Day 10 ughs.... (Yes, ughs instead of thoughts. It's that kind of day.)

My novel is slowly but surely heading into the final act despite my desire for a longer story. I wanted to end up with 90-120K; I think I will end up with closer to 80K at best. Which is fine. It's a first draft and I know a lot of things need to be fixed, such as two characters who have upped and vanished for a good 10K of words. That I haven't got a great handle on Jake AS a character probably doesn't help the fact that his sections seem to have less weight and importance to them, but I think this was as true in the version of this novel I did in 2004.

The past 3 days have been the bleh of not feeling good and also the fact that the entire middle section of his novel has been done via pantsing rather than plotting. And all it proves to me is that I absolutely suck as pantsing and shouldn't do it for most novels I am working on. (For weird things, like this story it works somewhat.)  I try to hit a mid-point between having some stuff plotted roughly and leaving a lot of things open so the ending is free to surprise me and keep me writing to find out more about it; for this story I had a solid 6-7 chapters roughly plotted out, and then after that vague goals to hit before novel's end, most of which I have reached.

The question, of course, is going to be what to work on for the rest of November ..... I may, just may, work on the story linked above a bit and naught else, but we shall see.