Word count today: 2,438

Total word count: 47,547

Words to go: 2,453

Not bad for another day when work and life conspired to give me less writing time than I'd counted on. It was a very stressful day at work, and I wasn't really in the mood to write. If I've learned anything this month, it's the obvious fact that writing is like anything else worth doing; it's fun sometimes, and difficult sometimes, but it needs to be done. I learned that a long time ago with my work, and that basic life lesson is re-introducing itself to me in the arena of writing.

November, it turns out, isn't the optimum month for me to try to write a novel. We had a pledge drive a couple weeks ago. It's hard to explain what it's like, but it's sort of the mental equivalent of mountain climbing. You do something incredibly difficult and taxing, get a little sleep, and get up and do it again. I actually love doing it (I like a challenge), but it really beats you up by the end of the week. We also had performance reviews throughout our company, and in my position I'm both getting and giving them. That's not the time I would have chosen to try to fit something like this in. That's one of the really cool things about it. If I can write a 50,000 word novel during a month like this (and judging from my word count, apparently I can), I'm able to do it pretty much anytime. Setting aside the time for it--or using my available time for that instead of something else--seems to be the main ingredient to hot, fresh booky goodness.