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.

I've received some negative feedback about my portrayal of the romance between Geraden and Allonna. That's something I will probably have to go back and substantially rework later; for now, I'll just continue the way its going, to keep it consistent within the first draft.

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With what I've written this morning, I have now added more words to my novel over the past 52 days than in all of 2002 and 2003 combined.

In terms of word count, So far today has been my second most productive day of writing since I started my sprint to the finish. Depending on how exciting the BYU game is, I could get even more done this evening.

It was actually chapter 41 in my outline, but I decided it made more sense here.

And I've passed over the 90,000-word mark. I've updated my progress bar at the top of the page to include the extra 20,000 words I think I'm going to need, and my new target date of finishing just before Thanksgiving.

Those of you who are paying close attention may have noticed that the word counter showing my novel progress has been stuck at 88,751 for several days. This does not mean I have writers' block. It just means that I decided to take a short break from working on the novel. Since there's no way I'm actually going to finish... read more »