After the fifteenth—and, if I’m being painfully honest with myself, a little before then— it was made abundantly clear to me that there was no path to 50,000 words for me this year. Between a six-day workweek at my day job, the promises I made to critique others’ work, and having written past the point I’d planned out, I struggled to form words even for this blog post (which is why it’s so late!). But I won’t count this week as a loss. Progress is progress, right? Every day of NaNoWriMo teaches something new, and I’ll sum up those lessons and share those for you now. Word Counts Don’t get…

Writers—and avid readers, too, I’m sure—will be familiar with the term “the soggy middle.” It refers to the part of the book that drags on after the enticing beginning and before the triumphant (or tragic) end. In a great book with tight editing, there’s nothing soggy about the middle. But life’s arcs aren’t always so neatly plotted, are they? All this to say, “Hello, and welcome to a week I did not nail.” Welcome to my soggy middle of a November week. Sunday, November 8 I had to make a quick Target run before work, which killed my attempts to write in the morning. I did manage to get out…