On Thursday our housesitter at the office (which is actually a house, because life is complicated) was packing her things for her imminent departure. She'll be missed. We took a pause in the middle of the day to have some champagne and say our farewells. In the late afternoon a local writer came over -- bearing pizza and wine! -- to say her own farewells, so at least the long day ended happily.

After that, I joined my wife, son, and mother-in-law to drive up to my sister-in-law's house on the horse ranch to celebrate my nephew's seventh birthday. He chose the menu: hot dogs, tacos, broccoli, salad, and plain pasta. An eclectic but sufficiently satisfying meal. Gifts were opened, songs were sung, candles were blown out, cake was consumed, and everyone was merry. We didn't get to stay long, since our kid's bedtime is 7:30, so we headed home and did the sleepytime ritual.

After which I collapsed into an exhausted heap on the couch. We watched some more Jekyll and some Criminal Minds. Eventually I roused myself from my torpor, thinking I should try to write, so I dragged myself over to my computer and put on my headphones.

Everything clicked nicely, and 40 minutes later I had 2,000 words written, putting me past the 40,000 word mark, and concluding part 1 of my work-for-hire novel (Part 2 should be about 20K long, and part 3 another 40K, for a reasonable 100,000 word total). My usual cruising speed is about 2,000 words an hour -- assuming I know what I'm supposed to be writing, and what happens in the scenes, and etc.; otherwise it's, ahem, rather slower -- so I'm pleased to be zipping along at such unusual velocity. The book has a definite and distinctive voice, which helps. If I can get into the voice, it tends to flow.

Unlike yesterday, when I wrote about 5,000 words of news at the day job, and also did some layout work, and came home pretty much exhausted, and didn't write a lick of new fiction, because typing was mine enemy. But perhaps I'll accomplish more this weekend.