I think I actually had more time to write in Baghdad... proximity to the five-sided PowerPoint collider has cut it down dramatically, and it will be worse this summer when I actually roll back to it this summer.
I have BattleCorps story projects on my HDD that are literally 10 years old and still unfinished. When Shrapnel was announced I though I'd be able to submit something for the first or second issue. Alas, nope. Job & family somehow conspire against my writing.
Well, that and the fact that I'm a slow writer, and tend to delete 90% of what I wrote again. I look at something I started earlier, re-read it with fresh eyes, and it stinks. I rewrite it from scratch, after two weeks I throw it away again. Rinse, repeat. By contrast,
Proprietary was pretty much a one-take shot during an unexpected break - it took all of three hours while our then-baby was asleep for a change. The changes after fact-checking (swapping the original
Commando DI computer module out for Double Heat Sinks as the McGuffin) took longer to implement than the writing, and the dialogue - the most critical and oftentimes hardest-to-write part, imho - remained unchanged.
I just hope I can get at least one submission in while Shrapnel lasts. Blink, and it's ten years later...