I can't not

I slept til 10:30 this morning (and ohhh it was nice), and now I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee (still doing okay with the half regular/half decaf!) wishing I didn't have to leave for work in half an hour.

Once upon a time, sleeping in and then sitting at my computer with a mug of coffee meant I could write for an hour or two. But that was before I got the full-time position at work, before I started back to school. I was in a weekly writing group last summer, which helped keep me on track, as well. I also didn't have friends in town to hang out with. They were all either too busy, or had moved away.

Now I have new friends to sew with, drink coffee with, and go out with. I'm working at least 32 hours every week, on top of 3 hours of class and about that amount of homework per week. I have no writers group, and IF I have some time during my days off where I'm not playing catch-up from the previous week, I want to sit and do nothing: watch movies or play around on the internet.

Well, no more! I miss writing, I reeeeeeally miss it, and I can't not write anymore! No, I don't have long, four-hour chunks of time in which I can sit at home or in a coffee shop and type and type. But I can FIND little one-hour pieces here and there. Between homework and bed, or between work and supper. On the days when I don't work until the afternoon, I could get up an hour earlier to write. (I could also get up earlier to do my poor, abandoned Wii Fit. I seriously need to, I hate feeling like I'm 80 years old when I get out of bed in the morning. Ow.)

Unfortunately, this is not a promise to start back up with Bernice's story, at least not yet. It's been long enough since I stopped that novel that I need to take a few days in a row to read back over it and find my place again. Get out my notes and the websites I've saved and really immerse myself in it. This will most likely happen in the two weeks I'll have between the end of this semester and the start of the Summer one. We'll see.

But I AM going to write more. I don't know WHAT I'm going to write, but at least it will be SOMETHING. Writing here on my blog only makes me long for more. Getting a little poetic in letters or journal comments isn't enough. I need characters, I need dialogue, I need stories. I need a project, is what I need, but I don't think I can start the big one (Bernice) for another month.

So I'll do what I can. I won't go crazy with it to the detriment of other aspects in my life. I do like having food in the house and a relatively clean place to live. I also like sleeping. (Oh, do I like sleeping.) But this can be done. Help cheer me on! Help me by bugging me now and then, "Have you written anything today? What did you write? For how long?" I need it! I need your help and, more than anything, I need to write. I don't know how I've survived this long without it.