Whew.

I wrote about 1,300 words tonight, faster than I’ve written that much before since I started this project – under an hour. Many nights I don’t get that far in two hours, so my thoughts were really organized tonight. Could be because as one of the major scenese I’ve been envisioning since the start, it’s already so well plotted out in my head that actually putting it on paper was fast an easy. And it turns out that what I thought was two new chapters – everything I’ve written since the end of chapter 2 – was actually four. So that kind of feels good. Did a quick readover and then sent it out to a couple friends before I could second-guess myself. My stomach’s in knots about it, even though they’ve already seen the first two chapters and gave good reviews. I really hope they like this next bit.

When I reviewed, I took out the boots part. It just felt too weird to me. I’m much happier now.

I’m currently sitting at 35,000 words. Hard to believe that’s about a third of a novel. In two and a half months!

Now for my celebratory salted caramel chocolate, and bed. I’m going to give myself a bit of a break for the next while, not stay up so late. Writing until 1a.m. or later night after night was what made NaNo so hard for me, mentally. I think I’m going to back off any future time-related goals and just get as much done before midnight every night as I can.

Writing the last sentence of chapter 6 was hard tonight. My hands were shaking when I did it. What I have to write tomorrow is going to be even harder.