In the past couple days, I’ve managed about 1300 words total. Not exactly the kind of progress I’d hoped for.

First, I must explain that I took the weekend off. It became readily apparent when I sat down to try to work Saturday that my mind wasn’t in it. I had spent eight or more hours each day that week writing or trying to write. I was tired, and I wanted to watch football and interact with my family.

Second, I’ve really struggled with the middle of this thing. I had basically 80% of the novel plotted out: the first 40% and the last 40%. There’s about 20% in the middle that’s really got me stuck. Part of it is that I’m trying to write a different kind of story than I might normally write. The 20% in the middle really focuses on the different bits.

So what does this mean for getting the novel done in ten days? It means it’s not going to happen. The first 40% took four days. The last 40%, I suspect will take four days. The 20% in the middle will probably eat an extra week unless I find my way quickly. The project won’t drag on forever, but if things go well over the next three writing days, I might be able to finish in 14 days of writing instead of ten. That’s not so bad.

Disaster! Well, sort of. I only managed 1342 words today, mostly due to not knowing what comes next. Two days of that in a row really hurt me. I knew it was going to be tough, so I kept putting off starting until it was seriously late in the day.

But, I did finish Chapter 8, and I spent a good amount of time thinking about the next two chapters, so I now think I have a decent handle on what the next two chapters will be. My worry is that these might actually need to be split into more chapters, which will damage the chances of finishing the book in ten days.

I will do what the story needs, above all else. If I fail to finish within my ten day time frame because the story requires additional chapters and scenes, so be it. It’s not like I’ll be that upset if it takes fourteen days instead of ten.

Right now, I have eleven chapters left. I have five days to do them in. If the story doesn’t grow, I still have a good chance of finishing on time.

One thing I’ve learned. It is stupendously difficult to keep writing at a constant pace when you can hear your family in the other room and they’re doing something interesting. At 9 and 5, my kids are always doing something interesting. I want to join them, and they want me to join them.

Self-fulfilling prophecy? Or just a realistic expectation?

Today, the writing was like drawing water from a stone. The word count number isn’t horrid at 4224, but I didn’t manage to finish Chapter 8. It’s about half done, I think.

So what was the problem? Easy. I had no idea what the meat of these chapters would be. In my outline, each of the other chapters had a few sentences describing what would happen. For these four chapters (the two for today, and the two for tomorrow), I had two sentences that described all four chapters.

When that happens, my word count goes down as I have to stop every couple hundred words and figure out what happens next. It also means I get restless. I have to walk around and think. Of course, every time I left the room, my son would regale me with details of the game Terraria.

What does this mean for the 10 day deadline?

Hopefully, it won’t mean anything. I wrote a chapter and a half today. If I manage the same tomorrow, and then two a day from then on out, I’ll still finish within 10 days. But my buffer is gone. I hope I will pick up some speed when I get back to the detailed portion of the outline.

I had a tough time today getting the words onto paper. I still finished the two chapters for the day and wrote 5132 words, but they weren’t easy.

Part of the trouble was that I didn’t sleep well last night. Another part of the trouble was that I had to adjust my outline a bit to fit the story as it evolves. In the outline, I had two chapters of material spread across three chapters, so I had to figure out how to condense them. It’s much easier when I don’t have to think about overall structure while writing.

I fully expect the next two days to be the hardest of the ten. The reason is that I have four chapters where the outline just says “Travelling: Shit Happens”. If I fail to finish the book in ten days, it will be because of these next four chapters, I’m sure.

Today was a near repeat of Day 1. Not quite as many total words, but I finished both the days chapters. At 5234 words, I’m quite happy with the production. 11005 total in two days. One nice thing about this pace is that I don’t feel worn out and I still feel super productive (so far). Talk to me in eight days to see if I still feel that way.

One mild worry I have is that some of the later chapters might run longer and that I won’t finish two in a day. I suppose that’s a risk with using chapters as a gauge instead of words, but using words seems so artificial. I hate stopping in the middle of a section.

I’m actually spending more time on the internet than I had planned, but it’s pretty much all progress posts. I’m not spending my time reading it. That’s where I lose days and weeks.