Well, I finished the story finally. It is, for now, called "Except the Weather" and is just over 22 pages long. Yikes. I have not posted it to the website because it is really really rough and because I may hate it. Perhaps I'm just a bit prejudiced because it took so much of my time. Also, it dredged up some memories (not in the story itself) that have made me pause to think.

So then I didn't really feel like writing for a couple of days and whined about it in my journal. Then last night, I started making some notes for the e-book I wanted to write about writing (this for my students). I realized that I had been putting that off and that I'll be back in school in less than a month. I'm am looking to put together a short (hopefully) book that is part how-to, part encouragement, part my philosophy about the art and importance of writing. Many of the "chapters" will be made up of handouts and presentation materials I've already done for my class. Anyway, I had hoped to have something put together for my students when classes began, so I could put it on the class webpages and refer to it through out the semester. Today I wrote about five pages on it. I worked on an introduction, a chapter about the general practice of reading and writing and part of a chapter about active reading. It is all draft stuff, really rough, but it felt good to get it out.

The good news is that I also wrote over 700 words on the novel, finishing the eighth chapter. I was beginning to feel that I might not get back to it. I even jotted a couple notes about the next couple chapters. Now, if I can only get back to a regular schedule!

But alas! Tomorrow we go to Six Flags for the twins' birthday. But I'm not going to be discouraged, at least not today.