My word count is 30,073. 19,927 to go in 9 days (including today). That’s about 2214 words per day in order to finish on December 30. I am going to try to get to 35k today, which would leave 15k in 8 days (1875 per day). But that’s a lot to do, so I have to knuckle down and get writing.

I had a Tarot for Writers online meetup this morning, after getting to 30k. It’s about an hour long, once a week, and it’s meeting in a chatroom, which is great because people from all over can do it. The point is to use Tarot cards and readings to help figure out character development (which we did today), plot, theme, etc. Anything that relates to writing. Today was my second time doing this, and I’m looking forward to more in the future.

The first thing we did was a two card reading: one card is the character’s best trait, second card is the worst trait. Emily’s cards were The Empress (she is the mother, very good in that role) and the 10 of swords (she has had a lot of pain in the recent past, and is stagnant in her grief). The 10 of swords came up in her past/present/future reading I did last week, in the past position. So that was an interesting connection.

After two more exercises, we went back to the first two cards. Challenge: how can the character use the first trait to overcome the second? This made me realize that Emily’s mother-in-law can help her get over the death of Lily, since Jan (mother-in-law) knows what it’s like to lose a… omg, a HUSBAND AND a child! I forgot until just now that her husband got killed off last night, as a “happened way before this story” event. Wow. That is amazing. These women have lots of parallels in their lives for me to explore, and that’s going to help me write the last 20k.

If you’re interested in learning more about using Tarot cards for writing, check out the links above, and consider pre-ordering Corrine Kenner’s book Tarot for Writers. (Corrine is the woman who runs the site and the meetup group.)