Pregnancy is a real bitch on brain function.  I’m not sure if it’s the influence of hormones, or just the fact that there’s so much more on my mind these days, but I have trouble holding even the simplest of thoughts for any length of time.  Ideas flutter in and out of my mind like butterflies, leaving nothing but a memory of what could have been.  Even the most basic leaps of logic are hard for me lately.  I struggle to concentrate.  I struggle to think.

The threatened miscarriage that left me paralyzed with fear last week has thankfully become something I can deal with now.  Prognosis from the doctor is good, and I am laying low (well, as much as I am capable of) and taking it easy.  I look at is as an opportunity  for work on the novel, and as a good excuse to stay out of the heat.  Of course, with pregnancy brain, writing is even harder, so here we are back at the beginning.

Still, the book is coming.  Word by word.  I’m in the middle, around 20,000 words in, the part where I’m not really sure what’s going to happen next, where I have to let go and trust that my characters know what they’re doing.  Most days I do a lot of staring at the screen.  Sometimes it all seems like crap. Sometimes it seems pretty good.  I’m determined to finish, though, crap or not, because this is when I make the decision, when the idea of wanting to be a writer turns into actually being one.  You can’t “kinda” be a writer any more than you can “kinda” be pregnant.  Whatever you say, you either are or you aren’t.

And I am.