Today in Mommy-land…
I rediscovered my old 2014-2015 “Today in Mommy-land” posts today, and oh my word-! I’m so glad I wrote those! It’s not only a great record of B-Bug’s babyhood, but it’s a great snapshot of what the writing life looks like during those early, sleep-deprived months of new parenthood. After reading a month’s worth of nearly daily updates from those days, and given the bizarre nature of the world these days, I’ve decided to pick up the habit once more. Just brief daily (or near daily—we’ll see how it goes!) check-ins to document the passing of the days.
Today, for instance, I got crazy lucky and Goldbug napped for almost THREE HOURS this morning in his swing. It took me some time to realize that was what was happening, but then capitalized on it as best I could to get some writing in and to finish up some other life tasks that have been weighing on me.
But once he woke up, it was pretty much all go for the rest of the day. Spent a good chunk of time helping B-Bug with some of his school-from-home work, which he cooperated with fairly well. Then, being Pizza and Movie Night here at Chez Slater, we watched Sleeping Beauty and, after B-Bug went to bed, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which was a movie…apparently. In all truth, it was fine, but watching it you get an eerie sense that AI are already writing our movies for us, just culling generic action-flick dialogue and plot points and randomly generating a film. That said, I’m still a Mothra fan.
Today in Writer-land…
Got a little work done today, but mostly thinking work. The hardest thing about writing during these infant times is that you don’t always have the mental space to ruminate on what you’re going to write before you have the time to work (at least I don’t). So today, I mainly did some summarizing, just for the upcoming chapter. I find my plotting/pantsing sweet spot is perhaps like using a flashlight in a dark hallway: plot just enough ahead to not trip over my own feet, but not so far ahead that I see what’s REALLY lurking ahead… Still, any work in these mad days is good work as far as I’m concerned, so hooray!