Writing progress: Shadow Academy

So after taking last week off, I dove back into work this week. Unfortunately, owing in no small part to Murphy's Law, everyone and their pet badger tried to get in touch with me last week about things that they needed to have done. As a result, it's feeling more than a little like if I finish all the stuff for this week, I'm going to need another week off to recover. 

I'm also noticing, as I work through one issue after another, just how burnt-out I'd gotten and how much I probably should have taken that week off earlier. But I digress...

In my youth, I used to just sit down, start a story, and write it straight through, more or less chronologically. (I wasn't usually messing around with experimental story structures; I was in my teens and I wanted adventure, so it was usually just a matter of Start Adventure, Have Adventure, Finish Adventure.) I'm not sure that's working as well for me now; in my youth, I also had a lot fewer distractions and could just lean in and lose myself in the story. That's... not so easy anymore. There's a lot going on, and this week has been particularly fraught.

Still, I got about three pages of opening done on Sunday, and I think I can just run from there (with maybe a bit of edit/rewrite in the last couple of paragraphs) and if I can, I will. I've currently got something like sixteen or eighteen pages of "first chapter" that is basically a disconnected collection of attempted openings, and I need to just settle on one and go -- before this project ends up as hopelessly tangled as the last one. That's not even mentioning how much I'd like to just get on with it, already. 

But I haven't touched it since Sunday. Monday night was DnD, so that's understandable; but Tuesday and Wednesday nights were just weird, and stressful, and exhausting. Nobody warns you that when you become an adult, most of your time will be spent trying to keep up with dozens of regular chores and another dozen or so not-quite-trivial things that will inevitably disrupt your best attempts at keeping a schedule. 

Don't even ask how I'm doing on the laundry. 

So I'm going to do the "re-read and pick up at the break" approach tonight, and if I don't get anything more written I'm going to be sad and angry and probably cranky into the bargain. Even if it's not writing-writing; I might just sit down and sketch out a batch of minor characters, so I have some descriptions to reference when Darian finally reaches the gods-cursed school...

Anyway. Progress can come in more than one form; I just wish it felt like I was making any kind of sustained progress, instead of these frustrating fits and starts.