The Grail deathmarch to final draft continues.
New words: something like 1500? I dunno. Some. A lot.
Words cut: eight hundred? A whole scene and some other bits.
Pages edited: 35 (I am on page 391 of 406)
Only chapters 24, 25, 26, and 27 remain before me, and they--unfortunately--are not much but outline notes. So it's slog, slog, slog from here to the end of the book, which I am guessing is about 15-20,000 words away. Which works out just perfectly, because
The manuscript stands at: 85,000 words, give or take. And my contract says 100,000. I think. Or something close to that.
mean things: gunfight, existential uncertainty
tyop: that black, black text began to crow from the page
I have drunk too much tea. My tummy hurts.
I am tired and going to eat something now. And maybe watch some TV before I come back to this. Or I might ignore it until tomorrow, depending on how stupid and tired I am. It depends. I have entered the end-of-book fugue, and if I am not writing, I am fretting about not writing. It's a little like stage 2 labor. Get this thing out of me now, I don't care how you go about it.
I have been livetweeting the death march, for anybody who likes watching hysterical breakdowns in progress.
Soon, soon, I will reach the scene where Tristen gets to break some shit.
It would be wrong to deny that I am looking forward to that.
Four more chapters. Four.
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
--Ernest Hemingway