It Seems The Closer I Am To The End Of My Novel The Further Away I get

I reached 95k on my novel yesterday, and the ending is looking ever closer. But as today's post title describes it seems the closer I get to the end, the further away I get from actually finishing the story.

While coming back from taking my son to school I was thinking of the climax of my story, and part of it didn't add up. Someone was doing (or not doing) something and my justification for it was weak. To fix the problem I needed to go back and re-write an earlier scene, and ended up changing it a lot. I added seven hundred words that weren't there before my walk back from the school run.

I then moved onto the biggest piece of exposition of the entire story. It's a character revelation that needs to happen for the story to reach the climax. That came to 2800 words, and for the first time since I began work on Sibylline Nights I shared what I had written with my husband and then we went back through and edited it to make sure the scene was as impactful as it could be.

I'm really pleased with what we produced.

And I loved working with Hubby on my story.

He's actually going to help me edit the first draft, and I cannot wait.

I just need to get the damn thing finished!!

Tonight I plan on writing the climax, and hopefully I can do it justice. Then it's just the final resolution left. I can't believe I'm so close to the end.

It's been a hell of a ride, and I'm very much looking forwards to the next part of my journey as I begin editing.

Moving on to the Home Stretch

So, if you've been taking note of my word count bar to the left of the main blog, you'll see I beat my January target ... by a lot.

Though I didn't meet my secondary goal of doubling my January target. I did however manage to write 30, 013 words in the thirteen days of January that I wrote on. Not bad, eh?!

My over-all novel word count is now 84,728!!

I'm having mixed feeling on what I want to do now. A HUGE part of me doesn't want to lose this momentum. I'd estimate I'm about 15k off completing the story and I really want to get it finished by the end of February.

However, another side of me doesn't want to burn out, and I feel like I need some time off writing to do other things. I have a Dragon Age fanfic I need to complete by the end of February, too, for a fest I signed up for on LifeJournal. And, the other night when I couldn't sleep, my brain was over-taken by the idea for a wrestling fic. I kind of want to do these less pressured writing things for a while, to give myself a break. Plus there's some books I want to read, and games I want to play.

Additionally there's the two blog fests I've put my name down for. Though those will become part of Sibylline Nights, I'm sure. 

I think I'm still going to aim to get Sibylline Nights finished for the end of February, but I'm not going to be strict in about my daily word-count goals, like I was in January, where I got annoyed with myself if I didn't write 1000 words every day. If I write 5000 words one day, and then non the next, that's fine and I shouldn't feel guilty about taking time off from writing.

Especially not when so much is going on at home.

I guess I'm rambling, but I just wanted to share my thoughts about word count goals etc. and state that my goal for February is to finish Sibylline Nights, but without forcing myself to write EVERY day.

I will try to keep up with the blog though, and post at least once a week.

Thanks for reading, and the continued support.