I’m at 35508, just past the word count for Day 21. At this point, I’m trying to develop origins for things that happen in the third book–things I’ve already written. It has meant weighing each element and seeing where and how and if it actually works.

For example, I have the main villain in the third book vaguely describe just how she came to be where she is. I’ve taken that description and fleshed it out a lot, though as I think of it even now, I don’t know if part of it still works. We’ll see; this is draft zero, after all. I had to come up with a background for a building that is in dispute during the last book–who built it, why did they build it, why did they build it where they did, and why is it now in the hands of another family? Not sure if this works either. I might have to write the scene with the original owners and see how that goes.

Part of my problem is that I’m still near the start of the story and I’m 35000 words in! A lot of this will be cut in order to make things move along faster and a lot will be added to give flesh and color to my world. But that’s for December. Now, it’s time to get the bare bones down and make other decisions later.