Accountability Post 2021 Week 16

Introduction to the Accountability Post 2021 Week 16

An unexpected surge of anxiety hit me this week. No, I don’t have to go back out into public yet. This anxiety was in response to the plot for A Ghast in the Machine. The plot-braiding I’ve done so far made it worse! Remembering back to the time when I used to write short stories, something similar happened. Not coincidentally, it happened at about the same time in the plot. That is to say, about the three-quarter complete mark.

This might sound strange. It sounds strange to me! But I think the problem is that I’m moving from potential to actual. Of all the amazing things that could happen from this point forward, only one plot will play out. Everything I’ve written until now is more or less setup. Those setups represented commitments, of course. Now, though, I have to fully commit to an ending that will either validate what I’ve done or make it look incredibly stupid. i really don’t want it to look stupid. These characters have been banging around in my head for decades. I’d hate to fail them now.

Time to suck it up, eh? I need to remember that no matter how badly I mess it up, I can always rewrite it. Since I likely have at least two or three rewrites ahead of me, I’ll have ample opportunity!

Accountability Post 2021 Week 16 By the Numbers

The week before, I wrote 6,695 words to push the count to 103,614. Here’s how last week looked:

I’ve seen better weeks. But I’ve seen worse week, too!

This week, I only wrote 4,430 words. That’s 2,265 fewer words than the week before. So, that’s that half-empty view. The half-full view is that Saturday’s writing almost didn’t happen at all because of real life intrusions; the same happened with Sunday.

Also, I had some more set construction to take care of. Now that end-game is in sight, I realized I need to spend some time thinking through the relationships of several plot threads. I reordered a few. I also built out the UN and EU space fleets, because they’ll play a role. Fortunately, I had most of their command structure in place. I had to confirm the ship’s classes, the ship’s names, and the like. The net effect was that the week didn’t turn out as many words as I would have liked. Still, I managed to move forward.

I’ll call that a victory and see if I can kick the output up next week!

Feedback Welcome!

Do you have any news about what you’re working on? Any tips about how you keep focused? Have you read anything that struck your fancy? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!