I stole the title for this entry from Larry Picard's new blog, A Life in the Musical Theater, both because it's vaguely appropriate and because it gives me an excuse to shill for him. (And--plug plug--we're both planning to attend the Brooklyn screening of CREDO on February 6.)

Yesterday's entry about word counts provoked more responses than usual, all of them interesting.

I never think of my boys as impinging upon my writing time, and I've never even considered reducing the hours I spend with them just so I could finish a book. It won't happen. They're too much fun.

Sometimes they're not fun, but it still won't happen.

Writing might dun a little contribution here and there from family time when it seems prudent (or when I've got the DTs from going too long without increasing my word count); but the way my schedule works, writing time is blocked out of my work day, not my family day. What I'm giving up--by design--is income, not family.

And for much of the last year, I've also been giving up more sleep than I would have thought physically possible. But I think that's gradually getting better. I can tell because I no longer think glow-in-the-dark blue centipedes with psychic feelers are roosting in the walls at Starbucks.

However, Rachel's comment did provoke a blink-blink-blink:

Ah, but how many belly-raspberries have you managed to produce over the same time period? Seems to me that you had certain priorities in exactly the right place for those times.

Somehow, belly-raspberries have fallen out of our repertoire, prematurely obsoleted both by newer innovations (e.g., Rhythmic Bopping On The Head With An Empty 2-Liter Soda Bottle; the Chase Around and Around Grandma's Sofa; and the new thrill sensation taking babies by storm, Big Scary Daddy-Monster Leaping Out From Around Corners and Going RAAAAAAA!) and a few chestnuts (e.g., the Upside-Down Baby; and its successful spinoff, Lowering Same by His Ankles in Front of Other People's Faces and Everybody Giggling Themselves into Hysterics, this latter often accompanied by Every Woman Present Saying in Warning Tones, "I Hope He Doesn't Throw Up On You").

(Which, in the one-year run of this smash hit, has never occurred, though others attempting to imitate the successful formula report less pleasant results.)

What eats into writing time isn't the family. It's partly the day job; but even more annoyingly, it's the commute. Not only does this negate 2 potentially productive hours out of every 24, but it doesn't even bring in any money. When the bike doesn't have a flat or a broken spoke, I love my commute; but that's still 2 hours of non-work time, and nothing to be done about it.

Well, it's not entirely non-work. But each day's bicycle time is good for no more than one idea. My exercise-mind can't hold more than one question and--if I manage bump into one--one answer. For a little while, I was carrying a small notebook and pen in one of my panniers, but after my 45-minute ride home turned into 90 because I kept pulling over to write things down, I nixed that.

Which is not true. I'd still be doing it if I could ever remember the notebook was in there. But generally what I'm thinking on the way home is "pedal pedal pedal pedal pedal."

And as I said:

One idea at a time.

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