Word count: 50828 | Since last entry: 561 | This month: 561 I am such a slug. Far from getting right back to work on the novel after putting the Gateways and zeppelin stories in the mail, I slacked off for over a week. But I finally did put my butt in the chair tonight, and wrote 500 words for a gold star. It’s a start. One reason I had so much trouble getting going is that this is a transitional chapter — only one point in the outline, which is basically “move this set of characters from here to there.” And yet somehow I need to keep the reader’s attention for 4000+ words. I’ve been mulling it over in the back of my head for the last week, and I think I have a set of incidents to occur on the trip that will reveal needed information, develop the characters’ relationships to each other, build the world, and increase dramatic tension. I hope. I am encouraged by my success with the zeppelin story, which was written in one shot without an outline. We’ll see how it goes. I have ten days. Despite not writing very much on the novel in January, I think it was a very good writing month. I wrote almost 14,000 words (the most in one month since I’ve started tracking, including both the PseuDoNaNoWriMo and the NoReNaNoWriMo), including revising one story, writing two stories from scratch, and putting all three of the new stories in the mail. And the Gateways story has already sold! Just to keep my head from getting too big, I also got five rejections. February is not going to be as productive, I suspect, with Potlatch and the International Film Festival and several Fahrenheit 451 events (it’s the county library’s annual “Everybody Reads” program, with discussion groups and plays and movies and readings all focused on one selected book). Not to mention I can’t expect an ice storm to keep me home and writing for three solid days. But Kate’s going to be out of town for most of one week, which could be an opportunity to get a lot of writing done. Or maybe to melt down into complete slugdom. Again, we’ll see.