Book Update.

There isn't really one.  

I'm stuck. Badly stuck. I have made no real progress since last October.  

I am ready to burn the whole thing in a fire.  One friend who read my mess of a draft said she can't figure out the conflict in the book. What's the issue that has to be resolved?

I don't know. If I did, I could probably finish the book in a couple of weeks.

It's pretty clear, too, that working 2 nights a week - oftentimes only one night - isn't cutting it.  But neither can I work in small bouts of time.  I've tried.  I can't get my brain in gear.  I stay up till 1 or 2 am on Fridays trying to write, but usually, I've been "away" from writing for enough days that it takes me hours of putzing around to get "into" what I'm doing and actually make any progress.  

I haven't figured out how to get to work quickly and make best use of what little time I have.  

I haven't figured out how to work 4-5 hours at a stretch of an evening several nights a week without staying up late enough that I'm too tired to function. I'm a night owl who is cursed with the ability to not function if I don't get at least 7-1/2 hrs of sleep most nights. 

I haven't figured out how to find more time to write uninterrupted.  I have no outside help caring for my kid.  I've tried writing while she's here at home but busy with other stuff, and I have the same problems as above - it takes me too long to get started and really going, and it never fails, that the minute I get two sentences written, something happens. 

A really big fire, so I'll never have to look at a the unfinished book again... 

Via the Museum of Hartlepool's collection of images on Flickr.

I can't find the ending of the book.  I can't link together most of the scenes in the whole second half of the draft. I can't find the "Why am I reading this?" to give to the reader. 

What I need (I think) is a several consecutive days of being to do nothing but work on this all day, each day, without having to stop to make meals, answer the phone, help with schoolwork, make meals, spell words, answer the phone, make meals, wash dishes.... 

Feels like that's not going to happen till I'm dead.

Via Powerhouse Museum

 And no, the irony of being able to write over four hundred words on why I can't write but not be able to write a dang thing on my actual book is not lost on me.