My jealousy continues. :) When I found out that Neil Gaiman was teaching, I was sorely tempted to apply--but think I would have been late on it, anyway. It would have been fun to be your classmate! Maybe one of these years I'll take the plunge.

I suspect any time you're working on a large writing project that takes time away from fiction, it gets harder to focus on the fiction writing. I suspect that's a lot of what happens to me with my freelance work. I haven't yet discovered a remedy to that, but I'll keep trying!