Week 3: 39 Chapters / 51,287 Words

More steady progress this past week. One chapter ran seriously long, coming in around 3,000 words. It required significant editing to shorten it. Otherwise, the chapter lengths have been pretty much on target.

I'm approaching the half-way point of the novel. If I'm able to keep this pace up, then I should be done in about another three weeks, making a total of six weeks for the rough draft. That's pretty good for a novel of 100k words!

I'm still eager to read through it in sequence for the first time. Since I've been writing it out of sequence, that'll be an eye-opener, I'm sure.

I think I'm on track. However, since I'm lost in the writing phase these days, I find myself questioning everything. I want to stop writing and revisit the planning. I want to rethink major scenes, and I question whether I have any clue what this story is about or whether my understanding is as deep as it needs to be.

All of this is normal.

Whether I had planned a little or a lot, I'd be experiencing these same doubts. I have to trust in the plan and carry on. This is not the time to rethink, but to follow what I mapped out and simply bring it to life on the page. Then, when it's all there, I can look it over and see what I've actually got. What I think I'm doing is not necessarily what I'm doing. How I think it's going is not necessarily how it's going. Such a lack of objectivity is normal when one is lost in the creative phase of writing manuscript pages. I mustn't take it too seriously!

So I'll carry on. As I must.

Adrian