Despite a writing session that netted two thousand words, looks like one final push left for a finished draft. Considering I’ve never estimated a project of this scope and length before, missing the target by a day seems reasonable. At least to me, it does.

When I consulted, if the final code drop ever landed on the initial deadline, the customer would have had a heart attack. It’s sort of assumed that software ships late. Deadlines in that business are suggestions.

Next time, I’ll allow a larger cushion on the back end. Regardless, even with a few more weeks, something tells me the project would have gone much the same way: a long stretch of modest output levels, the pace quickening once across the halfway mark, and a frenetic race against the clock for the final third.

Traveling this far with a novel has taught me one lesson. Well, several, but I’ll write more about those addenda later. My point is, keeping a handle on a novel sized manuscript is not difficult in the way I anticipated.

Finding time for writing is easy, but spending the majority of that allotment on a single project is exhausting. After a few months of facing the same conflicts day in and day out, the mind wants new ground, new adventures. Perhaps working on two projects at once might alleviate that tension. Or maybe not. I can always experiment.