#WIPMarathon Report #4

I'm excited for this check-in because I actually have a tiny bit of progress to report! Plus, starting today, I am officially on summer break. This should mean more writing. *Should* being the keyword here, given that I can already see a slew of potential distracters. Like this:

(You may have figured out that this was just my shameless excuse to squeeze in another picture of my pool. Subtle, right?). But seriously, I'm hoping June is the month where I sprint to the finish line. Okay, so the month of May--this'll be short and sweet:

Last report word count + chapter count/scene count: 86,801 - 26 chapters completed

Current report WC + CC/ SC: 90,536 - 27 chapters completed

WIP Issues This Month: Now that I'm inching my way closer to the end, I'm worried about...well...the end. I'm worried that my book's conclusion will be too cliche. And there is one loose end I'm having a really hard time tying up, and if I don't figure it out, it's really going to tick off my readers. Also, I'm getting quite desperate for a title. "Spiraling" doesn't do it for me, but anything else I choose has already been used by two or three other authors. I finally forced myself to set this issue aside when @boundiali, who has become my sounding board for all of my writing-related whining, assured me that he would help me come up with a good title. 

What I learned this month in writing: A wealth of information about self-publishing! I won't repeat all of that here since this recent post gives more details.

What distracted me this month while writing: May is our last month of school. I was wading in so much work this week that there were nights we were eating canned olives and beans for dinner.

Goal for next month: I can't believe I'm finally going to say this, but my goal for next month is to finish my book.  

Last 200 words:

And then there was Lynn. Stryder wondered if death was one of those unchangeable things, like the Hawk Eyes book that insisted on dropping in every single timeline. The details of how it dropped were allowed to change, but no matter what, that book was destined to hit the floor. Perhaps death was the same way. The who was going to die and the how they were going to die might change, but maybe death was fixed, and Time was going to serve it to someone, no matter what. Maybe he and Taz could loop back to Mel’s Diner a dozen times, and no matter what, someone was going to die. 

What if next time, that someone was Taz?

He shuddered, but then realized it was a pointless thought. He wasn’t looping back again. This was his reality now. Last month he was a basketball star. A “ladies man.” Popular. Now, he was a convict.

Suddenly a familiar heat tingled his skin.

What?

The room started to pull away from him, and he grabbed the mattress with all his might.

“No!” he shouted out loud. He had done everything he could. He had confessed his crime. He had let Taz go when he selfishly wanted to hold onto her. He had owned up to his mistakes. He was serving his time. He was making things right. What else did the Laws want?

“Damn it, no…!”