Snippet and more

I've been working on the third book in the Nexus trilogy lately. I'm started to really get a handle on this plot and where it's headed, although I think I need to do a bit more detailed outlining. My outline is, I realized yesterday, pretty vague. So here is a little taste of what's happening now.

[James, who is having a vision, encounters an odd person while trailing a young man named Arlan.]

James watched the men depart. That had been odd, and judging by the look on the blonde man's face, he had also thought as much. James followed the man toward the palace exit, not really sure if he should tail Arlan or follow the brothers, but the brothers were gone and he felt compelled to remain with the healer. As they left, James saw a shadowed figure lurking in the corner of the foyer. He looked at the form as he passed, getting an uncanny sort of feeling about whoever it was. He didn't look like an ordinary guard to James. He was different from the others here, from Arlan and from himself. He looked less solid. James stopped and took a step toward the figure, and the figure suddenly charged at him. He cried out in fear and lost his balance as the man rammed into him—very solidly for a man who looked so aural! Baffled, James followed the man's form with his eyes until he was gone, and then pushed himself to his feet to catch up with Arlan.

I had managed to write every day this week until yesterday. I think it was Holly Lisle who said that to be a writer you have to write every day, and if you can't do that while you have a job, you're not going to be able to motivate yourself to do it full time when you don't have another job. As helpful as I've found her site, I have to disagree. I'm a full time graduate student with two teaching assignments and research, and I am only human. I don't have the energy to crank out 5 pages a day after writing a 15 page paper, grading a stack of exams, running participants, and sitting through 3 hours of class. I don't know what human being does, and maybe that means I'm just not energetic enough, but I don't think so. I write when I can, and I write a lot. I may go two days without writing and then write solidly for six or seven hours on the weekend. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I definitely disagree. I'm a writer, damnit, even if I do skip a day of writing now and then.

(And I am totally going to write my bum off this weekend!)