The countdown begins

Well, kids, it's that time of book again: time for the end-of-book countdown!

Chapters yet to draft: 12, 14, 16, 17

Number of fiddly bits to retrofit: 9

Some of the fiddly bits are one line, others scenelets or multiple-paragraph exchanges. Also, none of those chapters is entirely blank at this point -- all of them have at least some words in them. (There are 18 chapters total.)

Of course, now that I've said that, I will be running around doing errands and probably won't diminish any of those numbers this morning. Still: I can smell it from here.

Momentum

Chapters yet to draft: 12, 14, 17

Number of fiddly bits to retrofit: 3

Well. I should make that kind of comment more often. Let's try it again: certainly I will have no time for working on the book this evening! Due to life and so on! With all of the et ceteras!

The only drawback to this stage of bookness is that I can't work on sections of it longhnd away from the computer any more, because there's just not enough wide open space to fit pieces into.

One of the good things about this stage of bookness is that it's very easy to squish nagging doubts and move on: is this right? Do I need to go into this part more? Does something else need to happen here? Never mind that -- I will see it all more clearly when I reread the whole thing, red pen in hand! And then again when someone else does!

It's coming kind of short. Not terminally short for a YA. But still short. Well, there'll be room if anything needs to be added at length, and if not, the short end of a category's normal range is not a bad thing.

Boooooook.