Still Happy, Ever, and After
an excerpt

Masochism, Toby thought to herself, has many forms. For a relatively busy lawyer, already over extended by assisting her firm move and expand to a new world, taking on the challenge that is NaNoWriMo, is one of the more severe of those forms. Much easier - and much less painful - to volunteer to overnight in Thunderhall, teach Constitutional Law at Guantanamo Bay, or wrestle Father Time two throws out of three. Even near-death under the carving knife of the Farmer’s Wife was beginning to seem retrospectively rosy in comparison.

Granted that NaNoWriMo appears much more civilized - simple even - before one begins. After all, how can it be that difficult to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s only 1,666.66 words per day. National Novel Writing Month doesn’t demand that those words be particularly brilliant, in fact they do not even have to be coherent, unless, that is, the writer has a muse who demands such. Unfortunately for Toby, grandfather After was a muse far more prone to demanding high standards than actually informing how to meet them. He would just point out that when he was a wyrmling, young dragons were expected to compose three thousand words per day — in perfect sonnet form — while simultaneously holding down challenging positions in their family firms, completing post doctorate research on new planes in the multiverse, and holding down positions as lead soloists in the local chamber orchestra.

No sympathy available there at all.