I am in an unfortunate rut.
The sad reality of the world is that only one soul can live per body. My body has volunteered to do a lot of work recently, and my soul is being stretched pretty thin. I'm experiencing the stress in various ways; I've got weird phantom muscle spasms and pains from time to time, I break down into emotional goo piles at random triggers, I have started swearing more liberally than I'm used to, and I'm excessively tired.
Despite all this I've tried to continue writing, but the part of my soul I use for Threadcaster is being wasted on other things. The time I can devote to it is fractioned off to other responsibilities - sometimes suddenly and dramatically. I've written a thousand times "I'd rather be writing", but this is the first time I've written and had no will to do it. Usually if I hit a wall or something I can jump back and revise a bit to restart my juices, but now no matter what I do everything feels forced and lifeless. Still I have to finish this draft. I have to write through the plot points and get to the end so I can start over from the beginning. There's no time to pity myself. I must keep going.
What has actually happened is that writing has become part of "work". It was never "work" before, it was always hobby - something I did for fun. Now that I'm trying to make Threadcaster into something substantial, I'm experiencing for the first time what paid writers feel when a deadline is coming up. I'll do it even if it doesn't come out great, I had a vision when I outlined it, hopefully the vision endures through my exhaustion.
I spent an hour writing two paragraphs tonight. I think they'll do. They're acceptable enough that I can go to sleep and assume everything will sort itself out eventually.
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