Maintaining Momentum

I reached Fifty-nine thousand words on Argiope today.

I wasn't sure about a scene, but I chose to write it out and include it simply to keep my momentum going in writing this book. I may very well elect to come back and remove, or at least alter, this scene later. It's basically a small scene designed as a break between scenes involving the main character and his allies. In this scene a kid out hunting encounters one of the antagonists, and has a brief conversation/confrontation with her. The effect is to add a little depth to a what has been a rather effective, but two dimensional, character.

The problem is that at this point in the story, I may prefer to keep her two dimensional. At this time she has a certain impact when she appears, and I don't think I want to dilute that. But I needed to keep writing, so for the moment the scene is in the book. It's just one of those decisions that will have to revisited after the first draft is finished. Right now, I just want to get a first draft done before the end of the year. While putting out short stories and novelettes has made me feel kind of productive, I need to get another novel out there.

So I need to get about ten thousand a week written between now and New Years. It's doable, but a tad fast for me. It will definitely cut into my promotion time while sipping mocha's at Starbucks. Sigh! The sacrifices a writer must make!

On another front, Sheridan did well in his test at Cub Scouts and will be getting his Bobcat badge this weekend at the campout. I'm very proud of him. I'm hoping he gets to do a lot of things in scouts, and we'll try to make sure our schedules allow him to be as involved as possible.

Now it's time to make the put the old nose to the grindstone, which sounds to me like an rather bloody and unproductive approach to getting work done but I don't make these metaphors.