Day 26

Whoohoo! Very productive day, at 4094 words, bringing my total to 43,786. Two more like today, and I'll make my target. Oh wait, I only have a couple or three more days, so I have to be this productive again tommorow and Wednesday. Let's see, I'm at 87.6% of target, with 86.6% of the time elapsed...so for the first time I am actually 1% ahead of schedule!

The last few chapters have been almost entirely dialog, however, I will clearly have much revision to undertake to introduce necessary description to bring this up to standard. But that is for later. I just have to keep pressing ahead, even knowing that some of this dialog will undoubtably have to be trimmed at a later date. And I like how the characters are developing, their interactions and how the plot is thickening, albeit not quite fast enough. (At current pace, novel is going to be 100,000 long since I'm only half way through the outline, and still have two more characters waiting in the wings...maybe 3).

One aspect that I am rather proud of is that the heroes are constantly confused about what is going on...I recently reviewed a book I criticized because the characters would take one look at the alien technology or one look at the situation, and immediately intuit the right answers to all the mysteries. Bugged the hell out of me. Like a guy walking into a Jumbo jet and flying it after 10 seconds. Yeah, that could happen. So my characters keep operating on the best information available to them at the time, and then they allow themselves to build up these increasingly sinister hypothesis, most of which are dead wrong. They get there in the end of course, but by then have completely changed their perspectives on everything and everyone.