Word count: 100,497
LBR census: Lots of talk of death. And love has taken a beating along the way.
Authorial sadism: That little house of cards Galen’s been living in has started to fall on his head.

***

I’m over the hump in several respects at once. The most obvious is the crossing of the hundred thousand word mark: sure, I’m only 1834 words closer to the end of the book than I was when I woke up this morning, but the psychological effect of watching the odometer tick over is enormous. The end of the book is no longer on the other side of a wall; I can see it now from where I’m standing.

The invisible one, to everyone but me, is in the revision. It’s been so painfully obvious to me that Part Four was where I started to lose my way; I stalled out a chunk of the way through it back in July, having to stop and rethink what I was doing, and what do you know? I’ve had to completely replace four scenes out of it, including the one I was writing when I stalled. Having made it past the last of those, however, the road ahead looks a hell of a lot smoother. Not that there isn’t stuff that needs fixing, but it’s of the “polish this and make it hit harder” sort rather than the “oh holy hell this scene isn’t even doing anything” sort. And I know which one I prefer. This wasn’t an 1834-word day; it was a 4762-word day, the rest of it being either flashback or replacements for existing crappy scenes. Tiring, but I’m done with that now.

I’m so close to the tipping point, too. (If I can have both a hump and a tipping point in this graph.) There’s about five thousand words of stuff left for me to muddle through, and then I hit the stuff I was semi-outlining last night: ten thousand words or so of scenes I think I’ll be able to roar right through. Then we’ll be into Part Seven, and the grand finale, which I hope will be very full of roaring.

But now I’m sleepy, and I’ve done my work, and it’s time for bed. Tomorrow, we begin the journey from 100 to 140.