I'm Back...

Posted by Jennifer B. at The Writing Cocoon. 

I finally made it home last night, a little before nine o'clock.  It was an exhausting trip home, but it is over. Now I just have to reset my body to GMT and get myself back into my routine.

I'd like to say that I got a lot of writing done over the last ten days, but it didn't happen. A few times I wrote down some notes and ideas, but I wasn't in the mood to really write. Well, that's not entirely true. I didn't have the down time, the space, and the time alone I needed to get in the flow of writing. I didn't make it happen.

Despite getting to bed at the normal (for England) hour last night, I woke up with a fuzzy head and the will to do very little. Hoping to clear my mind, I took a walk around the park. It didn't help. Now I'm fighting off sleepiness, and it isn't even dinner time. 

So, I'm a little disappointed that I didn't manage to prioritize my writing time while I was away, and now I'm faced with the task of rebuilding my routine once again. Maybe I'm making a mountain of a mole hill, but a whole week off feels like a set-back. The routine is important to me, and life keeps getting in the way.

I think I went wrong when I didn't set myself specific writing tasks for my travel time. Perhaps I knew this trip would be too difficult. The jet-lag will steal some time, too, now that I'm back.  My goal was to have the first draft of this novel finished before July 7, and with that in mind, tomorrow's goal is to write at least five hundred words.

Something else I'm contemplating - joining this writing challenge here. Do I have the nerve? I was thinking about starting to submit next January, but why wait? This challenge might give me the extra support/push I need.

I'm also trying to finish a novel for The Women of Fantasy book club. Yes, it's true, I couldn't even finish reading a novel. I managed to sleep on the planes and trains, and very little reading took place. We'll see how many pages I get through tonight before my eyes start to cross. Two days left to read this month's book!