Last November 17, I crossed the 50,000-word mark on a literary book I call Yes or No and won NaNoWriMo for the second year, giving me a perfect 2-of-2 record. (I wrote Mother for NaNoWrimo2020.) Tonight I reached 26,647 words. There are a few reasons for the slower progress.

The biggest one is the day job. I was still teaching high school the last two years and we were reading novels with the audiobooks. Students read (or slept) and I wrote. Now, teaching middle school, every moment is devoted to crowd control. There’s no more writing at school.

I also have a nasty cold. Last night I didn’t write anything at all. The two nights before that I wrote less than 1,000 words both nights. I hated giving up that streak last night, but I was exhausted and felt awful.

And finally, at the last minute, I chose to take on a new book in The Werewolf Saga as my project for this NaNoWriMo. I’d been kicking around a couple of ideas to get back into the Saga for a long time, but hadn’t really planned any of them out to any degree. I actually wrote the first chapter before I realized the character I was writing about was killed in the previous book. Uh-oh. So, the whole dynamic shifted.

I never fully outline a book because if I do, I become bored with it. It’s like I’ve already told the story. But I do typically have signposts I work toward in the course of writing. With this one, there’s nothing. I literally sit down every day not knowing where I’m going. Will I end up with a jumbled mess? Or will this lead to brilliance?

I don’t know, but I’m enjoying the journey and I hope you will, too, when it’s ready to be shared.