The last few months have been a nice, soupy mix of outlining, working on side projects, procrastinating, and moving from one Chicago neighborhood to another, but the time has come at last. This morning I finally sat down and started writing Hubris.

It’s funny just how mundane the act of writing is once you get down to doing it. After all that anticipation, it wasn’t particularly strenuous or exciting to type out the first 700 or so words. There will certainly be emotional moments, if my track record is any indication, but for the most part, it’s just one word after another, and the steady clicking of laptop keys.

It’s also funny how much I’m still wedded to my word count; that’s the Nanowrimo mentality, one that I’ll probably always have. I’m expecting the first draft of Hubris to hit about 90,000 words; that’s just a ballpark estimate based on the lengths of my previous books. If that estimate holds true, and if I can average 500 words a day, I’ll be on track to finish the first draft in about six months. If I can hit closer to 1000, I’ll have a draft in only three months. Chances are I’ll land somewhere between those poles. When I did Nanowrimo, I kept myself to at least 1,667 words a day, so 1000 doesn’t seem like much. I’m still getting used to setting my own timeline and doing this without a larger structure to keep me in check. You’d think it’d be easier to take more time rather than less, but writing is weird that way.