As of right now, I am writing at roughly half the speed it would take to have 50,000 words on November 30. Part of that is that I haven’t been feeling well, and some family things have come up. Part of it is that I’m writing longhand, which well, it takes longer than typing, and it’s been a while since I wrote anything of any length longhand, so I’m consistently overestimating how many words are on that piece of paper.

I’m right about five thousand words.

The good news is that writing on ONE piece of paper at a time has forced me to focus on the scene that I’m writing, and not jump all over my outline. (If I had one.)

The process is working.

What I have is a lot smoother and more complete than what I would wind up with typing.

The problem is, there’s also a whole lot less of it.

I feel like I’m missing something, right now. I feel like I’m not sinking into the layers of the story the way I would with a little more scene hopping. I have a couple–maybe three really good, really thorough scenes, but I don’t have a grasp on the big picture the way I usually do.

The story is taking longer to start feeling like one of “My” stories than it usually would. I don’t have a sense of most of the characters, and I still haven’t found that one, central relationship–you know, the weird and freaky one–that would catch my muse’s imagination. In fact, I think I have fewer characters, in general.

So, Day six, and the process is working, and not working. I think I’m writing better, and definitely cleaner… but being quite honest… I’m losing interest.