If all goes well, I’ll have completed my NaNoWriMo count by next Tuesday, though Traps and Treachery will take a good bit more than that to finish. The text (excluding world building) is currently sitting at 17,845 words, just slightly more than I added to Isabella and bringing my total narrative words for the month to 35,089, which is nothing to sneeze at.

My outline for Traps and Treachery is still not complete and accounts for 5,786 words. I am up to about 16 scene blurbs with just over half written and am within reach of the first major crisis, which should fall at just over 20k or 1/3 of the way through the book. It’s coming together quite nicely, despite the true chaos of this year’s process.

I’ve had some fun realizations along the way as seeds I didn’t realize I was sowing sprang to life, or I had glimmerings of where a seed needs to be planted. Compared to Steam and Shadows, this book has even more twists and turns, which is good as each of the three books of the volume build in consequence.

Ultimately, though I won’t have the finished novel I’d hoped to, NaNo is serving me well in getting this book on its way. I’m currently sitting on just over 40,000 words, which means I have 10,000 to go and am well within reach (I’m about 5,000 ahead of where I need to be, so not quite 3 days). It hasn’t been an easy path, as you can tell from my Frankenstein project, but it is being a successful one.

How are your projects going? Sitting pretty or scrambling? Whichever place you hold, remember to give yourself creative breaks. Take a walk, meditate, talk to a loved one. Burn out is a real risk, but one way to prevent it is by giving your brain downtime to work through your questions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up with the perfect solution only after giving up and walking away. This means I have sent emails to myself, put notes in the comments on my Kindle, and even scratched things out on a piece of paper when I had no other method of recording the thought. Our brains need that time to process, and the result can be renewed productivity when you thought yourself lost.

Below are my actual stats. The first number is cumulative, the second per day (you can see I’ve had to lean on my cushion quite a few times already, but I’ve had more days where I went over). Though I managed a good stretch between day 14 and 19, I had one day this past week where I didn’t make the minimum and was grateful for the extra.

Day 1 — 1692 – 1692
Day 2 — 3172 – 1480
Day 3 — 3997 – 825
Day 4 — 6242 – 2245
Day 5 — 8102 – 1860
Day 6 — 10929 – 2827
Day 7 — 13158 – 2229
Day 8 — 14622 – 1464
Day 9 — 16329 – 1707
Day 10 – 18565 – 2236
Day 11 – 20835 – 2270
Day 12 – 22911 – 2076
Day 13 – 24349 – 1438
Day 14 – 26090 – 1741
Day 15 – 27979 – 1889
Day 16 – 30313 – 2334
Day 17 – 33010 – 2697
Day 18 – 34905 – 1895
Day 19 – 37038 – 2133
Day 20 – 37913 – 875
Day 21 – 40097 – 2184