Against All Odds

I never want to type again.

I think I came into Tuesday a little over 20,000 words shy of 50,000. Maybe more than that. I've written more in the last week than I did for the entire rest of the month (as my profile bar graph will clearly demonstrate). I love those first 30,000 words, though. They represent something real and neat, and the next 10,000 words might be some of my best writing ever. But those last ten thousand? Those last ten thousand, and a couple thousand besides, are the product of today's work. One full chapter is almost entirely unnecessary filler. The final chapter contains a rough outline of what I wanted the final scene to look like, but it's caught up in a torrential downpour of padding. And then, just to round out the last 1500 words, there's an epilogue that I considered doing back when I thought this might be a comedy, which now goes completely and utterly against the tone of the novel, and really doesn't even fit into the continuity. And when I discovered, after two pages of stupid epilogue, that there were still 200 words needed, and it was something like 11:20, the characters broke the fourth wall, and I broke it right back at them.

But I can honestly say that the few extended quotes I used actually do have something to do with the novel. So, I don't feel like I cheated with those. At least, not much.

But, now, I'm going to leave my computer chair and find out what the rest of my apartment looks like again. If I don't post anything for a couple of days, it's because my hands have fallen off.

(Yes, I'm being melodramatic; I just finished writing a book about the Apocalypse, how else could I be?)