someday love will find you--break those chains that bind you

I was actually kind of excited about going back to work today, which was extremely surprising, given that I'd been on vacation for almost two weeks. But, this week is a short week, and next week is just a lead-up to a three-day MLK weekend. I don't currently have any plans to celebrate Dr. King's legacy, but I do intend to sleep and work on my romance novel. I wrote ~1500 words on the plane yesterday--pretty good, considering I was writing it out on paper because the distance between me and the seat in front of me was too small to allow for comfortable typing. At that rate, I should be able to write a full-length novel (~100,000 words) in 135 hours, which would probably end up being 2-3 months of steady writing outside of work. Of course, this doesn't count the time required to plot, develop the characters, or make extensive post-draft revisions. But, in the case of this novel, I already have a fairly strong idea of the plot, and approximately 28,000 words (not all of which is shared on zee romance novel blog--I stopped posting there due to concerns about theft, and should probably take down that blog altogether).

I'm all for making new year's resolutions and then failing to keep them, but I'm currently serious about finishing my novel in the next 3-4 months. Regardless of how busy I am at work, there are always improvements that I can make in my in-office efficiency so that I can keep some precious free hours outside of the office, and my weekends have generally been my own. This may result in some curtailing of friendship-related activities, but I'm not dedicated or stupid enough to avoid socializing entirely. However, I do want to make sure that I give myself the time necessary to finish this; I think I need at least an hour's span to make writing worthwhile, and preferably 2-3 hours, so I need to keep a couple of nights and at least one full weekend day free for my efforts. I'll also have to do assignments for my writing class, presumably, but that should be fun regardless of how the book is going.

There isn't anything else worth reporting; I think I'll go to bed early so that I can get up early and go to the office. Goodnight!