Still not caught up with where I'm supposed to be yet, but having written almost 4,000 words in a relatively short amount of time (most of yesterday afternoon/evening got devoured by running errands instead of writing, alas) I'm still feeling pretty proud of myself. At this stage in the novel I have all the exposition stuff mostly squared away and have just finished the first major action set piece. I'm afraid I might have shown my hand too early, though, because I've now shown that the Big Bad I'd set up in the prologue can be downed at least temporarily through a well-placed taser or three. My heroes are on the run after having been assaulted and evicted from their place of safety, and now I've got to figure out how I'm going to launch the second third of the book. I may have to resort to calling another character out of retirement since the first book. We'll see.

Also, I'm both impressed and annoyed with how the NaNoWriMo word count tracking widgets function. The upside: I can post my word count on the side of my blog, just over there to the left. The downside: it apparently only updates once a day, so it doesn't reflect my new five-figure status. Grump grump.

Right. Back to the slog. Not only do I need to catch up, but I suspect I should try really really hard to bank some work as well. Only 6,209 words to go until I'm caught up... I think the big thing this time around is going to be just rediscovering how much fun it is to write with abandon, and leave out all the concerns about word choice and deeper meaning and whatnot. Bones of the Angel was designed to be an art-house action-adventure movie on paper, nestling my own thoughts about religion and small town life between things blowing up. Children of Winter, Children of Wolves, on the other hand, feels more like a summer blockbuster. Which, when one is trying to reconnect with the art of writing and reading for pleasure, is utterly fine.

One last note – I am discovering, unfortunately, that doing both NaNoWriMo and DrawMo simultaneously is difficult for a reason I hadn't anticipated: last night I sat down to draw and realized that my brain was working in words instead of pictures, and refused to let me throw the switch. Part of this is, I'm sure, because I'm leery of being unable to throw the switch back to the novel-writing mode, but for right now NaNoWriMo wins. I do have some DrawMo sketches to upload later, but for right now, I'm focusing on the written word. Onwards! (Or should that be 'onwords'?)