As I mentioned in my NaNoWriMo wrap-up post, I am spending December continuing to write my NaNo novel.  My goal is to write 834 words a day (for a 25,000 word total month).  After official NaNo, this feels much, much easier!  And that’s a good thing because I’ve been sick a couple times and slipped behind on my goal–although right now I’m just about on track.

I’m also not too worried about the possibility of getting behind because I really don’t think the novel is going to take a full 25,000 words to finish.  I’ve done a little over 8,000 words so far this month, and I’d be surprised if it takes a full 10,000 more to finish.  Although it could happen!  Stories do often surprise me…

I realized somewhere near the end of NaNo that this story is bigger and more complex and frankly beyond the scope of what I’m achieving in this first draft–so at this point I almost feel like I’m writing an extremely detailed outline which will be changing and expanding as I revise.  I’m rather looking forward to finishing this draft and letting it percolate in my backbrain while I go on to another project.  And I am figuring out some things in the process of this writing, so it feels worth it to finish the outline-ish draft.

And it means I can give you another excerpt!

Aza rubbed her hands together, then pressed one palm against a blank space between the handprints.

Immediately the sound of rock sliding over rock filled the cavern. Aza and I looked at each other with mirrored excitement, looked towards the ravine blocking our path—and realized that the ledge we were standing on had just shrunk significantly.

“Maybe that wasn’t the right spot?” Aza said just above a whisper.

“Just how angry was this woman?” I demanded, staring at the now much closer ravine. “It was not enough to scatter clues across the entire galaxy, she had to put death traps in the final approach?”