Don’t Tell The Book

The intel I’m gathering doesn’t support my plan to finish the war with a single Vistula-Oder Offensive-style campaign.  I now believe that even the revised estimate for chapters remaining–raised last week from six to seven–was overly optimistic.  It appears there are ten more chapters ahead, for a grand total of twenty-seven.  At the current pace that implies a total word count of 137 thousand for the book.  A seven-week push to the finish would have been demanding, but not impossible.  Ten weeks is asking for trouble, especially considering that I will need to be especially sharp to tie everything together in the last two chapters.  I’m leaning toward two offensives, the first lasting six weeks and the second lasting four, with a week break in between.  The Book Wall has been rendered useless–the next chapter up on the wall is four chapters away per the revised plan–but it still looks neat, so I’m leaving it.   I’m hoping I can delay my nervous breakdown until after I declare victory in June.  Then I can go to pieces for a couple weeks when the girls are on summer break so they’re here to wipe up the puddles of drool (mine and Brinky’s).