Hey Everyone! I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

And for those that don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you just had a wonderful week. =)

For those of us in the States, Thanksgiving is a time when we gather with family, enjoy people we may not see all the time, cook some delicious food, and be thankful for the time we have together.

My family also celebrates my Uncle’s birthday, and one of my cousin’s birthdays, at the same time, so it just adds to the joy of the day. Over all it’s a good day for my family. We all gather at my Aunt’s house and she cooks the turkey (wrapped and cooked in bacon). My Mom makes a mushroom pie that is just divine. And my uncle gets enough beer as birthday presents to last him until the new year – a gift that my mom and I started when I was little and everyone and their brother decided in the last few years to jump on the bandwagon and do for him.

While it’s a good day, it’s also a long day. The mushroom pie has to be baked so that it comes out of the oven just prior to us leaving the house, so the morning is spent eating a quick breakfast and then baking. We’re out the door and to my Aunt’s for a serve time of 1pm, and then we’re there until 5/6pm. Leaves little time to really get much else done.

Not that I’m using that as an excuse. Not completely anyway. I mean, I didn’t have family obligations for the rest of the weekend. A dentist appointment and getting together with one of mom’s friends to talk about writing, yes, but nothing that ate up the whole of my day either.

Truthfully, I just needed a weekend off I think. I didn’t get a single word written from Thanksgiving through the weekend. I focused on what I felt was important to me this weekend: Family, Friends, and my Health. I also took this weekend to read, something I’m still sorely lacking a majority of the time. But it felt REALLY good to be able to just pick up a book (or well download it to my phone through kindle) and read. I started it Friday while sitting in my dentist’s office waiting to be called back and finished it Sunday morning. I pretty much did nothing but read Saturday night. And I took a little time to enjoy some video games Sunday afternoon when Mom decided to crash for a little bit because she wasn’t feeling well.

You guessed it though. It means that my NaNo word count did suffer greatly. So let’s get into the numbers, shall we.

Day 20 – 964

Day 21 – 0

Day 22 – 1562

Day 23 – 0

Day 24 – 0

Day 25 – 0

Day 26 – 0

Total: 24,227 (Goal: 43,333)

So. I’m roughly 20,000 words behind. I didn’t even bother to look at what day NaNo’s site suggested I would complete my 50,000 words, or look at how many words I would have to complete per day to catch up.

We only have four more days left of NaNo, counting today. I can safely say that because I took the weekend off, I’m not going to.

This isn’t to say I won’t continue to work on the story I started, I totally will. I want to see it to completion. And NaNo helped me to get a good portion of the way through the first draft. For that, I’m always grateful.

I will say, I have had the habit of bringing a novel back for a round two of sorts the following year if I don’t finish it or NaNo, but my goal for this novel is to have it finished before NaNo is even a blimp on my radar for 2018.

Ideally, and I’m not sure just how feasable it is yet, my goal will be to have my second Faerie novel planned out and ready to start for NaNo 2018. It’s a year off, which gives me a year to finish this year’s Fantasy novel and finish editing my Faerie book 1 novel, polishing it up before I start to save and potentially look for an editor to take a wack at it. Even, pending how long the first two goals take me, potentially have it back from said editor. We’ll see.

I’m still back and forth on if I want to try and quarry my novel or just ship it off into the world myself. There are a lot of pros and cons in both categories for what I should do. I’m still trying to feel my way through what I think might be the best route for me though.

I still have time before I get there, though. A couple rounds of edits at least.

Until next time, dear readers!