What a difference a day makes...

Tasks completed on Day 1 of child home sick from school (with a temperature but not ill enough to spend the entire day in bed)

Child spends an extra 2 hours in bed reading instructive literature (OK, back copies of Top Gear magazine, but beggars can't be choosers)
English homework completed
4 sessions of Mathletics completed
Intelligent conversation over lunch
Short session on National Geographic kids website games section
TV switched at 4.00pm due to pompous statement that it shouldn't go on until the same time school would have finished
Mother's Tasks: Laundry, cooking (delicious nutritious home-made Moroccan lamb stew), overseeing entertainment of child.  Writing: grand total of approx 20 minutes.

Tasks completed on Day 2 of same child home sick from school

Child spends an extra 30 minutes in bed complaining about boredom
1 section of 3 of next week's English homework completed
1/2 session of Mathletics completed
Loooooong session on National Geographic kids games section
TV goes on at 11.00am, (Don't judge me: 3 back episodes of Planet Earth 2 watched - I call that a win, under the circumstances)
Conversation over lunch about... I can't remember.  Not sure it was intelligent.
Tantrum over uncharged iPod Touch
Mother's Tasks: Tactical 'forgetting' to recharge iPod Touch, wrangling with child over completion of further homework, complete failure to unload laundry from the machine, and dinner likely to consist of any old veg I can find to serve with chicken stir fry.  Writing: are you kidding?


Tasks likely to be completed if there is a Day 3 of having same child home sick from school

None - because it's not going to happen.

(Better not...)

I'ld rather be writing...

I want to be writing, but I can't.  Not because I have writers block, but because I have a sick child at home and there are few things more guaranteed to distract from any creative process than sitting worrying about your son's high temperature.  Or running upstairs repeatedly to check said high temperature.  Or dealing with repeated requests for water / a toy / a dvd / repeat to fade...

Right now I'm recovering from the latest battle to get Boy #2 to take the nurofen that he hates the taste of but which he needs to bring those numbers down.  It wasn't pretty, I can tell you.  Promises were made - and ignored.  Physical coercion may have been employed.  Threats were certainly utilised.  In a way it's lucky Boy #2 is feeling so ill; he wasn't sharp enough to work out that my bundling him into the car to take him to a hospital where they would intravenously give him the drugs - if he didn't take it in liquid form himself here at home - was an impossibility bearing in mind that Husband has taken the car to work with him today.  Oh, the lies we tell our children...

So, anyway, I have had to put 'The Great Work' to one side for the moment, which is why this post is about writing rather than actually getting on and doing it.

I'm a little over half way through TGW at the moment.  It's taken a while to get this far, but I've made significant progress in the last couple of months and am hopeful that - children's illness aside - I may manage to finish the bones of it before the summer break, but this had presented me with a dilemma; do I ask someone to read it, now, for useful feedback - or do I continue to keep it to myself until I've completed it? I guess writers vary in their approach to this matter, but since this is the first time I've been through this process I've no previous experience to go on.

I can see why I would ask for feedback; it's hard to exist in a bell jar, and an unbiased opinion on what I've written and the direction the story is taking would certainly be helpful.  On the other hand - is there really any such thing as 'an unbiased opinion'?  Whatever we read, we bring our own baggage and experiences to the process - which is why one person can love a book that leaves another cold.  And whilst I do have some idea of how my story will end, it's still a fragile enough structure in my mind to give me pause before I set it up on a wall to be knocked down.

Decisions, decisions...