I should be able to come up with better titles for my entries. Not that this entry is going to be any more interesting than the title implies. Actually, it would probably be helpful if I had some time management skills, because then I would probably have the discipline to be filling out the log for today (lots of dinosaurs and splitting rocks with hammer and chisel) or doing some actual writing (of which there was none today) instead of writing a blog about how I have no time management skills. But it's 11:00 and perhaps I can be forgiven for wanting to do something fun and almost connected to writing.

I have progressed a little farther on the "short" (hah!) story I was working on, so there is a little forward movement to report. I managed to bring it to a close, but upon rereading it, I discovered that although the first 3/4 of the story was a lot better than I'd expected, the ending pretty much propelled itself off a cliff into a long abyss, it was that disconnected from the rest of the story. I also discovered that I introduce a lot of little threads into the story which pretty much just stick out all over the place, begging to be woven into something, somehow. This is, of course, what I get for trying to carve out a piece of something I was pretty sure was going to eventually be made into a novel. I do this all the time, so I don't know why I was surprised when it happened again.

The other thing is, I'm typing it up now (not today, of course, because I spent too much time on the computer googling "homeschooling ADD" and cleaning out the car), and it's longer than I'd estimated. I'm over 2000 words at this point, and only about 8 or 9 pages in. I have 43 handwritten pages. So I guess my handwriting was smaller than I thought. The word count does not bode well for marketing, particularly when I consider how much will have to be added to the story to really flesh it out right. Every now and then I start gnashing my teeth and wondering how long most YA books are. And then I start thinking that there's no way this could be a YA book. When I wrote the very last word, I thought to myself, "Oh, I see. It's going to be a prologue."

A really long prologue.

But I do not want to be writing this book. I have two other books in progress, and at least one of them is much more imperative at this time.

I have also gotten to the point where seeing novels in the bookstore, or the library, or pretty much anywhere is almost physically painful sometimes. I guess it's because I want this publication thing so bad, and it seems so close... yet so far away. Almost eighteen months of waiting so far. When I was a kid, when I first started writing books, there was no question in my mind that I was going to be a Capital A-Author some day, with books in the bookstore. That belief has carried me through a lot. It's only now, paradoxically when I should be most hopeful, that I'm starting to think that maybe that belief was only a load of crap.

It's the waiting, I guess. It does strange things to your mind. Anyway, it's making it hard to write. Which means I do things like spend fifteen minutes writing a blog entry when I could have been typing in a bunch of words on a story that may actually be another novel which may or may not have any kind of future.

And if you think you hear a lot of dull thuds accompanying this entry, that would be my head hitting the desk. Repeatedly.

This writing life is so exciting.