This week, I feel obliged to start off with a link to a list the Denver NaNoWriMo group shared on Facebook:  Ten Signs Someone You Know Is Doing National Novel Writing Month.  I have to admit doing at least some of these (though with me, it’d be tea instead of coffee).  And #5, well, I might be guilty of that:  “She can be found on Facebook and Twitter at weird hours of the night and early morning posting things like, “1,837 words in an hour!” and “What’s another word for ‘burnished’?” and “Did Vikings wear bedroom slippers?” ”

Also, I did just Google “adjusting to blindness in one eye.”  Though my query didn’t include tropical diseases or pirates.

So things are going along swimmingly.  Word count goal for today is 35,000, and I’m currently at 39,958.  Almost three entire days ahead of schedule.  The NaNo website says I’ve been averaging 1,900 words a day.  Not bad.

Story-wise, I’m also kind of pleased.  I have a tendency, in my stories, to land my main character(s) in a world of hurt, only to come along a chapter later and make everything all better for them.  So this time, when the story offered me an opportunity to heap more misery onto my beleaguered young wizard, I made a concerted effort not to tidy everything up for her.  Which means she’s now got to deal with both a minor disability (sharp minds will note the topic I Googled, above) and a renegade wizard with a major grudge who’s out to get her.  And he’s already killed once in order to evade the authorities…

I had originally planned to remove the renegade wizard from the story, once he’d done his small bit to further the plot (which was to allow my young wizard to reveal/discover that she has the ability to sense when other wizards are casting spells on her).  But looking at the outline for the rest of the story, I realized there was a bit that comes later where I would require an apparent villain who was actually a front for the true villain…and this particular renegade wizard would fit the bill perfectly.  Not to mention giving my poor main character yet another thing to worry about as she goes about her daily business.  He’ll be a bit tricky to write, since his wizarding talent is the ability to cast spells that keep other people from seeing him.

Of course, the story has now topped 100,000 words, and I’m about a third of the way through my outline. {facepalm}  This story’s definitely going to have a theatrical version and a director’s cut!  You’ll just need a small U-Haul to carry the director’s cut around with you. {sigh}  Obviously, I need to add a second middle initial, then contact HBO regarding television rights…

Okay, time for me to toddle off to bed.  Good night, everyone.  Hope you’re all having as good a November as I am!