November is half over, and those people who are valiantly keeping up with their word count in NaNoWriMo should be hitting 25,000 words today. That’s 25k words in 15 days. It’s really impressive, is what I’m saying.

I’m not making my daily word counts. At this point, I’m not even trying. Instead, I’m writing sort of sporadically when the mood hits. This means that my word count for this month is woefully low, but I’m not bothered by this for two reasons.

1. Despite having something of a plan, I unexpectedly started writing something else, something that’s been floating around in my head for a long time, something I didn’t—still don’t, really—know where it was going..
2. I’m actually writing. After many long months of putting off even trying to get back into the swing of things, I’m putting words on a page. I’m figuring out how to do that again, and it feels really great.

I know I can write a novel, having done it once before. But the conditions were exactly right. Now I need to figure out how to write a novel—or write at all—when the conditions are… well, normal. It’s a challenge I’m actually enjoying.