In this entire mad, mad world, there are only a handful of people who have “won” NaNoWriMo every year since 2001. There were about 100 of us who won that year, and the number can only shrink from there.

So while I sit on the third blow-it-up-an-do-it-again exercise with chapter 40 of Knives, I’m also looking at November, trying to decide if my reason to participate is habit, pride, or actual creative need.

But I thought of a good moment, and the moment led to a couple of characters with a very small struggle in a vary large universe that cares not what becomes of them. Characters which, for the sake of dragging things out to 50,000 words, will have to stumble across some other, contrived, larger struggle.

In December I can maybe produce a smaller story that fits them better.