Started the day at 43,831. Finished around 8 p.m. with 50,063. Our region had a marathon noon-to-midnight virtual write-in. In fact, I’m on the last two-hour shift and writing this as part of a sprint!

A lot of what I’ve written has been dreck, to be honest. Some of it has had nothing to do with Burning Muses (though I did make a stab at finishing that), Commissions (on which I did far better than I thought), or The Love Board (which needs a huge rewatch of Thunderbirds Are Go! in order for me to finish it). I wrote some things that play in the Dark!Jeff series Movements by JMount74, MariaShades, and Sin_Eater. Womble1 is also writing (a lot more than I am!) in the 14th part of the series, entitled Scenes.

I think being an ML again and having the in-person write-ins was a big help. So was having virtual write-ins on our Discord server. We set up a new one for our region, complete with a sprint bot. We might add to it next year; I hear one region had reminders throughout the day to drink water, take meds, stretch, etc. I like that.

We didn’t have as many in-person write-ins as in previous years. I made it to most of them, as did Alli, our newest ML. She had done this years ago in Delaware (?) and just jumped in with both feet here! Which was good because Tyffani, our other ML, was just swamped with work all month. I’m afraid I fell down on the job with pep talks. I did one at the first-week mark but that was it. I will do the final pep talk as soon as I get some advice on sending out our regional survey: two birds, one stone, and all that.

Another thing I found helpful as far as getting in word count was dictation. I wasn’t very good at it; sometimes I wished my fingers worked better for the simple reason that I could stop to think. Otter.ai is good, but when you have names that don’t exactly translate (like Kyrano) or you’re not speaking well into your microphone, you get as much gobbledegook as with any other speech-to-text program–or my typing on the laptop (man, that was bad!). I might try my Dragon disk in the drive again. There’s every possibility that I put it in wrong last time.

I plan on going through the new Burning Muses stuff before anything else. (Though I have a new idea for Scenes that I’d like to try. So far, the best things I’ve written for that have been a Dark!Jeff dream and a Scott drabble. Both have been well received. But I have written a couple of Grandma bits to edit and I’m thinking of an aftermath from Jeff’s POV on something from the last two chapters of Home. It might be fun!

Still have plenty of The White Winds to edit and post at AO3. I think I want to get that finished by the New Year. I’ve got one reviewer giving me emoji reviews right now; they’re cute and once in a while they say something piquant about the story. I love it when reviewers give you insight into a story that you didn’t even notice. For example, the idea of doing a Scrooge-like Christmas ghost to Jeff was bruited about in a chapter of Home and abruptly shot down as being useless. But, as a reviewer on Scenes brought up, my longer contribution was exactly that: a “Ghost of Christmas Past” kind of thing. I had no idea I was even doing it! So, an insight I loved.

The Girl has COVID and has had it since last Friday–when she went to work as it was Black Friday and… retail. Especially Walmart. She has tried all week long to get hold of someone from her store to tell them that, hey, I’m sick, and, hey, I’ll be out until Thursday or Friday, depending on how she feels. She’s been wearing an N95 mask around the house when she’s in the common areas,  using the bathroom and kitchen when no one else is near, and keeping her distance when we can’t help being in the same room. I’ve even communicated with her via text and our son has told her about food, etc. via a gaming Discord server. All of us are fully vaxxed (two boosters) and my husband and I both have had the bivalent booster.

So far, so good. Crossing fingers and knocking on wood.

Thanksgiving was good. I need to get down to my brother’s house again; my SIL has picked up some peppermint hot cocoa K-cups for me. Even it they’re peppermint mocha coffee, I’d be happy. Loving me some hot cocoa at night these days.

Pippin has come over to knead my belly so I’d better stop here. She’s been rather clingy, which has impeded my ability to type.

Later days! (Typed with hunt and peck.)