Thursday (1) – 2021 words (Steven hogged my computer for an hour and a half.)

Friday (2) – 2080 words = 4101 total (Had evening plans, so had to finish early.)

Saturday (3) – 2043 words = 6144 total (First time writing with everyone home.)

Sunday (4) – 2099 words = 8243 total (Daughter got sick.)

Monday (5) – 2080 words = 10,323 total (Sick kid at home, keeps asking for candy.)

I have completed the first of six five day segments. It’s easier to stay focused on my goal when I know thousands of others are also competing in NaNo. Though I write alone, I’m not on my own. Just knowing they are out there is like have a pace setter running beside me.

I’m surprised with how things are moving in the novel. I don’t think I had my mind wrapped around what it would really look like, feel like, on the page. It’s much more like a short story than I imagined. The plotting I’d done before hand is laughable. It is too brief to follow, which I think was a big problem when I was working on the zombie novel. The plot outline is like a vague arrow, but I’m having to think of the actual scenes I need and make them up as I go. The story is flowing well, better than expected. I don’t know if I’m more pleased with that or with the fact that I’m hitting my goals like a machine. Either way, I’m pleased.

My working title is Relentless. It’s an action science fiction novel (not too heavy on the science) about a vampire who’s stranded on a jungle planet with other survivors from the spaceship that crashed. Navigating a tiny community while trying to keep her identity hidden isn’t easy. Salvation comes in the form of a scavenger ship worked by prison inmates. If she manages to get off planet, even though one of the inmates has discovered her secret, can she survive when the scavenger ship hitchhikes on a gigantic luxury ship with a secret more potent than her own?

Delilah Rehm

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