The mind wanders around and around. It might be in a maze, for often the spaces look eerily familiar. The paths seem different, the distinction between path and destination murky.
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I made a WordPress page containing a list of all the fiction I’ve published on this blog. I had to do this by hand, because it appears difficult to get a reasonable list using various WordPress approaches (such as tags). The page I created is hardly a masterpiece of user interface design (I hope to improve it significantly over time), but it’s better than what was there previously.
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I don’t really know what this is, apart from looking like the start of a fantasy story, but it fell into my head, more or less in one piece, this morning:
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I finished the second draft nine days behind schedule, which in the overall scheme of things isn’t that bad a slip. It turned out to be extremely difficult to maintain a steady approach to the editing, unlike either the micronovel version or the first 35 episodes of AFBH, two projects of similar duration that I completed successfully (and on time) last year.
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Yes, done
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Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

I’ll do my best to finish over the next two days.

No progress. I’m stalled again. It’s unbelievabley frustrating to be stalled so close to the end. Hopefully I’ll get over it soon. One long burst of activity would finish the damn thing.

Little progress tonight, despite the word count. The chasm between “writing” and “not writing” as states feels like it’s widening, making it harder to go from one ot the other. It was like that at the start, and when I got stalled in the middle. I have to assume that will is what it takes to flip the switch, but an inadequate explanation of the concept of will has always undermined the usefulness of that assumption.
Word count: 72034

Paraphrased from an episode of The Wire I watched earlier (when I should have been editing): “Make your number, or die in this room.” For tonight, at least, I made my number.
Word count: 69259

Thirteen doesn’t appear to be lucky today. Not that much to do, but it’s currently beyond me.

I think I can see the finish line.
Word count: 63926

Obviously, I didn’t finish the second draft in November. I didn’t manage it by the end of this weekend, either. I’m close. Very close, probably about six thousand words of writing away, which isn’t too bad given the target of eighty thousand.
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Four to go.
Word count: 58594

Done. Five to go.
Word count: 53262

Another long day. So I fail to hit my target of the end of the month, but I’m still going to aim for the end of the weekend. Finishing the second draft only two days behind schedule would still make me rather happy.

Long, long day at work today. So I didn’t have the chance to edit. I did look over the chapters, and it looks tough to get six done tomorrow… Chapter 10 itself doesn’t look too bad, I think it’ll be easy to cut down. Chapter 11 will probably be harder. Chapter 12 might well be the toughest left, because the current material for it is extremely sparse. I think 13 and 14 will be easier, and then 15, because it’s the end, will probably be hard (although I do not plan any major changes to the ending at this point).

That was difficult. And now I have six chapters to do in two days. That looks both very tough and quite achievable.
Word count: 47930

The chapters from my first draft are extremely uneven in terms of length (and in other ways, too). Going through them and trying to make them more uniform requires switching between doing a lot of cutting and doing a lot of new writing, more of the latter than I had expected. So I’m still far away, but I haven’t given up hope of getting there before Saturday.
Word count: 45630

That took a lot longer than I’d hoped. Finally past the halfway point. With four days left in the month, I have seven chapters to go. I might need some of this weekend to do it.
Word count: 42598

I cut over 10,000 words today, but the last 3,000 or so in this chapter are proving difficult. Progress this weekend was rather slow.