Ah, those heady days when I figured I'd be done by this point! Not true, and soon I'll be resetting that counter to a more realistic figure - because as the post title says, I'm about to begin Act III of Housesitting. Some big moments have come and gone in Act II, which was plotted, in the dim and distant past, as the ending of the book - but then I just had so many more ideas.
Act III is actually the most loosely plotted part of the book so far. I have a rough idea of where it goes, and thankfully I have an ending, but how I get there will be interesting. There are a few big questions I have to ask, and I'm trying to answer them organically rather than in the interests of plot.
That probably sounds like pretentious rubbish, so let me clarify. I have a few plot points to resolve before I get to the end of the book. What I'm trying to do is actually have them make sense in the context of the book, and make them feel like natural events that these characters would drive, rather than making it feel like I'm shoehorning the characters into a plot. That is actually tougher than you'd think. In some cases - in a few cases actually - there's been a feeling as I'm writing of "No, wait - that wouldn't happen, that character wouldn't do that" and it's changed the book's course.
These are Writer Problems.
Anyway - to the other big question, will I finish by March 1st? I am really not sure. If I had to guess right now, 40K more words isn't even going to surprise me. At my own preferred pace of 1K words a day, I can neatly make that deadline. But strictly speaking my deadline was to publish, not to finish. So... that's going to be harder. Even when I'm actually 'done' there's still probably going to be a period of editing and rewriting. So... don't hassle me too much if March 1st comes and goes, and you're not reading the finished product.
But feel free to hassle me if it's not written by then at least!
Right, back to examining Act III and plotting more shenanigans.
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