I topped the 20k mark but have been petering out on the overall word count gains this weekend. I came to a point where I realized that while it was possible for me to finish it was not worth the loss of family time due to holing myself up with a computer. However, I am really happy with the stuff coming out of me on this NaNo and I do intend to finish it. Just not by November 30th.

Today I am going to be working on another flash fiction. Hopefully this one won't be sappy like the other two. My prompt is to use a set of words: orange, jump, wet, and briefcase. (At the end of class he had each of us say a random word off the top of our heads.) My previous prompt was "On her birthday he gave her twenty-five Hershey kisses, one for each year of her life," and before that it was Romeo and Juliet.

I don't think I will ever take a writing class and do NaNo at the same time again. I don't feel like I put adequate time into the class, and since I'm not a full-time student anymore it's really only what I make of it (ie, not just some hoops to jump through - it's all for me).

The same teacher is offering a class on manuscript preparation and marketing for publication in January or February. I don't think I'll take it, though; I've got the basics of those skills, I just need to actually implement them. Much the same could be said about the class I'm taking now, however, because I know how to write and I know how a good story should be structured - I just need to do it more. Practice.