Of the novel, that is.

I spent this evening brainstorming. I’ve been running into issues, and the most recent chapter has been almost impossible to write for a bunch of reasons.

I have finally figured out what the next chapter has to be, and the point of view it must be from.

Not only that, I believe there are only four more chapters I must write to get to the end of the book — three regular chapters and an epilogue type thingy, only not really an epilogue, just a different type of chapter. (Chapters have all been from a single POV. This ending would be a short scene from every POV character in the novel.)

Current word count:

All the chapters in this novel are running about 4000 words per chapter. So if I estimate about 16,000 more words, that brings the total of the novel up to about 81,000, which is about the length I’ve always said this novel was supposed to be.

And more good news — I had to take a break from the novel to attend a writing workshop, and write two short stories. In order to get back into the novel, I started from the beginning and worked my way through it. It took a few days (okay, maybe like a week) but I feel as though most of the things that were broken in it are now fixed (like one character whose name changed midway, I really didn’t understand the essential character of the Big Bad until I was halfway through writing the novel, etc.) So while there are still things that are broken, for the most part, I think it’s clean as it stands.

I feel much less panicked about finishing the novel by the end of the month now. Four chapters in two weeks is totally doable.