I think any of us who have been around the field of writing have heard the analogy that writing a book is like birthing a baby.  Babies are something that keep coming up in my life over the last year or two.  More than half my friends have started families.  Several of them went through a period of baby fever where babies were all they could think about.  No offense to all of them, but I think they’re insane.  I am so far from ready to have a child.  My husband and I have been married for five years and are starting to get the hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge that maybe it’s time to start thinking about that.  Um.  No.  All these well-meaning infant-toting moms keep telling me “baby fever is going to hit you!”  Frankly…I don’t think so.  We want kids.  But neither my husband nor I actually likes babies.  They are a necessary evil.  And when I think of how little spare time I have to write NOW and factor in the time-vacuum that is a baby–yeah, I don’t think so.  Not for a while.

But I’ve been wondering today if baby fever is manifesting itself differently in me.  Because my brain has been running amok marrying off my characters and giving them kids.  My lunchtime amusement today was the decision that Seth (formerly Collin’s best friend) is actually Collin’s little brother and the way I’m going to get him on site to hook him up with his match is that he flies in for the birth of his niece.  And in my little fantasy world Marin and Wyatt have twins.  WTH?  I haven’t even finished their stories, and I’m already building their little HEAs?  So maybe my baby fever is not for actual babies but for new fictional babies (books with happily ever afters).  This fits in with my tendency to go off on tangents, creating new stories and continually jumping into that heady first love of new characters state.

I need to take a chill pill though.  I haven’t gotten back to actual writing in almost 3 weeks, despite my prolific outlining and notebooking for TD and HOC.  I want to jump back into TD since it comes first sequentially, but my brain keeps jumping back to Collin and Kensie.  Tonight I may do yet ANOTHER read through of TD and some more work on my new outline.  See if I can focus on how my new ideas are going to change stuff.  I really want to get back to work!