...noveling.

I'd say that my novel is coming along swimmingly, but I suppose that would only be true as far as word count is concerned. The truth is that I have no idea what is going on; the plot keeps changing, the characters are growing in ways I hadn't anticipated, and to make a long story short, the novel is just running away without me. I have been chasing down my characters, trying to catch up, pin them down, and write them.

They aren't letting me.

However, I have been thinking that perhaps that's a good thing. Just like in reality, a friendship, a story, cannot flourish and grow unless the people concerned are allowed to think for themselves and make their own changes. I guess that's what my characters are doing. I sent a draft of the first two chapters to my English teacher, who really liked it, and commented that she felt a sort of feminist touch to the whole thing. I liked that, and I have been trying to incorporate more of this strong-willed, coming of age feminism into my heroine. I suppose you could call her a heroine. She doesn't do anything very heroic, but perhaps the very fact that she is hopelessly hopeless makes her a heroine. She is so very true to life. At least, I have been trying to make her that way. I fear she has been running off without me again. Alas.

Anyhow, the thing that I have been thinking of most lately is how difficult it is to live in two worlds. Coming home on the weekends is harder than I thought it would be, and I find that once I have gotten used to being home, it is hard to once again adjust to life at school. The same is true for the other way around; when I come from school, I have a hard time getting used to being at home. Sometimes I just wish that I could have a little bubble around me that retains all of my thought patterns and habits and makes them the same from place to place so that nothing at all changes no matter where I go. I think I would like that. I hate feeling far away from the people I love, as if they were one moment entirely existent and tangible, and the next just an empty feeling, a ghost of something I once was able to embrace regularly.