I know I've been absent a little while, but in that absence, I caught up on my word count and even got ahead! It was all thanks to a little thing I like to call Wednesday, Staying Up Until the Sun Comes Up. I went into it with a personal goal of 30,000, though Meg (my support system) offered me an incentive of a present if I simply got on schedule with my words (23,339, which rolled in right around 12:45am).

I began writing around midnight, but it was a little slow-going with a lot of procrastination. Frankly, I was just sick of writing about the depressing topic of funerals. I was also exhausted and had to have a half-hot cocoa, half-cappaccino blend to keep me awake. In the spirit of last year, I ordered from The Connection again (a hot pretzel with cheese I'd been wanting for the past couple of days), but sadly, I did not don any of my traditional NaNo garb. I was quite comfy in my pajama pants and sweatshirt, thank you. Towards the end of the evening (or morning, whichever you prefer), around 3 or so, I got a little crazy with the writing. I ended up killing off a celebrity and having my main character ruin a funeral for someone she didn't even know. It was so much more fun than your traditional funeral, something to keep the words coming.

Alas, I fell asleep around 5am, unable to make it until the sun actually came up. Mostly because it decided to sleep in and not poke its head out of the clouds until 6:57am, according to the Weather Channel; I wouldn't know - I was sleeping. I ended with 29,348 words, just 650 shy of my personal goal, but the fact that I'd written nearly 9,000 words was a huge accomplishment for me and I was so so tired. I probably couldn't have written any more if I tried, and though the celebrity-death and mishaps Jenny had in that church were amusing, I'm not sure if they contributed in any way to the purpose of the novel. So, it's for the better I like to think.

Even without Jackie, the adventure was well-worth it - though it wasn't quite as much fun. And I'm more than halfway there!