Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

I got a lot more work done today. I wrote two chapters for 5,164 words. I also prepped a story for release in Second Life. This is the story Covenant, which I wrote in October and read in SL. I created a number of other things for Second Life, since there is a sale on Black Friday and I need content. I also prepared the mashed cauliflower for tomorrow, so most of my meal prep work is done.

Today was a fairly typical writing day. The chapters came pretty easily, which was good. It was also a weird day. Part way into the first chapter, for reasons I can’t figure out, I got the hankering to rewrite the 23rd Psalm as it might be said by a devotee of Cthulu. It was a lot of fun, and very creepy, and will fit really well into a story I’d like to write in January.

I will be working tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thankful. I’ll be cooking and feasting, but I’ll also be writing. It would be great fun to take the day off, but I’m like anyone else who has his own business. There are times when you can’t take off, as much as you’d like to, or might need to. That’s part of the business, and comes as no surprise to anyone trying to finish Nanowrimo.

This is an important lesson. There are times, if you want something badly enough, that you have to set your priorities. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or asocial or odd. It doesn’t mean you don’t have friends or don’t fit in. It just means that you have something you’ve committed to doing. I had friends ask what I was doing for the holiday, and I was offered a chance to join folks for dinner, but I passed. I let them know I had to work and, fortunately, my friends understand what that means. Folks who don’t, well, they can take offense sometimes. Your job as a writer is to educate them—and perhaps remind them that you’re the same as everyone who owns a restaurant, or has to work in a drugstore or grocery or show up when your water pipes burst, or be in the office when you wake up with the flu, regardless of it being a holiday.

I am thankful for family and friends. I’m thankful for the great technology that lets me share this blog with everyone, and is reshaping publishing. I’m thankful for having a job that lets me enjoy what I do. (The next time someone asks me if I have a real job, I’m going to say, “Nope, I love what I do.”) I’m thankful for the freedom that allows me to indulge myself and entertain myself as I work.

November Word Count: Hard: 82,092 Soft: 16,790

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!