Cheating on my MS

I did write on Thursday, but didn't post my progress. Bad Kristi. Actually, OpenOffice and MS Word count words very differently, so I didn't trust the progress on OpenOffice (it was high by about 100 words).

As of Thursday, I've written 30948 words on Claire and Helmut's story (out of a projected 50-55k). Friday, nothing. Today, about 1500 words. And I'm totally cheating on Claire and Helmut.

This is something new. New new. Like I'm at 2800 words total. I'm scheduled to read at my RWA chapter's crit group on Wednesday. I have another, smaller crit group that meets every week. The chapter one's monthly, and a much bigger group (up to 20ish, usually broken into 3 groups of 6-8). Folks in that one get a lot of feedback at once, and from a nice variety of folks (some multi published, some newbies, all different backgrounds and genre preferences). Its like entering a free contest (plus we all go out for dinner afterwards). But when you read 3 or 4 times a year, and to different people every time, its hard to show up with the middle chapters of a book.

So, I'm bringing the start of something new that no one (even my weekly group) has seen yet. And then it ought to go right back on the shelf until I get Claire and Helmut to their HEA. (no promises that i won't break down and cheat again).

Tomorrow is all about C&H, though, so I'll get back on track. Actually, I'm not really off track. I've been getting out text in about 1000 word chunks, every 2-3 days. So I still need about 5-600 words/day average to finish by my goal. Still quite doable, and I'm not slipping yet.