***
3,728 marathon words today. End of Act III. Put to bed on a suitably somber but hopeful note. Two more acts to go, and I suspect they will both be shorter than Act III. Which is good. Because it is a monster.
713 pages total, counting 26 pages that are mostly outline. If I can keep act IV & V to under 75K total, I can bring it in under 1000 pages. God damn. What kind of a well-meaning idiot decides to write a book this long?
I only have a short novel-length manuscript to go. The good news is that it's page 687, and the plot is finally really starting to roll downhill.
Yes, that was the piquant taint of irony you detected there.