Top of the 17th

I'm now even more hopelessly behind than I was last time. It didn't help that I spent a day totally stalled out on both novels, where all I did was go around in circles trying to start scenes that turned out to be wrong in some way or another. (So now I have a Word Discard pile in Amulet I which I'm counting for words but not otherwise planning to use.)

The stats at the moment are:
Janis - 17,419
Amulet I - 21,413
Total: 38,832

I'm supposed to be at 56,678 by now.

I've basically hit a gigantic wall on Janis. I've started Part 2 and Part 3 now, and neither of them are going anywhere. Somehow I need to make the main plotline exciting again, and figure out an exciting way to present it. I also need some subplots. And figure out how exactly I'm going to introduce Aliacorba, because so far there hasn't been any reason for anyone to mention him. Maybe that plague subplot needs to be a bit more on the forefront.

Amulet I is doing a bit better. I wrapped up Part 1 tonight and will have to figure out how to start Part 2 next. The natives and the outlanders have managed to form an alliance with each other against Lord Duchene, the evil guy who is coming soon in an attempt to crush Edward. At the moment I haven't the foggiest idea how Our Heroes are going to defeat the guy. And the way it usually works for me is that if I don't know, my characters don't either. They never think for themselves. :p

There is one guy who is reading along to Amulet I. He seems to like it. He especially liked the two really good Edward scenes I mentioned last time - and the story has shifted to be firmly an Edward story now. On the other hand, he nitpicked to death the flimsy scene I came up with after five false starts while doing the circling thing. That didn't help much. At least he didn't see the versions that didn't make the cut.