Okay, so far, so good — this new writing challenge has helped me get my butt in chair and finish off a draft of chapter 8 of my book. I just realized, looking at the Word document, that I banged out 6 pages this morning — sweet.

There are some odds and ends I need to add to the chapter (I always forget to add physical details when I’m drafting, especially when I’m doing a lot of dialogue), but it’s pretty good for a draft.

It’s a fun scene, too. I got to include the ghost of the dead head coach who’s been haunting poor George, my sixty-sore-year-old protagonist:

I glanced back past the half-dozen empty tables and saw an oval-shaped face poking through the middle of the two doors to the kitchen. A pale white face, painfully familiar, and it was smiling at me.

“Enjoy your meal, coach!”

I nearly spit my mouthful of coffee out onto my daughter and son-in-law as I realized that my former boss, three months dead, had showed up here. Worrell was in the diner.

I blinked, and all I saw were the doors swinging in opposite directions until they came back to rest, closed.

After another, more successful sip of coffee in the awkward silence that had been stretching out, during which Thaddeus checked his watch only once, to his credit, I looked back at Lizbeth, my face hot.

“Strong coffee,” I said with a laugh.

Yay for MayNoWriMo! Fellow writers, and those of you who keep saying, I wanna write a novel, but I just don’t have the time — I encourage you to give it a try. You only have 9 more hours (depending on your time zone) to get prepped and outlined! A deadline can be a wonderful motivator.

As for me, I spent my lunch hour doing just that, scribbling ideas and notes for the last 15 or so chapters I plan on writing in the next 31 days. That’s two chapters a day for those of you keeping score. At about 3500 words a chapter, that adds up to around 50,000 words. I can do about 6-7 pages a day, when I’m on a roll. So this should be fun.

I’ll try not to bore you too much with the daily word count. Instead, I’ll try to point out one cool thing I learned each day during my writing. Sound good? Good.

So what did I learn today? I learned that by stringing together some jotted-down notes, throwing together a pile of words and dialogue and description, I could concoct a scene, so long as I did. Not. Stop. Myself.

And now, enjoy your meal! Like George, I’ll be enjoying my coffee…