Word count today: 4,100

Total word count: 36,267

Another really good day...I went to Barnes & Noble this morning for about two hours (thanks to my very understanding wife) and got within striking distance of 4000 words by the time she and my daughter dropped by for biscotti and conversation. This evening I wrote about a third of a page more, and finished up at exactly 4200 for the day.

Changing the setting by advancing the action forward in time has continued to help a lot. I brought back one character who was in one scene earlier in the book; I was actually a little surprised at how his scene played out today. I could see this story going a lot farther than 50,000 words. The 50K mark doesn't mean you have to stop, or even that the novel is necessarily done. The object is to get that far along in a month, which is still a big undertaking.