This week is already starting off to a vastly better start, and that’s in part because I got to spend the entire weekend at Salem. In three days, I went to Jaho, Jolie twice, and Life Alive, and I fully intend to make a repeat of that this upcoming weekend. I got some good writing done at Jaho on Friday, restocked on tea at Jolie on Saturday, and finally got my Sunday Life Alive lunch while reading back. It was glorious, and it means that I’m ready to go and absolutely roaring with energy on this Monday morning, despite the fact that I went to bed at 1AM and got six hours of sleep.

Monday

Not gonna lie, I really didn’t think I was going to write today. Mondays aren’t usually super busy days for me since all of the boys are in meetings all day, but I didn’t get a lot of sleep because I forgot to put my bread on until 9PM, and I am an utter snob and a half when it comes to bread, so I had to make it, but it’s easily a three hour process that I’ve turned into a four hour one, so I spent most of Sunday night reading Webtoons while I waited for my dough to proof and bake.

Thus, when I woke up this morning, I was dragging my feet, and even as I’m typing this at 3PM, I’m occasionally doing a slow blink, but y’all, I’ve already managed to write 3k words, and I don’t see myself slowing down yet. I want to write at least one more scene, which is bonkers because then I’ll only have six left before Aurelian’s gotta die, and that last scene is always short. So far, though, I’ve written two scenes, one at 1673 words and the other at 1181 words. (I don’t actually know if that equals 3k, but close enough if not.)

I ended up writing another 998 words for half of a scene, but, by the time I got home, I was so tired that I just recorded a few quick scenes for the audiobook I’m doing of this book for my friend (it’s the only way she’ll read it) before zonking out. All in all, though? I’m really pleased with how much I wrote today.

Daily word count: 3,852
Total word count: 11,036

Oh heyyyy, we’re past our first 10k!

Tuesday

I probably should have written more considering tomorrow is going to be hellishly busy, and I tried to convince myself to write another scene when I got home, but I’m enjoying Vespertine so much that I really just want to read that tonight. I did end up finishing the scene I started yesterday, though, and wrote an additional 1,973 words for it.

It’s insane to me that Aurelian’s part in the story is almost over, though. His story, in itself, hasn’t been a struggle, just my life at the time of writing his story, but it’s taken me so much longer than the others that I feel like I’ve almost lived with him longer, and it’s bonkers that I’m going to be done with him soon. The next lover is going to be awful, too, and I’m definitely going to miss Aurelian a lot while I’m working through the literal torture Andrew’s about to go through. But! Wait! Speaking of! I finally made the decision to switch his name from Andreas to Andrew with the next lover since it’ll finally be a common enough name (thanks, Jesus), and his next lover is going to involve him with a historical figure known as the “first Crusader” (oh, it’s gonna be bad), so I’m very excited about that. I’ve stuck with Andreas for the first four lovers because it’s the common Greek version of his name, and he wouldn’t have been exposed to any Catholics until the end of the fourth lover, but now that we’re here, we’re switching, and it’s going to be spiteful as all heck.

Anyway, I’m not doing anymore writing tonight because I’ve got another damn battle to write, and I don’t feel like it, so I’m going to read instead, and tomorrow, I’ll probably end up writing the next scene in the mountains right after the battle because that’s who I am.

Daily word count: 1,973
Total word count: 13,009

Wednesday

Tudo bem, I’ve got to do some editing today. And by some, I mean a lot. I’ve written about twenty pages without reading back anything that I’ve written, and it’s starting to make me feel a little crazy. I’ve talked about this before, that I edit while I write, but it’s been a while, so hi! I edit while I write! This has always been largely helpful for me because I have a wretched memory, and I’m liable to forget what I wrote even just the day prior, so going back to reread scenes that I’ve written only a day or two ago and do some small editing not only refreshes my brain on what’s going on, but keeps me motivated to keep writing since I love my writing, so rereading it is a lot of fun for me. This is very minimal editing, too, mostly just fluffing up scenes or fleshing out sparse moments where I just wrote a bunch of dialogue to get through the scene and didn’t pause to consider the emotional impact of it.

And, as of yesterday, I was starting to feel very scatterbrained when I was writing, so it’s time to go back and read back about half of what I have written for Aurelian.

