Progress Report

16,493/20,000 for January. I'm on track to complete my JanNo goal. Good start to the writing year.

I'm still not at the job interview scene. Somi has to participate in an interrogation first. I'd planned to just summarize it, but when the moment came that seemed like the wrong thing to do. Tonight I need to do a little research on the "tells" that show a person is being deceptive, and then tomorrow I should be onto Somi's interview, which I'm really looking forward to writing since it takes place in a brothel. Very shocking for my rather sheltered and prudish protagonist, and a taste of what the next 11 years of living in a man's world are going to be like for her.

I can see the mid-point of Somi's story looming ahead, but I think it's a tad far ahead. In other words, this first half of Act II is probably going to come in a little long. Sigh. I think I've decided to just do my best to stay on word count target and not worry about cutting anything else until the entire draft is finished-- Bresher's story, too. If I wind up over 120,000 words, I'll figure out some cuts then. This means I'm revising my January goals to eliminate cutting 800 more words from Act I. I've already cut 2,200 words of unnecessary scenes and wordiness, but now I think I need to see the whole finished book before I decide what else needs to go. And I'm just not going to worry right now about it coming in long. See me not worry? No, really, this is me not worrying.