We’re in the final week of NaNoWriMo now, with just six days left.  And it’s going to be a weird week, with Thanksgiving coming so late in the month this year!  I was keeping up very well for my 60,000 word goal, continuing to write around 2,000 words a day, even on workdays this past week.  And then…I got sick on Friday.  And, because I write every day, I clocked in at 306 words, and those were a struggle.  It’s actually kind of funny to see on my word count graph, as everything goes along pretty steadily and then–nose dive.

Fortunately, I had a big cushion in case of this kind of thing.  Despite the rough day, I never quite dropped below my target total per day, though I pretty well ate up my cushion.  If I’d stayed sicker for longer, I would have been behind very quickly for my 60,000 word goal–though I’d probably still be okay for the 50,000 goal.  Fortunately, even though I’ve still been recovering yesterday and today, I was able to spend both days largely alternating writing sprints and episodes of Psych (good show, I recommend it!)  So yesterday clocked in at 1,900 words (and six episodes) and today I hit 2,586 words.

The upshot of all that?  I’m currently sitting at 49,288, very close to the 50,000 mark and probably on track still for 60,000, as long as nothing too cataclysmic happens before the end of the month!

As to the story…it probably didn’t help that I hit a bit of a block the same day I got sick, but I managed to get over that hump and have outlined scenes up to the end of the book now.  I wrote a decent amount of angsting for Terrence on Saturday, which probably helped wrack up words, and today I hit another plot turn that brings us to the final, hopefully faster-moving and easier to write, section of the book.

I still can’t tell if reaching 60,000 words will also bring me to the end of the story.  I think it may be a little longer than that, but hopefully not by much.  I doubt I’ll try for a final push to finish the novel by the end of the month if it’s longer than 60K (maybe) but it should be possible to finish in early December.  And I think I’m good with that.

Here’s an excerpt from Terrence’s angsting chapter.  I think I last posted about Rose and Terrence arguing and…yeah, that didn’t end very well for them!

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It was almost as though the entire interlude of the last few months, everything from the day Terrence had set out to rescue the Princess Behind Thorns, hadn’t happened.  Except that Gregory was gone and he was treated as the heir in his place.  There was that.  But all the steps to get there seemed to have been neatly brushed away, as though he had simply stepped into a more welcoming, more accepting alternate world.

Terrence found, to his own surprise, that he hated it.

He didn’t want to pretend that Rose didn’t exist.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about her, especially about how it had all fallen apart, but he didn’t want her existence to be swept away as though she had never been, as though she hadn’t mattered at all except as the reason he could claim the throne.

As though she really had only been the legendary Princess Behind Thorns, easily set aside now that her purpose of securing a new heir was complete.

He was glad every day that Emerald Eyes hadn’t left with Rose.  The small black cat stuck by his side with a stubbornness that overcame closed council room doors and his father’s dark looks.  Terrence brought the cat everywhere he was permitted, and if he was shut out of anywhere, he invariably turned up anyway.  If not for the black cat, Rose’s cat, Terrence felt he might have started to question himself if she’d ever existed.  If not for the tangible, furry shadow left behind, he might have started to think he’d only dreamed up a fantasy that had turned on him at the end.