Back On A Regular Schedule?

     Maybe.  More or less.  For a few days, I'm back to my usual hours.

     Might even get the weekend off and even -- if nothing comes up -- have Friday off, too, since I worked Sunday.  That's a chicken I won't count until it is hatched, has grown feathers and is laying eggs of its own, but even the prospect of it is thrilling.

     What's not so thrilling is the amount of work still left on my project and all of things I will have to get caught up on.  But it's a job and thank goodness for that.

*  *  *
     I haven't been writing, which bothers me.  Reading a bit, and fairly wide-ranging, at least.  The writer's group I was attending (and have had to skip the last two meetings of) has gone in a direction I'm not sure about -- from the usual workshoppy mutual critiquing of 2,000 - 5,000 words by each member every month to concentrating on one member's long-form work every meeting, 10,000 - 25,000 words from a single member, a different person very month.

     Part of that's no big deal -- it's the same number of words, and if you haven't guessed by now, in addition to the direct benefit of having other writers analyze your work, a big part of these groups is learning how to read fiction like an editor -- what works, what doesn't, if the focus and points of view are sensible and consistent, word use, sentence length (you're not going to believe this, but I have an issue with habitually building sentences that even James Joyce might have looked at and suggested they might be a little long) and a zillion other things that one does not, generally, look for when composing first or even second drafts of a written piece.  That practice, first applied to other people's prose in which you haven't got an emotional investment, then helps you learn how to look at your own work with a critical eye.

     So that part's fine.  What isn't fine for me is the change means there's very little pressure to do my own writing between meetings.  I think I need that; it's too easy for me to get distracted or busy and write nothing.

     It's something I'm still mulling over.