I decided to take a break from writing for a few minutes just now and my break involved sketching a character on my computer, using words. I think I’m hooked. Here’s what I wrote:

The hero. The protagonist. The man behind the curtain. The man in front of the curtain. In a different dimension, he is the curtain and what is in front of him and behind him is only the plot. Hell, that’s true about any dimension regardless of what shape he takes or where he stands in regards to a piece of fabric.

I’m going to hit 15,000 words after I finish typing this update and before I got to bed tonight. To be keeping up with the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words for the month, I should have 11,666 words by the end of the day. I’m feeling great about this novel. Sadly, though, I haven’t gotten to kill anyone in it yet. Don’t worry, I will. I love a little death.

My characters have taken control of their lives and have developed free will. It’s weird writing like this. I’ve never had characters do this to me before. Though, to be fair, I’ve hardly kept characters around this long before. My only piece of writing I have that is longer than my current work is my senior thesis from a few years back. It came in just under 25,000 words. It was a struggle to write. But not with my current project. It’s all just coming to me.

Plot changes daily and develops new routes to get to the same end. My mind is constantly rethinking scenarios where people will meet. They talk differently. They act differently. I’ve already prepared myself to destroy a marriage. The marriage I originally thought was founded on undying love. The thought of it worries me a little.

Moving on. Today Jeramie remarked that I must clearly be continuing with Movember. She seemed like I wasn’t actually going to follow through. This November, I follow through with everything. It’s also nice to hear that someone can actually see my mustache. Usually people just don’t see it even when I can see it in a mirror from a distance.

Today, I’m skipping the 30 Day Challenge for a good reason. I could very well do what it asks me to do and reconnect with an old friend but I’m not. Let me explain my case. I recently quit Facebook because I felt like I was friends with too many people and I didn’t care to connect with most of them. I’m using my absence to purge myself of that guilt. I collected the addresses and numbers of those I want to stay in touch with and I intend to do just that. But I’m in such a busy month that I don’t think I can do it just now. I write a few thousand words a day. I teach English. I read. I workout. I cook. Sometimes, I sleep. When my writing per day goes down (I’ve looked ahead and my daily writing is just going to go up, but I don’t mind) I’ll start to connect with those friends that I’ve kept in my transition to a new life. We’ll just consider this the first step of today’s challenge. Sound good?

Push ups and sit ups are still going strong. At the end of the month, I’m going to post before and after photos. Granted, my before photo is from the middle of October, but it’s roughly the right idea.

I took the duck carcass from yesterday and I boiled it into a nice duck stock today. I’ve got three jars of it ready for a few batches of onion soup (my favorite winter meal because it’s easy, hot and I can make a few days worth of meals in about an hour). I also saved the duck grease for cooking. I just want to see how it changes the taste of things. When I finished boiling the bones, I dumped them out the window for the dogs and cats to fight over. Maybe Ernest Hemingway will get a bite. More on him some other day.