Reflections - Toward the climax and other ramblings

I'm at a slight loss for words here. There's a special sort of magic that happens when you write something of this length; you get invested into it and that investment can prompt some very curious sensations.

But, for the moment, I guess I'll start with this: 32454 words. That's how much I've written since the first of November. At this time of the month, if one is participating in NaNoWriMo/NaNoPoMo/etc. You're aiming to be at 31666 words by the end of tonight. So I've made it thus far. I know, though, that this pace is not something that I can keep up forever, but, as I've mentioned/implied in a previous blog post, I'm managing right now

But the fruits are there. You can see the listing of upcoming chapters in the long description; there are five chapters waiting in the wings. They aren't edited yet, per say, but that'll get there. It'll happen. But to think that I've gotten so much done... I'm made quite a lot of progress on the story.

But now I've reached a very special point. A few moments ago, I finished drafting a chapter. I'm about to start drafting another chapter. But this chapter... it's the big climactic chapter, and I have been thinking about this chapter since February. In fact, this is the chapter that I've been thinking about the most. And now I'm finally here and it's time to write it.

And I'm terrified. One person that I mentioned this to put it very succinctly: "It's a double-edged sword. It's the chapter you want to write but it's also the chapter you don't want to screw up." I'm excited that I finally get to explore this part of the story

Nonetheless, now that I'm in the endgame, I can give a definite estimate on what things will total out to be. I currently have about 119k words written down (by the way, for those who have read my previous works, this is longer than Substitute. Reflections is now the longest story that I've ever written). I presume that it'll be another 16k in the story.

As a result, I predict that Reflections, in the end, will be ~135k words.

I think there was a point where I originally estimated about 120k, so this is slightly over that, but not by much.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Suffice it to say, you current readers will have a lot of good stuff to look forward to in a couple of weeks. And who knows? I might finish drafting soon.

(Oh, and remember the AMA that I'm running, I guess. Kinda looks like no one has questions, so we're going to see if that actually happens in the end.)