NaNo Day 2

I woke up at five this morning of my own volition. Because...I don't know why. I thought it was six, and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize just how early it was. But hey, nothing wrong with knocking the word count out early.

It was a foggy morning, the kind of heavy fog that fights the sunrise. The kind so thick you can hear it splattering in fat drops down onto leaves. The kind of atmosphere that teases at the Story part of my brain. I bracketed my barn routine with writing, and reached my word count goal at ten. I'll count that as a very good NaNo day.

Walking Wounded has been a creative blessing. It's helped me feel connected to the process in a way that seems fresh and exciting. Working on it has spawned other ideas, and helped me reconnect with projects collecting dust on the shelf. It's helped me feel brave enough to schedule new challenges for 2017, and dive back into a series I've been wanting to publish for a long while now. When I talked to my mom about it, she said Walking Wounded was a book for me, and she was right. It's a story I wanted to write, rather than the story I was expected to write, and I think that's so important. Writing is a long game, a marathon rather than a sprint, and in order to stick with it long term, you have to reward your brain every so often. That's what this book is - a reward for my brain. I hope to have more rewards just like it next year.