School is Death to Creativity

I’ll admit that it’s just not school that’s shot the progress on my book in the foot.  A certain amount of time has been going into playing WoW as well.  Though, now that I’m over that initial starry-eyed can’t-get-enough stage, it’s easier to pull myself from the game to put my attention to things I have to do.  Like homework.  It’s harder to do it for revisions.

Part of it is waiting on my two new beta readers.  I don’t want to get too far into the book, then have to go back to make additional changes to chapters I’ve already fixed.  Especially with the first nine chapters or so, because they follow the original book so closely.  The original book that I rewrote twice, and edited the beginning of at least three times.  To be honest, I’m getting kind of sick of it.  I’m looking forward to slaughtering the later chapters, the new stuff, because it’s still new.  But the beginning has that been-there-done-that feeling.  Why would I want to take time from a game to do something that I’ve already done upteen zillion times before?

Because I want to get this book published.

Jacky’s been feeling neglected lately, and I can tell.  Normally the characters of Jacky are not the last things I think about when I go to bed.  They have been.  All weekend.  I have to focus hard to keep my thoughts from straying to Jacky when I’m trying to go to sleep.  Because once I start thinking about it, the ideas, the characters, the things I can do to make their lives hell, then I know I’m not going to be sleeping any time soon.  So no thinking about my books before bed.

Still, I have been thinking about them.  I’ve thought of things I’d like to do in a new book.  Great things that will either screw Jacky up permanently, ruin her relationship with her guardian angel, or get a piece of her soul sold to Lusivar.  (Satan, if you will, but not the devil.  A devil is a completely different beast and a demon, and my Satan is a demon.  Anyway…)

I read the first chapter of DEALING WITH DEMONS, and she did something she wouldn’t have done–maybe couldn’t have done–a year or two ago.  She had some good points, and good ideas.  She didn’t just say “that’s so good,” like she used to.  If she had more time in her life, I’d actually sign her up as a beta reader, but alas, if I waited on her, I’d never get it done.  Never ever.

Which leaves me thinking.  Maybe I shouldn’t wait.  Maybe I should take what I have and run with it.  Though that leaves me with only one chapter to work on.  Poking my BRs just might be in order.  I suddenly have a yen to work on the revisions.

And that, my friends, is the entire reason for blogging.