I just realized I forgot to do my weekly football update.

Two out of three last week. The BYU Cougars beat Air Force with a nearly perfect second half in which they scored 41 points. That gave them their longest winning streak in a couple of years: two wins in a row. Woohoo! Can you feel the excitement?

My fantasy team, the Klingon Warriors, won last week as well.

The Dallas Cowboys lost.

With that, the novel surpasses 110,000 words.

I didn’t quite squeeze all the information I needed to into this chapter, which is probably good because it’s infodumpy enough as it is.

Chapter 45 is now finished, despite my taking the time to make a few blog comments elsewhere. But I’ve got to keep my focus on the novel if I want to finish before Thanksgiving.

And that puts me over the 75% mark toward my word count goal.

It contains a scene inspired by something I read over thirty years ago in the Childcraft series of books my family had when I was a child. Do those even exist any more?

Total words in my novel written in approximately 28 months before August 26, 2004: 52,214

Total words in my novel written in the 60 days since: 52,252

And so begins Part IV.

I’m a little behind where I was supposed to be in the plot according to my outline, but that’s fine because chapter 45 in the outline had very little in it, and I can easily use it to catch up.

Well, I’ve finished a key scene in Chapter 42 and that puts me over 100,000 words.

Back when I started this novel in May of 2002, my goal was 100,000 words. Well, I’ve reached that goal. It’s just that the goalpost has moved a bit…

Well, I won’t say this chapter contains the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything. But it does up the stakes a little.

It is also the last chapter of Part III of the novel.

I am terrible at writing romantic scenes. Absolutely terrible. You’d think that after being in a writers’ group with a romance novelist for a couple of years that I would have picked up some technique just by osmosis. You’d think reading Jane Austen would count for something.

For what it’s worth, chapter 41 is now done.

Only twenty-one more chapters to go, according to the outline. And maybe an epilogue, which isn’t in the outline. I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.