Uncanny Vale

I’m at 23,597, which means that tomorrow I should hit the midpoint. I’m going to go ahead and rejoice when I earn my badge for 25K. NaNo is not an easy challenge, but all the support that’s in place really does make a big difference. Today I had an okay morning with 350 words in a half hour. Then I spent an hour or so in the evening researching something that didn’t lead to any tidy conclusion. This left me frustrated, and I had absolutely no taste for the work left before me, another 1650 words starting at 11:00 p.m. It occurred to me that I might just go to bed. But then I remembered how much faster the time and words go by when I have someone else to egg me on. I logged into Discord, found some other writers working late, and challenged one to a word war. Presto powzo! An hour later I had reached my minimum target. The quality of the words tonight is not something I’d like to talk about, but I think I did finally answer the question the morning’s writing had raised. Actually, it was more that I remembered Oh yeah! I already solved that when I gave up on staring at the scene that had me stuck and moved to a different one. This must be a novel-length thing, to have so many problems that I can solve one and then completely forget what the solution was a few days later.