I’ve updated here in a few days because there hasn’t been much going on with the story. Here are the word counts over the last few days:

7/20: 506 words.

7/21: 270 words.

7/22: 0 words.

7/23: 183 words.

The problem is that it’s time for my protagonist to encounter the extraordinary world. But I am uncertain what that world looks like. The story is at an impasse, such that it cannot progress any further without me making some decisions. So instead of doing that, I’ve mostly just avoided writing and worked on other projects, which is not ideal since I’m intending to finish the first draft of this novel before the year is out.

7/19: 0 words. Instead of writing today, I did prep work on the new podcast I’m going to launch with Barbara Hinske (best-selling sweet romance and mystery author), The Write Approach.

Update: I wrote 111 words while waiting in car line to pick up the 7YO from summer camp. Many thanks to Scrivener’s iOS app and its ability to sync to my laptop.

7/18: 623 words. The first half of today’s session felt … odd. It accomplished what it needed to, but it didn’t feel like it was good. I guess that’s what editing is for. But the second half flowed much more smoothly.

7/15: 160 words. The third consecutive day with a low word count, but still it was still forward progress. I skipped a chapter, because I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted to do with it, so I’m continuing the trend of writing this novel out of order.

7/16: 526 words. Not as much writing as I’d hoped for, but it was still more than the previous three days combined. It’s also noteworthy that I crossed 95,000 words for the year.

7/17: 767 words. A solid writing session this morning. I should finish the current chapter either later today or tomorrow. I’ve been writing Casual Business with Fairies for a month now, and it’s already at 14,000 words. At this pace, I’ll be done in another four months, which seems simultaneously like it will take forever and not be all that long. If I can finish it before Thanksgiving, I’ll feel pretty good about that, especially with how busy August and September are lining up for work.

7/14: 68 words. I’d been having a bit of difficulty figuring out how Middle Builds 1 and 2 would unfold in Casual Business with Fairies, so instead of writing this morning, I did research and really dug into fairy lore.

I had been planning to base parts of this story in German tales, mostly because that’s what I was comfortable with after the three Zauberi Chronicles novels. But that’s not what this story called for.

Once I realized that this was a story rooted in Irish fairy tales, much of the second act of the book began to unfold itself.

7/13: 118 words. Maybe there’s irony in titling today’s entry what I did when I only wrote 118 words. But the last two weeks have been really solid, and today, I finished the first seven chapters of Casual Business with Fairies, which comes in at just over 12,500 words.

7/12: 791 words. The first couple chapters of Casual Business with Fairies are rooted in a motorcycle trip that I look in the summer of 2005. By all objective metrics, it was a total mess. So that’s been fun to relive and place someone else in that misery … along with giving them their own additional miseries to contend with.

7/10: 462 words. I didn’t to writing yesterday until late in the afternoon after church and after I took the kids to play in the creek. But when I stopped writing, I found that Casual Business with Fairies was at 11,111 words, which was unexpectedly gratifying.

7/11: 861 words. With another good writing session this morning, things have been really falling into place for the Beginning Hook. And for a book that I had not plan or framework for when I started writing it, I’m pretty stoked about that.

7/9: 1147 words. Even though I haven’t written chapters 2-3 or 8-10, I finished writing chapters 4 and 11 of Casual Business with Fairies today. I get the impression it’s just going to be that kind of book, at least for now. I did cross the 10,000 word threshold for the novel today. Feeling good about that.

7/8: 693 words. After writing no words yesterday for a variety of reasons (an early start at work, releasing one podcast episode and recording another, and taking the kids to a matinee showing of The Rise of Gru), I had a really productive writing session this morning. It took me a few minutes to find the thread and get started, but once I did, the words really flowed. I should be able to finish the current chapter today (if I’m lucky) or tomorrow. The Beginning Hook is really coming together well.