Yesterday, I had planned to pick back up a short story I'd been working on earlier this month/late last fall. You know, the one I was struggling with before I decided to go all 'speculativation'(tm) on it, and yes, the same one that got shelved when that weird snowfall last week hit me in the forehead with a brilliant new story idea. Well, the brilliant new story idea has been written, rewritten, critiqued to death by my significant other and rewritten some more. It's been finished for all of two three days and that means it's time to jump back on the other one.

Except that a dead cat (not one of ours), an unexpected drive in the snow and hours spent being all blubbery and teary-eyed brought the end of that kind of thinking. No worries. Jump back on the wagon tomorrow. I even printed out a fresh copy of the story last night so I could get a jump start on it today.

A killer headache derailed me from nearly the start. I'm sure the pounding construction going on next door at the new rental house had nothing little to do with it.

After six hours and five aspirins, I'm finally looking at that short piece and I want to rip it to shreds, literally. The beginning sounds all wrong because I think I edited it to death. I like how the second scene reads but it has nothing to do with the point of the story and I still don't have an ending so I think it's safe to say I don't have a point either. I think I might actually hate this piece; sad because I had such great hopes for it.

What follows then is telling myself to calm down, read it with fresh, non-head-achy eyes tomorrow. I know I promised myself six short stories (minimum) and completion of The Car Novel this year and it's only going on February and I don't have to have this thing done by tomorrow. But I know how I can get -- a little relaxation here, a whole lot of game playing there, the shiny-ness of the new iTouch calls me away from reading and before I know it, it'll be July and I'll be freaking out not so much because I'll only have five months left to do all this writing but because I'll have to have come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo 2008 too. Basically, I can't give myself a break, now or later.

See how my mind works? Yup, clear as mud I'll bet.