After a crazy-hectic November–classes, new job, new house, NaNoWriMo (won!), Thanksgiving, and some serious family health issues right in the middle of it–here’s hoping December proves a little saner. So far it seems like it will. Finals are almost done, I’m getting back into the routine of work, and (best of all) I’ve got a shiny new manuscript to work with.

Granted, it’s only 50,016 words, and I’d like to end up with at least 80,000 eventually. But I did a read-through of the manuscript last night–my first complete read-through–and I’m happy to say there’s a lot of material I can work with. A lot of material that needs serious revision or is quickly going to get chucked, too–right now, of course, the manuscript’s quite a mess, and (as with its predecessor) I kind of skipped right over all the battle scenes and left them for later; writing battle scenes is not really my favorite thing to do. So there are missing chunks, and disordered scenes, and useless scenes, and clunky dialogue, and some really, really groan-worthy cheesy parts–but it’s a complete rough draft, you guys, and I can’t wait to make it really shine. Because I’m so, so excited about this story. I think it has the potential to be so much better than its predecessor. I love each of my characters and their story arcs and their interactions with each other–I actually made little notes as I read through the manuscript to comment to myself how much I loved particular lines of dialogue or turns of phrase. And there are even scenes that made me cry (in a good way)!

All in all, I’m so excited to polish up this manuscript and make it submission-worthy.

This post is my “thank you” to all my writing/word-sprinting/tweeting buddies who got me through that crazy, crazy November and helped me reach my word count goal. Couldn’t have done it without you guys. You rock the mynocks.