Oh no, not again!

Total word count: about 121,000
Today's word count: No idea. Probably around 2,000.
Cups of coffee: two filter, one espresso and a pot of Earl Grey tea
What's playing: The Vines, The Flaming Lips and The Be Good Tanyas

Well, I have exceeded what I thought was an over-generous estimate of how much I had left to write. Damn! So I have extended the little word counter again to prevent it from getting stressed out. Now it's sitting at 130,000. It can't be much more than that, surely? I am nearing the end. I had another productive morning in the cafe, despite the small and sticky child who was trying to climb onto my notes. Remember how I said the other day that I was happy with chapters one through twenty-nine, pretty much? Well I have managed to spend most of this week so far on chapters twenty-eight and twenty-nine, and they have changed beyond all recognition. Books are funny like that.

I feel the need for a list. Today I have:
1) Written an interesting couple of paragraphs about Mugabe (not sure where they're fitting in, but they're needed somewhere)
2) Written an important scene revisiting a character who disappeared earlier in the book
3) Split one chapter into two, which has infinitely improved the flow and structure of the book
4) Written a bunch of other stuff that is more difficult to put a good label on
5) Worried about a little sub-plot thread that is flapping around - not sure if I should kill it entirely or follow it through.

What I'm worried about (well, one of the things) is keeping the last chapters of the book from getting too bogged down in political stuff. It still needs to be a story about the narrator and her family, not a political commentary. Keeping the balance is one of the challenges I'm facing this week.

I'm wary of making any more pronouncements about my finishing date ... I want to give the ending the attention it needs. I am looking forward to giving my mind a break for a couple of weeks, but I don't want to rush this and I feel like I'm doing some good work. The plan for the rest of the day is to ... well, keep going, as usual, and also to send another batch of pages to my advisor. Tomorrow morning I'm visiting a friend - the priest who married us, and who also married my Mum and Dad twenty-two years ago in Zimbabwe - to return a very difficult book on theology that I only semi-understood. Just a piece of trivia there.