round up the usual muses

[He] was, by her watchfulness, most abundantly supplied with coffee and muffin. -- Jane Austen

Nanowrimo is going so much better this week! I'm at 33,324 words (up from Saturday's 23,812!), and I'm really glad I didn't give up on it. Really glad. These characters are so much fun...

So, will I be done before Friday? ... No. No, I won't. But I'll get as far as I can, and then splice little moments of writing into my Week of Craziness. And hopefully, it will be enough to reach 50K before the thirtieth?

Is this the triumph of hope over experience? Quite likely, but I'm still going to try.

Meanwhile, this is what makes the writing good this week:


1. There has been homemade crancherry pie. Pie always helps. That's worth repeating, so say it out loud with me: Pie always helps.


2. As does coffee. A lot more coffee! I learned my lesson Saturday night, and have been well-caffeinated since. French press coffee with pie? Yes. Starbucks' new caramel brulee latte? Absolutely.
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(YUM, by the way. Burnt sugar in my coffee? Yes, please! I can write for hours with such encouragement...)
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3. And then there's knitting. Hooray, once more, for knitting. I grab the outline for my next few scenes, and then I pull out the latest scarf and start knitting away. My mind starts stirring around the next bits of the book, and then characters start talking and things begin to fall into place.
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Knitting and daydreaming. It's a beautiful thing.
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(On that note: we're hoping to open our Etsy store on December 1!! More news to come on that one, so stay tuned.)
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4. Most definitely, long chats with my writing partner... who also happens to be my mom. So we compare notes at meal times, when we both stumble out of our writing stupors and compare our progress. So much easier to marathon a novel when you have someone to run alongside!
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5. And then there's the weather. There's something about the gloom-and-doom of these rainy, soggy, flooding sort of days. The sky is near enough to touch, and my room is cold. So I peck away at my keyboard, swathed in afghans and legwarmers. Perfect weather to stay inside and create a dynamic world of crazy characters and the trouble they get into.
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16,676 words to go... By Friday, right? Maybe?
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...
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How much coffee do we have?