Alison Strobel

I've been trucking along pretty well on my current manuscript--code name MuMe--and keeping up a 3000 word count every day. Then we got to today. Saturday is laundry day around here, but today it was also un-Christmas-izing the house and cleaning up a bit day, so I got no writing done at all. That was frustrating for me. I am SUCH a better person when I write. I have more patience with my kids, am nicer to my husband, and manage to find the energy to do things like cook actual meals when I've spent a decent amount of time writing. On the days that I don't, I'm more sullen, more impatient, more blah. (Though the blah part didn't hit so much today, probably because we went out for dinner to a new pizza place. But then I discovered I'd lost my purse since my Target run yesterday, which catapulted me way past blah and over to crappy mood land.)

So tomorrow I'll have 3000 words + today's 3000 + yesterday's 1000 that I didn't finish because Dan and I went and saw Avatar for his birthday. (Though seeing Avatar was worth it--not because it was The Best Movie Ever or anything, though I did thoroughly enjoy it, but because it was the first movie I've seen in the theater since FOREVER.) Tomorrow is going to be a long day in front of the computer, except that I don't get any more time to write than I usually do--typically 12:30 or 1:00 to 5:30. That's how long it takes me to get down 3000 words; I almost never go over my word count, and the few times I have it's been by less than 200 words. So instead of those 5ish hours feeling like 10, as they normally do, they'll feel more like 20. Ugh. I just keep telling myself I'll appreciate having pushed myself like this when I hit my deadline and have a month off before editing, as opposed to typing "The End" and then having to go straight back to the beginning. But in the moment it is so not fun.