now a piece of me is a piece of the beach

I didn't intend to stay up quite this late, but then, I didn't intend for a lot of things. Today was almost like the days I used to have six months ago, when I would get up and slog away at my desk at home, but today I spent it all doing work for the man instead of writing. I ducked offline around four, though, and went downtown to get my bangs trimmed - a task that may seem like total vanity, but one that had reached the point of necessity since I was worried my bangs were going to scratch my corneas. My brow lady, though, casually asked if I was stressed - when I asked her why, without confessing anything, she said that my brows were falling out and that is often a sign of stress.

Hahahahaha. As though I need a visual cue for the fact that I'm more stressed than I was six months ago. Except I don't know that I actually am more stressed...in some ways, the mad couple of months at the end of a book is way worse than all the tongue-biting and commute-hating I do at the day job. But I should probably look into this, if only because I am vain enough that I don't want to lose my eyebrows.

sssanyway. I came home, had a glass of wine with Terry, and then we went down the street for fish tacos and some conversation. My conversation is mostly angsty; I'm going through a bit of a crisis of the faith in regards to my writing career, and unfortunately there are no easy answers. I don't know what I want to write after Prudence (both from a desire standpoint and from a marketability standpoint), I don't know whether to write the gargoyles as a young adult series or go a little older, I don't know whether to solely self-publish or shop to New York, and I guess I don't even know whether I want to keep writing romance.

The realization I had last night, and which I was too tired to share, was that I had considered writing something literary again, rejected it out of hand, realized I was rejecting it because I'm afraid of it...and so promptly had my usual self-flagellating instinct that I must do whatever it is I'm most afraid of. But is that a rational urge, or is it the same urge that draws me to places like the Aran Islands...places that feel like the limits of the known world, even if most of the world is mapped and I'm more fascinated by the limits of the human heart than I ever will be with climbing mountains? And would I possibly be happier, or at least have fewer ulcers and bushier eyebrows, if I could be satisfied with my current trajectory?

This is all a question for another time, since I can't solve it tonight. So I came home from dinner, picked a book at random off my overflowing pile of unread books, and ended up reading half of THE SWAN THIEVES by Elizabeth Kostova. So far, so good. And now I must go to sleep so I can write something tomorrow - goodnight!