Top of the 28th: 4600 words to go. No clue what to write next.

So now the score is:

22,075 - Janis
45,422 - Amulet I
67,497 - total

I'm actually right on track for doing 75k words, if that were my goal for the year.

Let's see ... things that have happened since my last entry.

1. I had a nervous breakdown. It came right after I finally got around to making my Excel progress charts for this year, and noticing that compared to last year, I'm sucking it bigtime.

2. During said breakdown, I decided that I suck as a writer, and I couldn't possibly write as well as I've somehow managed to write over the previous three weeks, despite clear evidence to the contrary. And even with that evidence, there was no way I was ever going to write that well again.

3. This was followed by noticing that all of my work indeed is claptrap, like I've been fearing since 2004. Which meant it was totally pointless to continue. Somewhere in this part of the proceedings, I discovered what it feels like to laugh maniacally and sob at the same time. At great length.

3. This caused me to stall out for a good long while. (The "nano time" version of "good long while"; in this case it was about 36 hours).

4. Then I got better and wrote some more. I managed to come up with 5167 words of a serious side tangent that will probably be completely discarded in the first editting pass.

And so now I'm back to reasonably sane again. :) In a reasonably good mood for some writing progress, just as soon as I figure out what I'm going to do next.

Sadly, my side tangent kind of stole all the thunder from the planned evening scene. That is, the evil shadowlord showed up over in the villages where some of the other natives tried to fight him, and although they were largely ineffective, one of them did manage to set him on fire.

So now he's not going to make an appearance at the fort, since he's not up for it anymore. Which leaves me with nothing obvious to do next.

Let's see... where last we left off, it was mid-afternoon at the fort. Charles is stringing up Christmas lights (sort of), Ahlosarka is clearing out a giant barnyard, and the tribal chieftain (thus far known as [leadername]) is talking to birds. Edward and Aliacorba just got done doing their little thing.

I guess I might as well fast forward to the next morning.

In other news, my sinuses are behaving strangely. I'm hoping that will go away sometime soon...