I took a break from my normal Saturday, although this Saturday is far from normal since Philip is here. The kid is thin! It’s remarkable. He desperately needed clothes. What he had was falling off. We went to see “Men Who Stare at Goats.” It was a good time to go, since everyone else is seeing the Twilight movie or 2012. There were only three other people in the theater. Philip and I thought it was a riot. I laughed so hard. One reference I had to explain to Philip because he doesn’t know the history of LSD. No one else was laughing. My son particularly liked the references to being a Jedi and Ewan MacGregor’s character (Obi-Wan) having no clue. This is one movie where the time went by quickly and I had no desire to find out the time. That’s rare.

So I got behind in my word count where I write 3,000 words a day. I wrote around 7.000 words today to make up for lost time and to reach 60,000. I have serious neck cramps from sitting at the computer most of the day. I did finally write the scene I had been planning for about five days. Yeah! It took fewer words than I expected. Darn! My poor characters are on a rollercoaster ride.

Last night around 8 pm, I reached 50,000 words. I have finally hit a turning point in my novel.

I have almost reached the 50,000 word mark. I have a lot more story to tell. One of the characters did a surprising thing. He finally woke up and returned to the living. My characters are in crisis mode yet again. I haven’t reached the biggest crisis that they have to face yet. I don’t know what that will be.

I have finally gotten to the point in my novel where my characters are surprising me. I did throw them into an impossible situation. They acted just like you might expect for a while. Not now. I’m not sure what hardship they should endure next. Death? Disease? Near Death? Surprise visitors? This time I have gotten attached to my characters. Death seems like too much.

I have this nifty shirt from the NaNoWriMo shop. Since you may not be able to see the words on the sign. It says, “An Idyllic Writers Retreat Smack-Dab in the Middle of Your Crazy Life”.

I have been busy writing my novel and working–too busy to post here. After some weeks I finally spoke to my son on the phone. It was good and then bad. I don’t know if he will pick up the phone the next time I call. He was upset. I was upset. I’m no longer listed on his friends list on Facebook. I have quite a bit to say about that, but none of it can be posted here. He is supposed to be here for Thanksgiving vacation. Frankly, I have no idea if he will show up.

Does thinking about someone calling have them call? I wondered if this worked for anyone else. I had been thinking for a few days about how to get someone to be in contact, and then out of the blue I get a text message. Unfortunately after a small flurry of messages, I haven’t had a single one since. I wonder what had them stop.

Too bad I have no way of working this into my novel. It might be a fun little plot twist. In my novel world, there are no cell phones. There’s very little of anything. Think of camping the old way…no GPS, no matches, no air beds, no prepackaged food. It’s just you and nature. Maybe it is a bit like living in Africa away from cities. I don’t really know, since I have never been.

It’s about time. There’s my current word count to the right. I’m working on finishing this novel–that means writing the complete plot to “the end”–in the 30 days. I have written in spite of being sick. Wednesday was painful. It took 45 hours to write 3,000 words, and once I did, I ended there. Thursday was better. I wrote 3,000 words in about 2 hours. We will see what today holds. I’m still not better, but I’m not feeling worse.

First rule: Save often and make backups. When I say save often, I mean every few minutes. My word program crashed on day 2. Luckily, the last save had everything except the spelling changing. The recovered file was a joke. If I had gone with it, I would have lost a large portion of my story that I could not have rewritten the same. The word widget still isn’t working. There are technical difficulties over at NaNoWriMo land. I’m currently at 9,754.

The widget for word count isn’t working. That would be that little empty box on the right. I’m at 7,051 words with more to add tonight. I have so much going on tomorrow that I won’t have a chance to write, so I need about 2,000 more words. I’m shooting for writing a finished novel again this year. That means writing 90-100K words. There’s nothing like a writing goal of 6,000 words in one day. I’m at 4,000, and it has been fast and slow. The first 2K were slow today. The last 2K have gone by quickly. I like quickly. Tuesday is teaching day.