So, no progress on the NaNovel today. It’s depressing to see that ‘words behind’ number grow, let me tell you.

But I realized I was so fractured that I wasn’t getting anything done because I was trying to do everything at once. So tonight instead of NaNoing I finished up an article that’s been kicking my ass. It’s one I never really wanted to do; I just kind of fell into it. Someone asked me if I would be interested in doing it and I think I said “Maybe” or something, and she took that as a yes and the next thing I knew it was my assignment.

Anyway I just sent it off. Hopefully it’ll be accepted as is and I’ll be done with it. It wasn’t due until next Monday. I have another due the following Monday but then I’m free of writing obligations aside from NaNo. (Well, I’m waiting on a piece of loaner equipment for another piece, but I’ll worry about that when it arrives.) Anyway, my *hope* is that I can quiet my mind and use Friday evening-Saturday-Sunday as pure NaNoveling time. Alternatively I might jump on the other article and get that going and get it done early…we’ll see.

When last I wrote, my novel had taken yet another turn, and a pretty fun one. I’m not going back to read anything because that makes editing way too tempting. But I know in my heart that the first 7-8000 words I wrote will be cut if I ever try to polish this up into a submittable book. It took that long to get the flow going.

In other news, my apologies to those friends out there who’re leaving me comments and not having them show up. The damned spammers are killing me, again. It takes a long time to filter through the spam and find the legit comments. I saw an article in Wired a few months back about an infamous spammer who was found bludgeoned to death. I know this doesn’t reflect very well on me, but all I thought when I read that was “Good, he deserved it.” When you make your living by irritating the hell out of people…you have to be building up a pretty damned big karmic debt.