4,000 plus words on my two days off. It is possible to catch up at least a little bit in my days off. I'm planning a fancy dinner party with lots of details and exciting bits between the guests. Hope it will kill many pages of words.

12:30 a.m. Beer No. 2. Watched TV.Cleaned my room (sort of). Procrastination time is over. I have a pen, paper and inspiration from Karen's prodigious output. Let's write!

Don't hold out on us, Tyler: Fewer chases, more climaxes.

With the encouragement of some unnamed people, I feel a sex scene coming on very soon.

2,300-odd words this morning (current total: 14,500), about the early leg of the main character's bus tour.

This is good; it gets him out of Oakland, lets him meet two other characters (for I have found that once one commits to a carnal episode between your main character and a secondary character, it becomes necessary for them to first meet before anything further can happen). Let me be clear: chronological, orderly composition? Not my forté

So, eastward my trio traveled along an imaginary Highway 80.

And then suddenly it was as if a huge piece of the sky came loose and crushed my brain, in the middle of an instant-message session with my buddy Cecily, and It All Came Clear.

I suddenly achieved a device, a formula, the NaNoWriMo equivalent of a songwriting hook, for every excuse I might ever need for further novelistic escapades (more sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; rum, sodomy, the lash; back-stabbing and double-crossing) laid out before me like a patient etherised upon a table.

I must go now, while I-and-I are able. But before I go, I say unto you verily: Keep on pushin'. Move on up a little higher. Soon and very soon, the sky will fall for each and every one of you. So it is foretold; so mote it be.

*hands Liz a cookie*

I'm thinking now is the time for all of my characters to suddenly have pets. Or maybe it was just the trip to the pet store on Friday. It would at least give them something in common. As for continuity, I've given up trying to reconcile the age of some of my characters with what they are doing in their lives. For instance, one woman is probably too old to have her current job and probably too old to have done the things in high school I wrote that she did in a flashback. Oh well. December is for reconciliation or shredding, one of the two. 18th will work for me, writing away with a pen and paper. I have two pairs of twins, one human, one animal.