54k.

And counting. At last I made a little headway on "Confessions" during last night's commute home, only to hit another writing hiatus for the weekend. As I'm driving back and forth between Peabody and Cambridge today and tomorrow, I won't have my customary train time to peck away at the novel, and so the work will have to wait. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress in this regard. Perhaps I've reached a point where I need to carve out a new block of time that I can dedicate to writing. In the beginning, when I just was getting back into the swing of things as a writer, it sufficed to exploit the cracks in my day that went otherwise unused - the bus ride back to Lynn, then the train ride to Salem, dead time on the T, when the subway cars weren't so crowded that working on a story without some looking over my shoulder became a practical impossibility. But now even when that time is available to me, it doesn't feel like enough anymore. I want to write every day, for as much time as I possibly can. Staying up Thursday night to work on The Greek Institute's website was instructive. Although I was somewhat zombielike all day Friday as a result, it felt good to have stayed up and gotten something done. I know I have a strange aversion to writing on my laptop (although I seem to be able to edit on it just fine), but maybe I can stake out the rocking chair in the living room and write on my trusty iPaq after the baby has gone to sleep for the night for an hour or two every evening. It's worth a try.