the wings that you burn turn to ashes, my dear

Finally, the first draft of my NaNo 2022 novel, Lay All Your Love On Me, the sequel to last year's How Wild Are We, is finished.

Corwin and Sophia's story currently tops out at 98,664 words. Not all of these words will stay, and I have at least two scenes I know I need to add, but I feel confident that this is in the right word count range.

*collapses*

I'm going to go to bed now.

It just occurred to me that I never posted my NaNo wrap up, or set December goals, or anything.

Ooops.

NaNoWriMo went well this year! I ended the month writing 80,950 words. Which... holy shit. That's my highest word count total for any month... ever. I attribute this to hosting three write ins on Discord per week, and running/joining sprints all the time. I can write a lot if I set a timer and just go, not worrying about quality so much as trying to get the story down.

I now have through Chapter 15 drafted on Angel of Mine. (I actually have more than that, but I might be playing around with scene order/adding some things, so I haven't split them into chapters yet.) I did manage to write a few of the missing scenes from A Hero Lies in You, which I really wanted to get done for NaNo. I'm calling the month a success even if I didn't write as much for Hero as I hoped.

Now, I'm back to my daily editing. I'm currently on Chapter 9 of AoM; 7 just went up yesterday, and 8 is already off to beta. If I can manage to stay a chapter ahead, that would be lovely, so I don't have to crunch to get things posted on schedule.

We're still doing write ins with my NaNo group, only we're meeting on Discord on every other Sunday. At our next meeting, we're going to be discussing five writing goals for 2021. I currently have a few ideas rolling around in my head, so I'll post them here too when I have them solidified.

Also... My Secret Santa at work, Lily, bought me a Red Ranger helmet. Like, a real one. It's so pretty I could cry. I also now need to make a Jason cosplay for a reason to wear it - I'm thinking that I will do a casual cosplay of this look with black pants, and then maybe the full uniform? I have time to decide because it's not like any of us are going to cons any time soon.

I am ready for Christmas. It's going to be a quiet one, on account that I'm not traveling this year, but I'm looking forward to it. It's probably going to be the year that Q wakes us up every hour, too, but that's all part of the holiday when you have kids, lol. I hope you and yours have a lovely holiday season, and may the dumpster fire of 2020 light the way for a better 2021!