My goodness, I kind of disappeared there, didn’t I?
Last time I reported in, I said that I had hit a kind of milestone in my work-in-progress, the (still!) untitled first book in a science fiction trilogy that might be called “The Iron Staff Trilogy” (although truth be told, I’m considering calling the book “The Iron Staff” and coming up with a different name for the trilogy). Well, tonight I hit another one, another scene that I planned out from the very beginning.
More importantly, though, the end is finally within sight. Kind of. Sort of.
Here’s what I mean: up until this week, ending this book has seemed almost theoretical. Oh, I knew I could make it to the end, but there was so much plot to get through. Stuff had to happen. Twists had to occur. I need to hit the aforementioned milestones. Well, I’ve hit the milestones. I’ve twisted and turned and, dare I say it, even shimmied a few times. I’ve thrown rocks at my characters and they’ve tossed them back at me. It’s been fun.
And it’s almost over. I’m so close I can taste it. I’m so close, I want to just shut myself in a room and keep writing. Forget sleep. Forget work. Just get this sucker done.
Okay, I won’t do any of that. Not healthy, not helpful. But it’s almost becoming a biological imperative to keep writing.
By my count, I’ve got approximately six chapters left. That’s a rough estimate right now. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been tacking on new chapters and scenes to my outline to flesh stuff out. That could easily happen with the rest of this story too. Even as I’m looking at the outline in Scrivener, it seems a little sparse.
But if I can crank out a chapter a day (do-able, I think), I could be done in a week.
So where’s it standing? As of right now, it’s 92,362 words. Longer than Numb and The Hive. Not quite as long as my Failstate books. And, of course, editing and rewriting will mess that up spectacularly.
I’m almost there! So. Very. Close!
You can do it!