Ooh, you guys. I was sitting here in my pajamas in bed before starting my workday, planning out how to make 2018 my BEST YEAR YET (more on that later), and suddenly I remembered that it’s Wednesday, and we’re doing WIP Wednesday every week during NaNoWriMo! Yay!

WIP Wednesday is when I share an excerpt of what I’m working on, and you do the same in the comments. (500 words or less, and no explicit sex, because I have some young blog readers.) It’s a no-critique zone, but appreciative words are fine!

If there’s one time it’s okay to have a rough, raw, unfinished piece, it’s during NaNoWriMo! (It’s actually always okay, but you know what I mean.) So if you’ve been too shy to post before, c’mon and give it a try! It’ll make you more energized about your project, and it’s fun for us to see what everybody is up to.

I’m sharing again from my sweet contemporary romance, and I’m picking up right where I left off last week. My hero and heroine just met at a coffee shop, and when she mentioned that Monday was the best day of the week, he demanded an explanation.

 

 

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She glanced up again from the book—or the journal, apparently; she had a pen in her hand. Her blue eyes were wide, guileless. “I call it Clean Slate Monday.”

“Clean Slate Monday,” he repeated, as if that phrase explained anything.

She nodded. “You know, like if your last week—or actually your last month, or your last year, or whatever—if you had disappointments, or you messed up, you can forget about all that. Because it’s a brand new week. A fresh start.”

As Dylan stared at her, she took a sip of her latte, then wipe off a bit of foam that clung to her upper lip. She shrugged. “Anything could happen.”

Holy smokes. Dylan had no words for the feeling that thrummed through his veins. Something told him that he needed to know her much, much better.

But his cynicism rose to the surface to protect him from unfamiliar . “Do you work on Mondays?” Maybe she was a waitress in a restaurant that was closed today. It was easy to be chipper on your day off. Maybe she didn’t work at all.

“I do, actually.” Her tone was wry. “I’m a teacher. I have weekends off. Well, more or less.”

Okay. He wasn’t sitting next to a rainbow. He was sitting next to a unicorn. A person who worked Mondays through Fridays, and called Monday the best day of the week, didn’t even seem real.

She went back to writing in her journal. He caught a glimpse of the page. A sketch of a house occupied half of it. No, not a house: a cabin. Huh. It looked so much like the his grandparents’ cabin, where he and his sister had spent their summers as a kid. The place had been tiny, but those had been the best times of his childhood.

Just a coincidence, obviously. A lot of cabins looked alike, didn’t they? But still…

He needed to stop staring at her like a creep. Despite his curiosity, he looked away. Whatever she was writing or drawing, it was none of his business.

He had plenty of business of his own, and he needed to get back to it. Usually, he had no trouble settling down to work. It was how he’d succeeded so far. He’d gotten through college with a combination of academic scholarships and jobs that were unpleasant, exhausting, or both: loading delivery trucks, cleaning toilets, canning salmon in the summer in Alaska. He was made for work.

He studied the Powerpoint slide. The figures in the projections balanced out. He made an adjustment to the formatting, still acutely aware of the woman next to him. Whatever she was working on, it was probably much less crucial—and probably a lot more fun.

 

sweet romance WIP Wednesday

 

Your turn — share what you’re working on below! Or if you like, you can just talk about how NaNoWriMo or your writing in general is going. Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!

 

 

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