The week of vacation I took to spend working on my novel is over. It’s back to my regular 50-60 hours a week at work.

I won’t lie, I had hoped to accomplish more during my week off. I wanted to have something more substantial to show for my efforts – like an outline or even the first draft of a chapter or two.

I still feel good about what I did accomplish. It was like a roller coaster at times because my progress tends to take one step back for every two steps forward, but I guess that’s better than the other way around! I’m happy that I kept working on the same story instead of giving up and starting over repeatedly. Even when I procrastinated, I managed to stay somewhat on topic by organizing my writing desk, grabbing some fantasy novels to read or researching agents and publishers.

I noticed that over the past week, the evening was one of my most productive times of day. I hope I can keep it up while working full-time.

So far I feel optimistic about that. I couldn’t stop puzzling out my story idea during my commute and I read articles on antagonists while eating lunch. I can’t get my story out of my head. I had such good ideas at several points throughout the day that I had to sprint from the car and dash out of the shower to jot them down.