The Story That Wouldn't

Long, busy weekend that... like, my boss's boss asked me how I was doing, and I had to stop and think about it... for about thirty seconds. Because, I mean, right now I honestly don't know how to answer that. Or I don't know how to answer that honestly. 

We had a week of minimal power and water, with everyone trapped in the house. Then we went straight back to work for another week. The sheer amount of dirty laundry in our house... well, I mean, that was most of my weekend. Everything I did this weekend, I did between washing, drying, and sorting loads of laundry. And dishes; dear ye immortal gods, the dishes. 

Beautiful Wife spent most of yesterday just sort of... collapsed and reading. She has things she needs to be doing for work, but there's some extended family drama that's causing a lot of stress -- and doesn't seem likely to resolve any time soon -- and I think she just needed a day of downtime. So I'm just basically trying to keep everything going and give her some room to recuperate. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly (given all that) last week was not a good week for writing. I tried to switch off the weird-dream, venture-out-of-the-citadel-and-across-the-strange-outside-world story and at least pull together an opening for the "Hogwarts for Monsters" and... I don't know, maybe that was a mistake. I know what I want to set up for, but when I tried to write out the setup it just... wouldn't come. I don't know if it's not ready yet, or if I would have had the same problem with the weird-dream project. Last week was exhausting in that "the crisis is past, but none of us have had a chance to recover" sort of way, so it could be either one. 

Writing takes energy. 

So my current strategy is basically the same as last week: get everybody down to bed, take a few minutes to calm my brain and look over story stuff, and then try to write the sorcery-school-for-monsters story. If that doesn't work, read the last couple of page of the weird-dream project and see if I can pick up from there. If that doesn't work, brush my teeth and go the hell to bed. I just need to remember to stick to the plan, and not stay up hoping things will shake loose when they clearly aren't. 

Also, keep doing laundry.