Sickness Does Not Help Creativity

I work with little kids. Ages five to sixteen. Last week, eight of them were sick. One sneezed in my face, another wiped his nose and then touched my hands, and yet another drank from my water bottle, and then told me about it later. So it's no surprise that I woke up the other day with a stuffed nose and every cell in my body screaming for more sleep. I can feel my computer eyeing me in bed, and I feel terrible.

So I decided to set some goals, instead of just going nuts and writing for eighteen hundred hours, while I should be eating oranges and sleeping. About a year ago, I subscribed to Letters in the Mail from The Rumpus ($5 a month, people! Letters from authors every two weeks! It's awesome!), and one of the authors, I forget which, said that he set small goals for himself, maybe 100 words a day, and then worked his way up to 1,000 words a day. Well, that was an excellent idea, especially since I've been participating in NaNoWriMo for the last three years. So 1,000 words a day is easy compared to writing a novel in a month!

That is my goal. Sort of. 1,500 words per day. I thought that this would be helpful, but then I decided to James Patterson it and maybe work on two books at once. We'll see out that works out.

What are these two stories about? Well. Isn't that the million dollar question? They're both young adult books, because they're both about love, and isn't love so much more potent when you're a teenager? One is semi-autobiographical, and the other is...semi-something I wished would have happened when I was thirteen. I've been thinking about the latter one for about twelve years, and I just finally worked it out to where I think I might have something there. The former....well, it deals with bipolar disorder and how it affects those we love the most.

Yes, I am the Queen of Being Vague. But these are just super rough drafts right now. Hopefully I'll have more to it on my next post. I promise to explain them in more detail. In between being sick and immersing myself in Downton Abbey.