Novel Writing - 82 Hours Left

So November is wrapping up, and I'm well below where I should be if I actually want to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Tacoma Chickadee has been writing as well and is adding words much faster than I am, even though she was about as behind as I was yesterday. She's flying and I think she'll make it. Go Chickadee!

I just passed 35,000 words last night. With 82 hours left in November, I calculate that I would need to do 176 words an hour to make it the rest of the way. Or, if I put five hours toward it for the next 4 days I would only need to write 721 words per hour.

It doesn't seem likely that I'm going to make it. But that's cool. The last time I finished a novel was 2002. I actually used to finish one every 18 months, but I haven't done anything since college. So being 126 pages into a novel that I really like at this point feels pretty damn good. Especially since I know pretty well where it's going and get to just keep writing.

I just finished one of the most fun scenes in the second act and have a doosie of an interrogation planned. And Act III gets off with everything collapsing and falling apart before working up to the climactic scene.

Beautyman is an interesting enough character to write that I have considered having him star in another mystery novel. I'd actually gotten a good 40 pages into it a few years ago but couldn't make it work. It was trying to do too many things and wasn't succeeding at any of them. I'd worked with two different titles for that one: "Diamond Cut Diamond" or "The Marinara Murders."

I am starting to think that "Sometimes I Despair" is a little too high-brow for this book. I've thought of a couple other titles like "The Saint Killer," which I'm not a big fan of because it's too obvious. I'm also considering "The Blood of Saints" as a title, which comes from a short Biblical quotation I'm using on the serial killer's calling card. Other nominees have been "One Less Saint" and "No More Saints."

And I laughingly suggested over the weekend "The Saints Go Dying."

Perhaps you can tell by this point that the book is about an LA serial killer who's MO is to go around and kill saintly people. All the best people--the good, honorable, wonderful people--in LA are being killed and the rest of the population is being scared into not giving, not volunteering, not fighting for what's right. That is a backstory of the book, but it's one the Detective is certainly aware of as he tries to find and stop the killer.

Any titles on that list you really like? Would one grab you enough to make you pick up the book and check the back cover. At this point I almost like "The Saints Go Dying" just because it gives me one more word toward my final word count ... ;)

Just kidding.