Saturday, January 24, 2009

Back in action?

This week I seem to have regained something that I set aside for a while. Anyone who reads this blog regularly--well, anyone who reads it regularly would know that it's been a while since it was updated on anything resembling a regular basis, and that was part of it. "It" being an unwillingness to take the time needed to maintain my writing.

I don't want this next bit to sound like I'm blaming my son for this lack of drive, because that's very far from the truth. But I did exchange the writing drive for a willingness to observe Oscar and all of the changes he's been going through for the last few months. I've been able to watch him go from a bundle of cuteness who seemed undifferentiated from other babies his age to a little person who is starting, in a very rudimentary way, his likes and dislikes, desires and preferences.

I'm figuring out, with his help, which games, toys, and songs delight him; and which he could do without. It seems like just a couple of months ago that his movement was limited to rolling over--and sometimes he got stuck on his belly and needed a helping hand to return to his back--and now he's crawling backward with pretty impressive speed and can crawl forward with a lot of effort using the arm-over-army Army crawl method.

I feel so lucky. I know that for one reason or another, most dads don't get to see this evolution in their kids. And my new-found devotion (or is that newly re-found?) to writing isn't going to take away from my watching it with Oscar. Where a lot of my free time went to reading or trolling the web, I've lately been using that same free time to actually working. To that end, I had a good week: I got three proposals into shape (enough that I felt comfortable sending them off to one of my managers to read and critique), I started notes on an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a couple of years, and I got a start on the next chapter of 100 Girls. For those keeping score, I wrote chapter eight a couple of months ago and sent it off to Todd; Today I started in on chapter nine.

All in all, not a bad bit of business. I really hope I can keep it up.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

And you've been journaling every day--you inspired me to do better keeping Oscar's daily calendar up-to-date. I like it, sitting around writing or even just jotting with you.

Could you maybe link to the Cory Doctorow piece of writing that we've been talking about lately?