Book Update:

The current word count on the Insomnia novel is just over 14,000 words, with 4,000 words dumped in the last two evenings. I should be able to drop another 2,000 tonight without even breaking a sweat.

I want to say that this is the easiest, most comfortable novel that I've ever worked on, but I'm afraid I might jinx the work. But I can't deny that everything is coming together brilliantly. I stumbled upon a new subplot a few nights back, and figured out last night -- while working on the third chapter -- exactly how to introduce two of the book's subplots, including the always important "romantic" one.

I think I figured out how to get around the days-as-chapters problem as well (by simply throwing it out the window, and accepting that some chapters will end up titiled things like "Saturday Morning" and "Saturday Evening" -- as is the case with chapters three and four).

The school-shooting back story is coming along nicely as well, after my initial concern over it. I ended up having to go back and throw out just about everything I had already done on it and start it over from scratch, but this time it's actually working, and working so well that the back-story became long enough to split into two chapters.

Which should also make for some good drama, as I get to drop the back story right at a cliffhanger.

And then, of course, introduce a chapter with no references to the shooting right afterwards.

It's fun to leave people on the edges of their seats.

It's a shame that this isn't a NaNo novel, in a way, because I'm sure I could have torn through the 50,000 in a month easily. At the same time, I'm glad I jumped on it when I did. I think part of what caused last year's novel to fall apart was that I sat on it, even while I was burning to work on it, just so that I'd have something to do for NaNo. By the time November came along, I was no longer quite as passionate about it as I had been four to six weeks earlier. I had over-thought it. It was boring.

So even though I'll likely not be novel-writing this november, it is at least a worthy sacrifice, if I can end up with a worth-while novel completed at an entirely different time of year.