20k in June: Done Early!!!!

 Yes! You read that right!

 I am already done with my 20k for June.

 Do you think I'm happy?

 You bet I am!!!


 Here's what happened...
                             I had managed 10k since completing my May 20k, but I was experiencing down-turn.  I was getting to the point where I had kind of written myself into a corner, laying down good and vitally necessary scenes, but not having a clear track of where they all went in the timeline. (That's me! A fly-as-we-go writer!!! )

 This had built up to the point where I was beginning to feel some creative claustrophobia.
   I couldn't tell why, but I knew I'd felt that creeping, panicky feeling before.
 "Oh, no!" I thought, "I'm about to shut down! My creativity is taking a dive."

 So my good lil sis came in late from working and she listened to my progress report, and the sneaking suspicion that I "didn't know what to write next!" *Panic attack! Panic attack!*

 "Well," she said, whipping out a blank sheet of paper ripped off an old calendar, and grabbing up a pen. "We have to figure out everybody's timeline!"

I cringed inside, desperately wanting to scream "NOOOOOooooo!!!" and bail out the window.

 I hate the intense thinking it takes to synchronize timelines.

 But Abi had the bit in her teeth, so I just clung to the saddle and went along for the ride, feeling the figurative slap of every tree branch we dove through.

 "If he is here, it takes him a day to get to back to the castle. So, why would it take him so long to come the first time?" She scowled, "This isn't good."

 "But...!" I defended anxiously. "It's snowed, and he doesn't know where he's going, he has to look for it. He's tracking the sleigh!!! That's how he finds it!"

"Okay," she nodded, miraculously accepting the logic. "But why does it take the sleigh so long?"

 "And the sleigh also doesn't know where its going, so they're wandering around trying to find it. So when he tracks it, he also wanders around."

"Okay, but horses are faster then sleighs."

 My brain whirled. "But it's deep snow all through the forest. So... that slows the horses down?"

 She and I have both ridden in deep snow, so we both know this is a good argument.

 "All right, but if the sleigh leaves heading back to the castle before he does, how come he arrives so much earlier?"

 "Because... the sleigh alters course, and goes to the glen. Then they are persuaded to stay there for... overnight! They stay overnight, because it's cold and there's thermal water activity in the glen, making a warm environment in the caves."

 "Okay... we'lll give you that." she scribbles it down on the timeline she's roughly charted out. "So, this looks like it could work."

 I breathed a sigh of relief, to have escaped the dreaded time constraints at last. Then we both went to bed... and the next day, I wrote 5k that afternoon. I know? Crazy, right?

 But the next day I wrote nothing... because stuff happened.

 And then the next day a wrote another 5k! Things just kept coming into my brain and then flowing out through the keyboard, and I was like... "I'd like to quit now, I'm tired of sitting, but... but...!!! Here's another thing that happens!!!!"
 Oh the feels that went on in those scenes! "And... here's another thing!"
   And there would be another thousand words or two.

 It was super fun. Also kind of tiring, but the emotional high from these terrific scenes was so totally worth it.

 Yes!!!

 So I treated myself to an Klondike bar I've been keeping in the freezer for just such a purpose.


 ...And... that's how I finished my 20k for June so early.
 Now I'm not sure, but I think I may take a bit of a rest to catch up on my sleep!
 But then I'll be back at it, 'cause I've got this ms on the run at last and I want this thing DONE!!!