As I have mentioned on the Twitter, I have arranged to take the rest of October off to work on “The Unsteady Earth”, the egregiously-late sequel to “The Warlock’s Curse.”

My goals for the next couple of weeks are simple: walk at least 10,000 steps a day and write at least 5000 words per day.

Yesterday was my first day back in the saddle. The walking part I’ve got down pat; 10,000 steps is actually less than I usually walk, so it’s more like maintenance. I’m adding resistance (weight belt, kettle bells) to increase the intensity and offset the shorter time.

On the other hand, grinding out those words was *hard*. Oh man. My body-muscles may be in better shape these days, but my writing muscles are terribly flabby. I can only hope that they tone up quickly, as a couple of weeks is not much runway. I did my best to hush up the inner critic and just tried to tell a story. The problem is, it isn’t really my inner critic that gets in the way, usually, it’s my inner buttinski …. You know, the person (usually a close family member) who, when you’re trying to tell a story at a party, keeps butting in and redirecting you with “but tell them about this!” and “they don’t know about Aunt Edna’s mole! Tell them about Aunt Edna’s mole …” And they keep insisting on elaboration and explanation and detail and filling in gaps until you’re hopelessly wrapped around the axle and you never actually get to the end of the story because after a while you can’t even remember which story you were trying to tell …

I suppose this difficulty is the natural consequence of working on the opening chapters of the fourth book in a series, where a lot of narrative water has passed under the bridge, and the reader needs a gentle reminder. Unfortunately the inner buttinski and I are having a very hard time coming to an agreement on how gentle that reminder needs to be.

Oh well. On with my day. There is coffee to be had and words to be wrangled.

Today’s starting word count: 38,111