Closed down the computer, went for a walk with Greg and Ursa to take a movie back to Blockbuster, watch two idiots in cars find each other and have a little accident (honestly, I couldn’t tell you which one was doing the most dumb thing, and I witnessed the whole deal), talked it out a bit with Greg, and realized on the way home that I need to redo the math on finishing my novel. Again.

I hit 85,000 words today. I have no sense of scale, you see. I’ve never done this before. So I keep saying: Maybe 80K, maybe 90K. I really don’t know how many words it is. I know I have some beefing up to do in the first half, but I would expect the first half to be a little longer than the second, just to get the pacing right. But I hit 85K without occasion or fanfare today, and now I’m thinking…95K?

So if it’s 95K, and I have 8 working days left, my average requirement just notched up to 1200 words a day including weekends. I missed yesterday but made up for it today, but that can’t happen much or it’s not going to work. I don’t know if it’ll take 95K to get it right, but the way things are going, it’s not wrapping up in 5K. To find out where it ends, of course, I just have to keep chugging as much as I can and start wrapping things up. I have a list of plot points that need to be resolved. (Like, uh, whodunit? for one thing, and oh, yeah, what’s the deal with THAT?) The good news is that the list is short. The scenes I need to write are probably down to a number I can count on my fingers. But. I still have to write them.

In short: 1200 words a day or I walk the plank.