Falling a tad bit more behind, yes, I know. But today I woke up feeling absolutely splendid after a night free of pain, had a very nice final day at the con, and came home with an urge to sit in our hot tub for a bit and soak my knees. After I got out, I almost fell asleep in my chair, so a nap was necessary before I could get my wits together enough to churn out any wordage. No problem, I can make it up over the next few days.

Today’s stats:

Started With: 18,170 words
Wrote: 1,218 words
Total word count: 19,388 words
What else did you do today, Nicola: Drove to the con hotel, sold a copy of Storm Season and HIS, also sold a set of skull and rose earrings, did a panel and an autographing, drove home, discovered to my delight that our pool/spa heater still worked after three years of non-use, sat my happy ass in some bubbling water, took a delightful nap, and now I’m heading back to bed because it’s 1:39 AM and that’s late enough for me.

Writing Tips: “But Nicola,” I hear you say, “you have 5,000 words to make up, and you’re already supposed to write 3K a day. How in the world can you make up that backlog?”

Simple — I write 500 to 1,000 additional words a day. I tend to go a bit over the 3K mark anyway, so adding on a few more paragraphs usually isn’t that big of a deal. And if I’m stuck on a scene, I can always jump around a little bit in the story and find a scene I do I want to write and add in some wordage there. It may well be edited or even deleted when I get to hooking that scene up to the rest of the story, but at least the words are there. This, by the way, is why it’s useful to have an outline either on paper or in your head. If you’re stuck on one scene, it allows you to jump around and keep working until you can figure out what’s holding you up (or you get in the mood to write a smexy scene).