• 

• 

The text that I just sent my friend just perfectly explains this story–“finally get to write the library of Alexandria scene next where Andrew moons over the books more than usual, and he’s going to have his first panic attack ever!” This dude survived 600+ years without a panic attack, I’m so proud of him, time to break him in half. I got very little written today, and I’m not even going to pretend that I’m going to write when I get home. I’m only 180 pages from the end of Vespertine, and it’s totally possible that I’m going to finish it tonight. However, I did read everything that I’d written in the last two weeks, so now I’m caught up, and I only have four Aurelian scenes left, and I am not going to forget to talk about whether or not Andrew knew Jesus in my next modern Rafael chapter.

I have a note to myself that says “dude stop forgetting to talk about Jesus”, but there are about eight hundred other things I have to put in that chapter, too, so we’ll see if I actually remember once I get writing.

Daily word count: 1,438
Total word count: 14,447

Thursday

I am hyped about today’s scene. It’s going to be set in the Library of Alexandria, Andrew’s going to have his first panic attack ever, and we’re going to struggle with the overwhelming weight of eternity when faced with so much accumulated knowledge at the same time as just mooning over all the books. It’s going to be very complex and very fun to write.

Oh, it was good. Truthfully, it was so much better than I’d imagined, and I’m so pleased with myself. Like, damn, what a scene. What a scene! I’ve only got three left now, and I can already feel myself playing the do it you won’t game of trying to finish this in an obscenely short amount of time. I want to linger in the next two scenes, though, so I’m probably not going to finish it before tomorrow night, but oh man, that panic attack was A+++++++.

And that’s it for the day! The first scene was 2,088 words, and I just wrapped up another at 1,176 words for a grand total of 3,264 words for the day. I really thought Aurelian was going to end up being shorter than Philip, but they are neck and neck right now. Philip was only about 500 words ahead at this point, and they’re both going to have the exact same amount of scenes (my brain loves that), but I think Aurelian is going to win for one reason only. At the end, Andrew & Philip were estranged, and about the last five or so scenes are without Philip, so they’re not as long, but Andrew & Aurelian are together right to the end, and I really want to lean into the next scene since it’ll be their last together, so it’s probably going to be a doozy. After that, though, I’ve just got Aurelian’s death scene, Rafael’s modern chapter, and we’re ready to research the next lover!

Daily word count: 3,264
Final word count: 17,711

Friday

I didn’t end up writing at all today. Fridays are tough because I’m usually balls to the wall all morning setting up lunch for the boys and catching up on administrative tasks, and though I sometimes I have Friday afternoons pretty free, we leased a small office down the street to help with our increase in hiring and providing more conference space, and we got the keys on Friday, so I had to head over and build out seven desks. By the time I was done, it was already five, and I was wiped, so that was that.

Daily word count: 0
Final word count: 17,711

Sunday

What a day! As I’m typing this, it’s just past 9PM, and I’ve got to outline my day for you so you can really appreciate how productive today was:

9AM: get bagels with my dad & food shop
10AM: finish reading The Road Through the Wall (70 pages) & help with yard work
12PM: watch Night Teeth (2 hours)
3PM: head over to Jaho to write the last three scenes of Aurelian
6PM: dinner & meal prep while finishing the last two episodes of ADOW season one rewatch

And now, here we are at 9PM, and I’m still going. I’ve got to write the blog post that’s supposed to go up tomorrow because I was focused so much on writing the last two weeks and haven’t done any prep work at all, and I really want to read the second half of Kingdom of the Cursed. I have a feeling I’ll only get 100 pages read instead of the full 200, but we’ll see! I’ve still got a lot of energy, and I’m feeling like a badass from this super productive day.

Daily word count: 3,194
Final word count: 20,905

Some notes. At the two week mark, I should be at 25k in order to make it to the 50k mark. However, I was so concerned about being able to write that my true goal was finishing out Aurelian’s section, which would be about 20k words, and y’all. I wrote the last scene today! I’ve accomplished the goal that I set out to do for NaNo when I wasn’t sure I was even going to write at all, and I’m really pleased with that. And I did it in only two weeks! Thus, I want to set some goals for the next two weeks.

Since I wrote 20k in the first two weeks, I’m thinking I can probably get 20k for the second two weeks. This may end up being less because I do need to spend some time researching the next lover, and I’ve got ten chairs to build tomorrow morning, so my Monday might be hellishly busy. I’ve also got Friendsgiving at work on Thursday & Thanksgiving with my family the following week, and I’m not great at writing at home, so, realistically, I’m thinking I might get somewhere around another 10k once I’ve finished research, which should only take a few hours to do.

It’s nowhere near what I’m usually aiming for with NaNo, but I’m really proud of what I’ve done so far.