Some days, the words flow freely. You hit that goal mark effortlessly, and float away from the keyboard to bask in the literary sun.

Others, every darned word takes a sump pump to extract. You stare at the screen for hours, and that word count just won’t reach 1,667 no matter how you plead.

Today’s somewhere in between, but close enough to the latter that I needed to take a break before jumping back in to take another lap.

I am, however, doing pretty well. A heck of a lot better than last year, anyway. I’ve got almost 40,000 of the target 50K words written, and ten days to go. I’m going to make it; I really do believe that. For the first time, I will actually “win” NaNoWriMo.

In the past, several of the losses were on a technicality, though. I actually finished the first draft of two novels during NaNoWriMos past. However, both were mid-grade mysteries, written for kids in the 5th to 7th grade levels, more or less. The 50,000 word count is just too high for a genre that rarely reaches 30,000. (Don’t tell J. K. Rowling that, of course.) This year, though, I’m writing for grown-ups, with grown-up attention spans.

Well, theoretically, anyway, though I must confess I know quite a few twelve-year-olds who can read circles around some of my adult acquaintances.

My book, if you can call it that, is written in a hodgepodge of disconnected scenes. I’ve jumped from beginning to end to middle a dozen times, with a large assortment of disjointed scenes in between. I hope and pray that, once November and the first draft are basically done, I can stitch it all together in a way that actually makes sense. I keep praying for Agatha Christie to channel through me, make this task a bit easier. I’m pretty sure every other mystery writer who has signed up on nanowrimo.org does the same thing.

Methinks our literary inspirations in spirit all have learned to take November off by now.

But, for your enjoyment (or not, as the case may be), before I dive back into the water, I’ll just copy and paste here the last couple of paragraphs that I wrote today, before my brain screamed that it needed to come up for air.

The sketch artist looked all of fifteen. She wore no makeup, jeans with a hole in the knee, a faded tee shirt featuring some huge-eyed anime character, and bright red hair in braids that hung nearly to her waist. She introduced herself as Siobhan in a voice as sweet and fluffy as cotton candy.

Tara stared at her, before realizing the girl had reached out for a handshake. The grip was hard, firm, and strong enough to make her wince. Appearances what they were, she was guessing this kid probably had a black belt in something … she glanced at the shirt … Japanese.

Happy November, all. If you’re in the US, and I don’t get back here before next Thursday, a Happy Thanksgiving, too.