Word count today: 3,396

Total word count: 32,167

I'm 60% of the way toward the goal! WooHoo!

I had a nice burst of creative writing today, introducing two new characters. The second half of the book is set in a different time (20 years later) and a different place (outer space) than the first half (now-ish, earth-ish). Since most of the characters from the first half of the book are missing or dead (or, um, missing), I had to populate the new setting with mostly new characters. This feels easier and more natural than creating the first batch of them did. It remains to be seen what will happen with the two characters I introduced today, but I think I did a somewhat better job of fleshing them out.

It's been an interesting journey with this story so far. I started with the protagonist, his psychologist, and the protagonist's drug-addicted brother. The brother never made a reappearance, and a couple other characters I introduced didn't end up going anywhere, either. The psychologist has kind of become the lynch pin of the whole thing, drawing together the original characters and some new ones. He's also going to serve as the element that bridges two or more time frames in the story.

The novel began in contemporary America. I got bogged down in some plot issues that I felt were overwhelming the story. Since it already had kind of a sci-fi bent, I ran with that part of it and advanced the story 20 years. It now takes place on a starship of unknown origin, which has scooped up the remaining inhabitants of earth and promises to take them to a new home. I have an idea where this is going, although it's entirely possible I'll end up in a completely different place. Resetting the story has allowed me to introduce new characters, possibly tie up the dangling plot elements involving some of the original characters, and create more conflict and interaction. I realized the scenario I had set up had boxed me into a corner in terms of both dialogue and conflict, and I needed more opportunities for both. In a moment of absolute lunacy about 10 days in, I had seriously contemplated scrapping the whole story and starting over. The deadline forced me to find a way to tie the original story and characters together with the new setting in a way that makes sense within the framework of the novel.

A few days ago I was ready to throw in the towel; now I wouldn't dream of it. I've had three days of fairly high output (3194, 2523, 2296), and I've gained a lot of lost ground. The needed daily average to finish on time was 1667 words at the beginning of the month. After several days of inactivity, my need average output jumped to about 2100 words. Today it's down to 1793. I'm hoping for several more days of significant progress. I hope I can get that average down to 1667 words again, and then go below it. If I can average 2500 words a day for the next five days I'm on vacation, that would get me to about 45,000 words. Even if I can't maintain that pace, I'm not going to have any trouble finishing if I just keep writing every day.