I suspect that I'm about halfway through with my current manuscript. It's hard to know for sure, since there's no way of knowing how long the novel will be. I know it won't be 50k words, nor will it be 120k. It will fall somewhere in between, I think--probably around 75k. Shorter than five of my previous novels, but longer than my first one.

When people ask me how I feel about a work in progress, I never know how to respond. Sometimes I love what I'm writing, other times I hate it. In general, though, I've been very happy with all the novels I've written, and I'm happy with this one, too. It might be the best one yet. Then again, maybe not. Depends on your definition of "best." All I know is, if I found it on a bookstore shelf, I'd want to read it. I can only hope thousands of other people will feel the same way.

As always, my momentum comes and goes. Some days, I'm on fire, and I crank out a bunch of words. Other days, it's painful and slow, but I keep writing anyway. I don't write stuff that I don't intend to keep, which means I edit/revise as I go along. If I start a scene, and it doesn't seem to work from the beginning, I won't even bother writing it. Each scene has to have a reason for being. What happens that propels the story forward? It can be something minor, but the story has to move forward. The reader has to learn something new in regards to a character, the plot, backstory, or something. Which isn't to say that I haven't written some self-indulgent scenes, because all authors have done that. It can be painful to let them go. You might think it's a wonderful scene, but it adds nothing, so it has to be cut.

I can't imagine writing a tight outline for a book. I love letting it flow naturally, and letting the story take its own unexpected turns. My final product very rarely ends up exactly as I pictured it beforehand.

I hope to be finished by about June or so. Could be later. Doubt it will be earlier. Holy Moly will come out in May, and publicizing that book will eat up some time. There's less of a hurry when there isn't a deadline, but I've always been pretty good about moving forward without a deadline. Sure, I procrastinate, but I'm talking hours, not days or weeks.

I'm procrastinating right now. Can you tell?