I let my NaNo sit all of December. I made my word count (50,000+) all right, but the exercise burnt me out a little and the whole story’s still not on paper. (For perspective, I’d like to add that most books today are 75,000-100,000, with some fantasy stretching to 200,000 words, according to people who seem to know more than me).

So here it’s January now, and my month off is over. I was just not in a hurry to open the Lindorm folder again. Don’t know why.

So I finally started by doing my favorite thing which was writing a new beginning/opener (beginnings are my favorite thing to write for some reason), and I got about three pages over the course of the (up and down) evening. Very exciting for me.

Then I went back and skimmed some of the stuff that I wrote in November. I was trying to remember how I’d pulled off the “romance” bits of the fairy tale, especially since I’ve not really been a romance reader. I laughed so hard. Probably embarrassed laughter. I could only barely imagine someone I know reading this.

Not because it was “That bad” (It was pretty good for a first draft, actually) I just loved having control over everything people said and did– and it cracked me up. Mostly the talking part. My characters probably talk way too much, but that would be because I find what they say entertaining.

And for now, at least, this experiment is for my own entertainment. It is fulfilling that function quite well.

Three pages at the beginning, allowing me to hint at what I knew what coming because I’d already written it– that was very cool. I’m loving this again.

The hard part now is to stick to filling in (and making interesting) the places I skipped during November, rather than re-reading and tweaking what I’ve already written. This story-stuff is such fun!