Earlier this summer, I marked the end of a newly completed chapter with an announcement. I believe the reason why I got out of that habit was because I went through a stretch where I was mostly revising old material and adapting it to some new aspects of my plot. But today I noticed that I was on page 172 out of 217 pages. Suddenly, I realized that I’d made a lot of progress. I’m about seven chapters away from the end. I’ll need to write two additional chapters and edit the five others quite heavily, but things are moving.
If past experience is any guide, these could go more quickly. This might seem a bit odd, but I’m never 100% sure how a draft is going to end until I get there. So the eager reader in me starts pressuring the writer once things start to go bad at the character’s darkest moment.
Kristin Wolden Nitz 