Today I got back into my customary pace; I wrote just over five pages. After the past two days of doing seven pages and three pages, doing five felt good. By now I've reached page 373 of the manuscript. I've structured the story, excluding prologue and epilogue, to be one week long, and I'm now into the final full day. It's clear to me at this point that the story will exceed the 400-page length I'd originally envisioned. Might be as long as 440 pages.
But that's okay. It's much better to be a little long, or even a lot long, than to be too short. It's easier to cut than to fill. When I wrote the first draft of my novel Digger, it was over 700 hundred pages. Working with an editor at Bantam, I cut more than 200 pages. Some things I hated to lose, but there was a lot that I cut which only made the story better, a faster more intense read.
So, I'm not concerned about exceeding my anticipated page count.
In today's scenes, the antagonists strike in the wee, dark hours of the morning to scare the hell out of as many people as they can, and they succeed in including the protagonist's wife among that number. So things are getting personal. The sexual predator is foiled by circumstance from striking out at another victim. Far from discouraging him, it only makes him more determined.
The tension keeps ratcheting up.
Day 77 of writing my new novel is done.
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