Wife going back to work

Daily Goal: 500 words.
I wrote 2-300 words.
Sundays/Stories Finished: 8/0.

I never managed to post an update yesterday and today I'll have to make a fast update so I can get some sleep. I have had two stabs at an ending for the story. I have also started to type it in. The process I hope to get done tomorrow is to type it in and then do a quick edit before I get someone else to take a look at it.

My wife is starting work again tomorrow. Me and the baby will have 8 or 9 hours or fun together. I am sure I will be full of energy to write after that ordeal. It will be hard, but I think I'll manage. How I'll fit in writing with the wife working again I don't know.

I've written a little short flash fiction thing yesterday. I didn't have any good ideas on how to end the story, so I just ended up writing something else. It was just a short little funny scene.

The story on hold for a day

Daily Goal: 500 words.
I wrote 0 words.
Sundays/Stories Finished: 7/0.

I should have finished the story today. I got a break in the middle of the day, when the wife took the baby out to see a friend, but I relaxed and read up on roleplaying.

The roleplaying group met for the first time today and our first session might be in a week already. I looks like it is going to be great fun. I hope the baby will stay healthy and sleep soundly whenever we meet. I can't imagine it will be popular if I'll have to rush home or cancel at the last minute. Everyone of us has busy schedules and it takes quite some effort, I imagine, for us all to plan a meet.

The short story has taken a break for a day, but I hope to get the draft finished tomorrow. My wife is planning another trip with the baby, so there might be ample opportunity. If not, I should still hopefully have enough energy in the evening to finish the last page or two of the draft.

An unexpected break for writing

Daily Goal: 500 words.
I wrote 338 words.
Sundays/Stories Finished: 6/0.

Despite the accuracy, I didn't type anything today. It was all written in longhand. I had to count, because for a while I thought I might have broken the 500 mark. Imagine my disapointment when the tally only got to 338 words. Two large sections where I had crossed out and rewritten several sentences tricked me in my initial estimate.

338 words are better than nothing. My girl took an unusually long nap today. I took a nap too, as I usually do when she sleeps, but I got up after half an hour and thought that she would wake up any minute. More than an hour later I was still writing, enjoying an unexpected break. My wife and I got our payback tonight, however, the baby had no plans on keeping to our usual schedule and putting her to sleep was a two-hour ordeal (with waking up three times in the next three hours afterwards, as she usually does, thrown in; but she is usually easy to lull back to sleep during those interuptions).

So I am tired, as usual. I am finishing my blog and I plan to, stupidly, waste half an hour of good sleep and read a chapter or two in _A Confederacy of Dunces_ before I go to bed. I am liking the book so far. It is very funny and I love the effort John Kennedy Toole has put into dialects - something I wouldn't have the skill or patience to do myself. It really makes the characters jump out from the page much faster if you can tell them apart when they speak.

What a great novel Stoner is

Daily Goal: 500 words.
I wrote 0 words.
Sundays/Stories Finished: 5/0.

Another week has gone by, flown by it seems, and I have not made much progress on the writing front. I still spend most of my free time reading. _Stoner_ is really good. I tried in vain to recomend it, describing the beautiful prose, but after a few tries I just gave up. If you feel like a melancholy campus novel, then give it a try. You'll be sold before the first chapter is over.

My parents are in Denmark for a month. They, of course, want to see their granddaughter, which means that quite a few days the next month will be very busy. Today I've excused myself from writing, by blaming John Williams's beautiful prose, the author of _Stoner_, but I really wouldn't have written anything even if I had nothing to read. I am just so exhausted when the baby finally falls asleep that there is not much energy left.

Besides, she has awoken three times in as many hours, forcing me to rush in to replace the pacifier or whisper a comforting, Shhh. Each episode pulls me from _Stoner_, but the reading is easily resumed once I manage to calm the baby and sneak out. I do no think that writing would survive the interuptions so effortlessly.

Keeping the story alive

Daily Goal: 500 words.
I wrote 50 words.
Sundays/Stories Fiinished: 4/0.

I wrote a little scene today, it couldn't have been more than 50 words, but it keeps the story alive in my mind. At the rate I am going, I take the amount of time that one would use to write a novel to write a single short story. If I do get it finished, sent to some publisher and rejected, however, I think I will be quite content.

My baby has started crawling. A month ago she started on the first steps towards crawling, trying to get her balance on her hands and knees. I thought, at that time, for sure she would be whizzing around in a couple of days. The days, however, went by with almost no improvement. If you would have asked me a week ago, I would have been sure that she would never crawl and was just going to skip the stage and start walking.

Then suddenly yesterday and today, she started putting one hand a little bit out and found she could edge slowly forward. All her energy seems bent on it now and she is making great improvements. She still looks like a chameleon (I am sure I didn't spell that right) rocking a bit back and forth with each step, but I am extatic. I am sure she'll be whizzing around now in no time.

I hope my own journey into writing shares some of those traits. The slow climb seems dreadfully difficult and slow; but, hopefully, there will come a plateau where I can see I've made some distance and gotten to another stage.

Time creeps, time flies.

Daily Goal 500 words.
Yesterday I wrote 0 words.
Sundays/Stories Finished: 3/0.

I think days are dreadfully long, now that I have a kid. Random people, distant relatives, strangers on the bus, keep saying, Enjoy it while it lasts, before you know it she'll be grown up. You've heard that cliche, I am sure. I don't think it's all true, but it isn't all wrong either. Days with a kid are dreadfully long, sometimes, but on the other hand, you never really get to the bottom of things.

One example is the dishes (I don't own a dishwasher). I used to like washing dishes. Doing them gave me back some energy after dinner. Otherwise, I'd just sit in front of the computer after eating and waste the evening. Then you meet someone - in my case I got married - and you are suddenly doing the dishes for two people. It is still enjoyable, but on occasions it becomes a little bit of a hassle: If you don't watch out a mountain can pile up. A baby uses up an incredible amount of plates and cups and spoons: much more than a grown-up.

Now I am doing the dishes for what seems like four people and I have to do it while taking care of a baby. Furhtermore, I can't do them while she is asleep, or she'll wake up, which means I'll have to have them washed before she goes to bed at around seven o'clock in the evening.

I worry about them constantly. It is the same with doing the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, and the shopping. The amount of milk one buys every trip to the mall. I have to bring my school bag, lest my arms fall off on the way back home. It is even a relief, when she's good, to bring the baby, because you can pile the groceries into the carriage.

What my point is - about time perception - is that it seems that one never really finishes anything. There isn't enough time to do all the stuff that needs doing. At some point in the future, I imagine, I will finally finish that metaphorical pile of dirty dishes. Suddenly I will find myself with time to spare again: time to think and to reflect. In hindsight I'll think, How time just flew away.