Well, bloody h*ll, I'm having trouble sitting up and keeping my concentration again. I'm not sick anymore. It's like lingering aftershocks of being sick. Very annoying and inconvenient aftershocks.

I have two more stories for a w-f-h project I need to do, but I'd prefer to have one long focused go at each story so I know what I'm doing. And that deadline has suddenly become flexible. Now comes another potential w-f-h project, much shorter, but it's certain to be under the gun deadline-wise. I also have to drive 40 miles to turn in tutoring paperwork--paperwork which is late because I was sick on Friday and couldn't drive 40 miles and back.

I don't know how to sort out my priorities at the moment. I'm very confused. Maybe I shouldn't have worked out yesterday. Maybe I should lie around today--but I'm pretty sure I won't. There's too much stuff that has to be done.

I did work on my former GN a little last night, and am currently of the opinion that I'm going to drop a character--Helen's daughter. I have kept her in all the versions so far, but there's no question that she's a bit of a problem. First: her name is Hermione. You just can't use that name anymore, can you? Second: Helen leaves her behind and goes off with a guy. I'm pretty sure I can deal with that so the reader won't mind too much--the problem is that doing so takes too much time and space. The amount of explanation required feels like it takes the story off on a tangent--but deserting your child is a very unlikeable act and making the reader okay with it can't be handled quickly. This is exacerbated by the fact that the baby doesn't show up till the story's nearly over, so it's like bam, there's a baby, bam, here's the end. Between the two bams I have to cram a ton of stuff in, if I want the baby to work. But that's on top of the normal story that's already leading in a straight line.

However, I like some of the issues that comes into the story with the baby. Still...current thinking is that the problems outweigh the possibilities. So for the time being, I'll probably X the baby.

Come to think of it, that will be a nice change from X-ing the parents. I've X-ed a ton of parents to streamline mss, but never a baby.