So in the race of novel vs. baby, I’d say baby has a slight lead at present. I’m 30,000 words in but have had to slow down and go carefully so I don’t miss a corner and run completely off the road. Upside is, I know where I’m going (as much as I’ve ever known where I’m going in this writing thing) and the situation keeps giving me more to write about.
There are speed bumps too – where I start thinking too much about what’s going on subtextually or philosophically. I have a bad habit of just dragging that stuff up into text. (I don’t know that it really is a bad habit, exactly; it feels like a reaction against bad/overinflated “literary” style. But it isn’t always an appropriate for what I’m trying to do, this being a case in point.)
Ultimately I’m just trying to write some characters I care about facing difficult situations. If I get that right, then i have to trust that everything else will fall into place around it.
It’s good stuff, this writing thing.