Chapter 5 is going slow, I suspect not having much time to write this week may be the culprit. On a good night, I have about 80 minutes of time to write an I haven't had very good nights this week. I still need to go through 600! photos of soccer games and throw out about 90% of them. Time, why is there so little of you?

I have been able to think though and I decided that I'm not going to off a character that was doomed before. That still leaves a fair amount of attrition among the early characters.

I decided that I'm not going to off a character that was doomed before

Has Minear taught you nothing!?

Hey now, of the ten early major characters only 4 make it past chapter 17 with that change. Though it really seems more like 3.

Well, all right then.

::kidding, of course::

Oh crap I forgot a character. How can I forget him? Anyhow he buys it too after a betrayal, so that 4 out of 11.

I got some good writing in last night. Maybe, just maybe, I can knock out chapter 5 by mid-next week.

I did a word count out of curiosity and have come up with 32,000 words. Which, wow, I'm not that far into the story yet. At the average of 443 words per page, that means I did about 1,200 words last night. That was a good night. I out about 2 hours of time so that's 10 words a minute. I suspect I've now overanalyzed this.

To continue my analysis that would put a final word count in the ballpark of 220,000 words. If I already have 32,000 that doesn't really seem all that daunting.

That sounds like a huge book. I'm loving the play by play.

I wrote a thing. Greg said the ending was too abrupt, so I changed it. I didn't like the change, so I changed it back and sent it to Nick. Nick said there wasn't enough conflict and if I wasn't going to change it back again, I should at least get more conflict in the middle.

I changed it some more...but not quite the way either of them wanted me to change it... and I don't know if it's better or worse.

I'm wondering if anyone here would like to read it and comment? It's under 3k words.

Deena, I could take a look and get it back to you this evening. I'm going to be out and about through the morning/afternoon, but can look at it when I get back.