And now the insanity begins.

I experienced some of it last night when I wrote more than 4,000 words in just two hours. My most productive day in the space of just a few hours squeezed in at the end of the day, after spending all afternoon wrestling with my computer and then giving up for the evening.

How much more crazy typing will there be before I finish this? Will the ending I’m looking for miraculously appear at last? I’m already at 45,000 words and I know what I can write today. If I finish that, then I’m at a loss — I know how to build up to the climatic scene, and I know what things can happen after it, but the big bang itself is still missing.

Amusement: borrowing from real life for scenes in the novel. For example, Sara the protagonist just had a brief argument with her mother about the definition of a date. She went to see a movie with Gavin, so her mom thought that meant they were going out, while Sara argued that it’s not a date unless you call it that. She and Gavin had not explicitly called it a date, and nothing had happened which would imply it was, hence “nothing is going on.

Yeah, not too long ago I was having the same argument with my mom.

And also entertaining: giving Sara a really cool dress like I’d love to have. After looking around at all sorts of period costumes, I finally decided on one that I liked.

I found a bunch of sites like Yosa.com of people who sell period costumes, often custom made as this one is, when I was trying to put together my costumes for Buttercup last year. It was this site that led me to discover the pattern we used when creating the wedding dress I wore in the last scene of our production of The Princess Bride. My dress is lovely too, of course, but it would be nice to have one of these!

But now I have to stop thinking about what people are wearing and neat details like that and work out the important things like how, exactly, they’re going to win/defeat Emily/get rid of her/what have you. Still out of ideas, and now I’ve built up to the point where tomorrow, I’m going to need to start B.S.ing my way through it because everything I’ve planned is all written. Who knows what zaniness will show up in the process — aliens? ninja kitties? Martha Stewart?

Maybe I’ll get lucky and it will all come to me in a dream tonight if I go to sleep spazzing about it.