Boring process blog.

For the second day in a row, I went on my twilight canal walk and an entire chapter came to me. I rushed home, went to my room, and wrote it down. And this was the chapter that I'd been stalled at for a full week. I just realized that it needed to start as a conversation between two friends and everything else followed.

Not having my computer with me gives me time to cogitate a little longer. I'm probably losing a few ideas, which is unfortunate, but that might be made up for by the precognition. So I think that makes three strong chapters in a row, after several chapters that I thought were adequate.

The pace feels a little odd. Not so much that it's building to a crescendo as that it just has been a steady pace of inevitability. 

I'm up to 73K words. I figure I have about 2 or 3 chapters left, a couple of them relatively short, and then one long action sequence at the end. A little bit of postscript.

I want to make a trip the the John Day Fossil Beds and soak up the atmosphere, write some descriptions. And then do a little research on guns (a weak spot for me, considering this is meant to be a thriller) and maybe hostage taking procedures. Find another couple of longform articles on Malheur and Bundy ranch, maybe Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Make sure the book is at least 80K words. As always, I need to flesh out the book. I believe it's important to get the plot down, the skeleton of the story, and then go back and explicate it. I keep reading on Facebook of fellow writers who are doing 150K words, which is pretty amazing. I believe this book works at 80K or slightly longer. It would be easy enough to add more, but I don't think it's necessary.

Almost done. I was hoping to be finished by September 1, and I think that will probably happen. But these last chapters are important and I don't want to push them.

I'm kind of not thinking about the last chapter. It will need to be figured out, what each character is doing, who lives, who dies.

Action scenes are easy to do, but hard to do well. So I want to be sure it all works and that it all feels right, and maybe even includes a little pathos.