Phew. Well, I got the first 3/5ths or so of the book going in one more or less cohesive glop.

And now I’m gonna shove it into the proverbial drawer for a week or two, because I have absolutely no distance from it whatsoever, and can’t tell who’s whining too much and who’s an idiot and whether we’re cooking with torment or merely reheating with angst.

Meanwhile, unrefined tidbits are starting to poke at my brain–random lines and scenes and character ideas and whatnot. I have no place to put them yet, so I’m left jotting one-line notes to myself, or writing a couple of paragraphs of dialog that would require a few hundred pages to become sensible. Since I’ve been dancing on the fine edge of creative burnout for awhile anyway, this doesn’t really help, but I should probably be grateful that there are ideas, instead of nothing in particular.

Most of them aren’t things I could simply turn into a painting and lay to rest that way, unfortunately. And I need to get painting again, I’m getting wracked with guilt for not painting. I’m having a hard time counting writing as Doing Real Work at the moment–not that it’s not hard, god knows, but the lack of an immediate financial pay-off is tough. While I’ve kinda gotten to a point where I have the luxury of spending time on stuff like that, in hopes that it’ll pay off eventually, I still haven’t quite overcome the feelings of guilt, and the little voice saying “Quit screwing around, do something that’ll pay the bills already!”

Eh, it’ll work itself out, I suppose…