Production of quota

c. 1,700 words, for a total of 59,534 words.

I was hoping I would perhaps (this is crazy!) finish this morning; but in fact, though I have written a good chunk, there still remains the crucial important culminating scene to write, the forty minutes' or an hour's worth of events that needs to be described to fill in the gap between where I have got to and the last little bit of the novel which I wrote weeks ago so as to get it down on the page while it was still clear to me. And it did not seem like a good idea to rush it, especially as my concentration is by now seriously flagging!

I am going to just spend the weekend cleaning the draft up a bit in very minor ways, and then let it sit for a month or two; I think I will be able to do a better revision if I let some time pass and gain perspective on it. I may not be able to get back to it until March, I'm not sure. It makes me anxious to let things sit, it is tempting to spend a few extra days and send it out to my agent right away, but I know letting it sit is the right thing to do!

(There is probably going to need to be some sort of a "postscript" section, and that I think I'll wait to write until I have done an initial revision on the whole thing and have a clearer sense of what strictly speaking still needs to be told. On the other hand I really like the way the story ends very abruptly, not unexpectedly but with a death that will in some sense not be investigated or ever fully explained, and I wonder if those bits of story that would otherwise serve as postscript might somehow be folded in to the earlier parts of the story; this might be something I have to test on readers?)