Life's Balance: More Work = Less Sleep

Wow. I’ve been at school ALL DAY (like I am every Tuesday and Thursday) and haven’t had even a few minutes to work on pre-noveling.

(By the way, do you use “noveling” or “novelling” when discussing the creation of a novel? There are good precedents for both constructions. I’ve seen both used regularly; both are listed in various (quality) dictionaries; and both are flagged as incorrectly spelled words by most spell-checking software! I use them interchangeably ‘cause I don’t want to use just one and then have it be the “wrong” one!)

Back to school…

I teach 3 different college Biology classes so I need a lot of prep time for lectures and labs (and tests and grading and student mentoring and all the other things that go along with teaching). Luckily I have gaps between classes so I have time to download presentations or photocopy handouts or whatever, but sometimes (like today) I’m lucky if I have enough time just to wolf down some food to keep myself going.

It’s now 9:15 PM and my last class just ended (I started teaching a little after 8:00 AM this morning) and I’m itching to work on my novel!! But now I’ve gotta’ drive home (40 miles in about 50 minutes) and by the time I get home I’m going to feel doing like little else than curling up with the cats and closing my eyes.

This is really going to cramp my writing style during November! I’m realizing that I’m either going to have to write really early in the morning (I am NOT a "morning person") or else stay on campus working at night and drive home in the wee hours of the morning. Either way I can pretty much kiss the idea of a good night’s sleep goodbye.

Well, it’s gonna’ be worth it!!!!!