Fall is crazy, right? Halloween, Thanksgiving, School restarting, Christmas, RenFaire, Dickens Faire, conventions, festivities, and all those bleeding birds nesting in my trees and eating my pears, it’s enough to make one want to accept exile to an obscure Italian island.

After my writing binge this summer, I’ve been caught perpetually in the feeling that I’m wading through treacle, and it’s been driving me bonkers. Too much time on the road, too much Real Life ™ getting in the way, not enough time podcasting, or writing, or doing any of the half dozen other things that are in the top five of life priorities.

Turns out I’ve traded up one set of problems for another. As I conquered the word-rate barrier, I ran into a bunch of other roles and problems I had to grow into right-quick. And that can take up a lot of time and even more mental space.

What problems? Well, there’s new properties to manage and market. There are old projects that went begging that needed finishing up. There are three more books to finish by the end of the year, and new short stories that refuse to wait their turn.

It’s enough to make you feel like you’re working your ass off for no accomplishments whatsoever.

So, imagine my surprise when I total up my progress for the year and discover that, even with time on the road, I’ve been consistently writing at NaNoWriMo rates or better. The binge wasn’t a fluke, it just turns out that there’s a rhythm to the way I write: 5k words one day, 10k another, 1k another, 500 words another, but it averages out to 3k a day or better, and the progress on the various projects only feels slow because that work is spread over three novels, several shorts, and two nonfiction books. But they all grow.

Lesson: The next time someone tells you that one novel a year is really fast, spit in their eye. And keep writing at whatever rate you can manage. And next time you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything, step back and take a look at the last three months. Use some kind of objective measure. Then, make a change if you need to, or power through if you don’t.

Me? I didn’t do NaNoWriMo this year, and I probably won’t do it again, but it’s not because I don’t want to write a novel in a month.

It’s because I’m already doing more than that in an average month.

In other news, the first episode of Sculpting God is all recorded. I have a bit of post production to do on it, and then it’ll be ready to go up. Another episode will be ready about the same time. One more beyond that, and I will start the podcast – at this point, it’s looking like Sept 21 or thereabouts will be the beginning. More updates on that soon.

Predestination update:

73,860 / 125,000 (59.1%)

Despite what the word meter tells you, I should actually be done by November. This draft is a polish draft, and most of what needed polishing and fixing were the first three sections, and that’s about done. The rest is bringing the balance of the novel into stylistic conformity with the rewritten first half. It’s going along gangbusters, and we’ll start the podcast for it in December – consider it a Christmas/Solstice/hey-we-get-this-time-of-year-off-for-some-reason-let’s-get-drunk present.

In other news, I’m teaming up with my friend Zoe Winters to do a competitive NANOWRIMO this year. I have a SF/Fantasy/horror/romance story that I’ve been thinking about writing for a while now, and it seems like the right time to do it – it’ll give me a good break from the Predestination universe before I dive back in in January to write the sequel: “Free Will and Other Compulsions,” which I’ll need to have done by July so I can start podcasting it next fall.

Watch this space for more news – there is a LOT upcoming guaranteed to warp your brain and make you think about all those things your mother used to smack you for.