Ok, ok… I know that my word count has not moved. It stills sits blankly at zero. This is not actually a true representation of my novel. See, I’m re-working the same novel that I worked on for NaNoWriMo last year. Last year I logged nearly 14,000 words (which is a little more than zero), so it’s not like my novel is just some unembodied, imagined thing. It’s real, people. It has words in semi-coherent order. It has chapters, even! (Even though some of those chapter will be chopped out completely. Same thing with a character or two.)

The problem that I’m faced with is that I have 15,000+ words and the NaNoWriMo peeps frown on writers logging giant word counts. (Like, if I were to go from 0 to 15,000…) So I’ve logged nothing, fearful that if I do people will write nasty things about me on the NaNoWriMo message boards. Which, I know none of them so why should I care…? I don’t know, but I do. Anyhoo, it looks like I’ve been super lazy, when in fact I’ve been medium diligent. I’ve also submitted two more items to children’s magazines and I’m revising a third. So I’m not doing nothing.

One thing that I really need to do, but that I’ve been too pansy to try thus far, is to pick up the phone and call the famous rehab center here in town. I could really use a tour of their facility to get a clear picture in my head for my setting. I’m fearful that if I call and tell them that I’m a writer and want a tour for research, they will turn me down cold. Instead, I am planning an elaborate lie for them about how I have a alcoholic younger brother who steals from the mall and who’s tearing our family apart. (I’m currently holding auditions for the role of my alcoholic younger brother. My real-life, non-alcoholic little brother would play it too straight, I think.)

A fun side note: I found an interesting site, written by a talented, cute YA author. It’s a site dedicated to relaying what she’s learned about the writing process, start to published. I found it late last night, and I haven’t read through the entire thing (yet), but if you are in the process of writing a novel (or even thinking about it) it’s totally worth a read.

And now, more medium diligence.