I miss my Vampires

I have been so busy lately with family and work stuff that I have not had much time to work on my novel. I have been writing it for a year now though last Spring I changed horses in midstream and made my main male character a secondary character and took his best friend and made him the main male character. I took an on-line writing course which really helped me to learn to focus on a story line. One of the exercises called for me to plot out each chapter. I was resistant at first. I am a very organized, detail oriented person yet I felt this would inhibit my writing. In truth it really helped me organize my story on paper and I am almost finished with my first "rough draft." But I digress. The purpose of this blog was to express how much I miss my characters when I don't write for several days or a week or so. I usually try to write out a chapter or a part of one, then I put it down for a day or so. I then read it outloud. I am the type of person that needs to not only see my written word but to hear my words outloud. This helps me with dialogue. Sometime I get on a roll and just when I think I have a chapter rapped up my characters will say or do something that shocks even me. They have minds of their own. I get excited when they emerge from the page with their own point of view. They are becoming living, breathing people and I imagine how they move, speak or dress. I write dialogue in my head sometimes playing out a scene to the point of tuning out everything else around me. Right now I am working on a novel set in New York City in the present day. My two male vampires are Madison Avenue shoppers, trendsetters, handsome and two totally opposite men in every way possible yet who have remained friends for a very long time. Anyway, it's difficult to balance writing plus all the other stuff we have in our lives, jobs, family, friends; life in general and I constantly finding myself measuring my time, like I'll run for a half hour, read for an hour, etc. Measuring time trying to fit it all in. Maybe I am just fooling myself but sometimes I feel I should join the circus and forget writing, I am such a great juggler!