Labor Day Novel: End

17,942 total words.

The first 9 chapters came out to be 17,638 words. Then I wrote four extremely bad paragraphs to try and launch into chapter 10, but they were not only extremely bad, they also didn't lead anywhere. I'm out of steam, I think. Might as well stop until I can do something only semi-bad instead, and with content that actually makes sense. ;)

So ... to catch up from my last blog, I ended up combining chapters 8 and 9 (now chapter 8), and it was told as an on-the-road scene. Then chapter 10 became chapter 9, and it was told at a diner in Driftwood (instead of being an on-the-road scene). The lost hiker chapter is one of the least action-packed chapters; the only other one with no action was chapter 6, which was basically an infodump chapter. (But it was a good infodump - by the time I spelled it all out, hopefully the readers would've actually wanted to know all that).

That leaves 3 more chapters to go before the story is done.

Chapter 10: The rock fall scene. It's Friday morning (story started on a Tuesday night), and the bus is now driving its way through the Bitterroot Mountains. Nature is going to take God by surprise by trying to smash the bus with a giant boulder. Alan has no choice but to catch it in mid-air, without any prep time to make it look natural to casual observers. The aftermath of the event is probably going to be long and drawn out.

Chapter 11: A diner in Clarkston, Idaho in late afternoon. The Pope calls. This is where the root password is finally given out. This is the chapter where everything in the preceding chapters has to get tied together. I wrote up a lot of weird stuff at random, whatever came to mind at the time of writing. Before I can write this phone conversation, I have to reread everything I wrote before and see if I can make them related to each other in some cool way.

Chapter 12: Eugene, Oregon. God tells all (to Ned) and goes back to Heaven. ;) Most of the relevant bits from the actual song will play out in this chapter. The lyrics like "If you had one question what would you ask" etc.

So... when am I going to write this? I'm debating whether to do a chapter per night until it's finished, or if I should wait until next weekend and do them all at once. All at once might work out better, just to get myself completely immersed again. Also gives me more time to recharge from this weekend, mull over what I've written already, and reread the first 9 chapters before plunging in again. Plus the work week tends to be full of daily life distractions.

Robert is reading it now. He seems to be liking it. ;) If anyone else wants to see it, it's up at my dead rpol game (in a non-public thread). Send me a PM and I'll give out details for how to access it.