I spent the past week finishing the final scene of the book. The time and place for the scene were present in the primeval outline of 2021, but the contents have shifted around quite a lot as I struggled to get all the characters to the end. In the final scene, I wanted to tie up some loose ends, but not all of them. In life, are all the loose ends ever tied up?

Only about 1500 words this week, therefore, as I tiptoed through the chapter. Some nights I didn’t sleep well, because I keep running over conversations from the scene in my head, afraid I’d forget some critical line by the next morning.

Now that the final chapter is in draft form, I will go back and finish the scenes that I only “sketched” in order to get the plot to the finish line. There are 16 scenes (out of 75 total) that need to be finished. The list seems long to me, but not too scary. I expect that the next month (at least) will be devoted to completing these scenes. After that, it can be called a first draft!

And so I plod on.