Semester endgame

Seven days!  Seven days! And then the semester is over!  Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, in the course of those seven days, I’ve got three major papers to write. It’s going to suck.

But then it’s over!

Thank goodness.  This semester has been pretty crazy–not in terms of work, but in terms of motivation.  A lot of the classes I took (especially MESA 350) are basically just repeating the things I already know, which is really boring.  When you’re bored, you don’t have much motivation to do the work, and when that happens…well, let’s just say that bad things happen when that happens.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), there’s nothing quite as motivating as last minute panic.  The work will get done.

Unfortunately (and this is definitely unfortunately), the end-of-semester crunch will almost certainly take time away from my writing.  Just when things were going so well, too.  The revision of Genesis Earth is coming along VERY well–I’m not only enjoying it, I think I’m making some excellent fundamental improvements on the story.  Of all of the novels I’ve written or worked on, I think this one is the most promising.  If I didn’t have any other obligations, I could almost certainly finish this revision in a week–possibly even less.  I’d really love to get into it.

Also, the other day I had an idea how to revive Hero in Exile and turn it into a workable story.  Hero in Exile is the working title of the novel I started last fall, but after I got 70,000 words into it, I realized that the story I was writing and the story I had in mind were incompatible with each other.  I put it all away, recycled some of the basic ideas, and used those for Bringing Estella Home.  Well, now that I’ve put Bringing Estella Home on hold (ironically, after getting 70,000 words into it), I just had some really interesting ideas how I could make Hero in Exile work!  It would require throwing out my original outline almost completely, but I could use almost everything I wrote previously–basically, tell the story that I was writing instead of the story I thought I was writing.

Except I have to change the name of the main character.  “Tristen” just isn’t a good guy’s name–at least not for science fiction.

So now, I’m considering picking up that story and putting Bringing Estella Home on hold for a while.  I’m going to be really busy these next couple of weeks, but after all the craziness has settled somewhat it’s going to be a very interesting question.  Honestly, I have no idea.  It could go either way.

But it’s all academic until the semester is finally over.  But dude!  SEVEN DAYS!!!!  And then…FREEDOM!!!!