July?!

How can it possibly be July 1 already? That means I have 312 days left 'til my 30th birthday. With my word count stalled out at 5,462, I'm beginning to rethink this whole "finish my first novel by my 30th birthday" thing.

So what is a realistic goal for writing a novel? Especially when you factor in working full time and caring for a 23 month old daughter (and all the other things life throws at you)? I suppose one answer is that if I was truly passionate about writing this novel, I would find the time to make it happen. Someone else might say that you can't force creativity — and this is especially true for me as I often have to mull things over for a while before I actually sit down to write, even in my writing in my professional life. But at what point does this "mulling things over" become simple procrastination?

I've been thinking lately about pausing on the writing of this novel to write something totally different. Not a memoir, per se, but a novel based on my own childhood and family. I've done a lot of similar writing in the past and its almost like I need to get that out of the way to free me up to write the half dozen or so other stories in my head. Perhaps I will mull this idea over the long July 4th weekend...