Rewrites on the end of the book are done. Today, for the first time in ... months. *Many* months. I do not hate the book. I don't ever want to see it again (which is unfortunate, because I still have some detail work to do through the body of the thing), but while writing today was slow, it wasn't a god-awful struggle. I ended up writing more new pages than I expected, and I don't know if I'd just managed to psyche myself out with the paragraphs-not-pages thing, but it wasn't too horrible. I also won several games of solitaire.

For the first time *ever*, I'm satisfied with the end of the book. I added two new chapters and removed or altered probably another chapter's worth. Maybe more. Hard to tell, at this point. The manuscript (at the moment; it'll probably change) is 509 pages long, 33 pages longer than the last draft, which had already been the longest draft of a book I'd ever written.

I am emotionally wrung out, man.

ytd wordcount: 181,800
miles to Isengard: 53