I am happy to have passed 50,000 words at last. I started this novel during NaNoWriMo last November, where the goal is to hit 50,000 words in one month. Alas, I have never in my life been that fast a writer, and so it has taken me into February to meet that goal.

But meet it I have. Even though last week I only finished 1259 words, that took me to a total of 50517 so far. I spent the rest of my writing time doing something new: I started a spreadsheet where I laid out in order all my chapters, and all the scenes within those chapters, with columns listing who was present in the scene, where it took place, and what the purpose of the scene was.

In this book I juggle several different plot threads, and I introduce a certain set of characters and magical themes that I hope to write about in other books in the future. So I face a number of tasks, and since this is only the second time I have pushed a novel-length story to completion, the structure of a novel as it’s being written is something I am learning as I work. As I head into the final third of the book, I still have to figure out how to bring all these things to some sort of satisfying conclusion.

I hope that as I do this again, and then again, some of this work will start to feel more natural to me. For now, I test different tools as I try to find what works. I think the spreadsheet is a good tool for me.