author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So the read-through is practically over. And the last quarter of the book is, like, totally fragmented. Reads like an outline. I know exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote it: "Oh crap! It's week 4 and I only have 35,000 words! And I don't know how to get to the scene I want to write! Crap! I'll just splotch it down on the page without any run-up..." It reads like something between an outline and a "scenes from" abridgement.

There's also the scenes that by their very existence imply something that ought to have gone before but failed to, what with me not having thought of them until week 4. I keep making notes like, "Good description of Mitch & co. on p 190. Need more throughout." "Too far in to be the first time we see this mannerism." "Did she really? Figure this out."

Yeah. I am not looking forward to finishing with the read-through. I'm going to have to fix all this mess.

And the sad thing is, it looks about ten times less painful to fix than either of the two NaNoWriMo novels that went before.

We really do get better at this. But what "better" means is never quite as much as we'd like it to.