, that actually happened to me yesterday. I caught a student plagiarizing a paper, and I told him to come to office hours, and when he showed up he had his mom with him. It was amazing! So amazing that I kept replaying it in my head all night.

I'm also off my game today because writing isn't actually the first thing I did. I'm backing bread for Thanksgiving and I needed to get the dough started first thing. That's why I usually bake bread on the weekends, so the necessity of starting the dough first thing won't interrupt the writing. Couldn't be helped today, so I had about an hour of work in the kitchen before I came to the writing desk.

Those are two fairly forceful energy sappers that could keep me from writing. They definitely did keep me from achieving as much as I wanted, but I'm taking credit for keeping the ball moving forward anyway.